Nicolas Clavel
Founder & Chief Investment Officer
Nicolas has over three decades of experience in trade finance. After beginning his career with Credit Suisse in Switzerland, he joined Citicorp Investment Bank in London covering EMEA structured trade finance in 1984. He left Citibank in 1992 as CEO of their West African Head Office in Dakar which covered Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Cabo Verde, Mauritania and Senegal having been headhunted to start DOC Finance, a merchant bank based in Geneva focused on trade finance in Latin America & Africa.
He returned to Africa seven years later as CEO of Standard Bank’s Congo-Kinshasa subsidiary, before joining Standard Chartered Grindlays in Switzerland two years later. Nicolas then spent 5 years with Barclays Private Bank in Switzerland managing a portfolio of East African clients before setting up Scipion Capital.
Nicolas holds an MBA from Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, is a non-exec director of AIM-listed Symphony Environmental Technologies Plc, & has served as a court magistrate in Switzerland for many years.
Anthony Kukielski
Chief Financial Officer & Head of Trade Finance Origination
Anthony has three decades’ experience in the trading & financing of commodities, their derivatives, shipping and logistics. His experience has led to him being called as an expert witness by major international shipping law firms in both litigation & arbitration matters.
After completing his accountancy articles with Peat Marwick Mitchell, Anthony joined Raphaelly International, a major commodity trader, in Johannesburg in 1981. Between 1986 & 1991 Anthony held a series of senior management positions with UK trading group S&W Berisford plc; from 1991 to 1996 he was Vice President Trading Operations, at Tirtamas Comexindo , at that time Indonesia’s largest independent international trading group.
From 1996 to 2002 Anthony was global head of the commodities team in the London office of an offshore private investment group. Between 2004 and 2005 he was a consultant to Snowmark Corporation and Titan LLC, a USA-based investment consortium, advising on the structuring and funding of a major Siberian timber investment project. Between 2006 and 2009 Anthony was a consultant financier & principal for Arlington Special Situations Fund, concentrating on deal origination and structuring. He joined the Scipion team in 2010.
Chris Jenkins
Head of MARKETING & Business Development
Chris joined Scipion in September 2011, having been involved in the banking & finance industry for over twenty years. He ran the Equity Finance trading business at Bear, Stearns International Ltd in London from 1999 to 2008, covering hedge funds & inter bank financing in Europe, Asia, and Africa, developing their CFD & Swap products into a $12bn business.
Prior to his role at Scipion, Chris handled Sales &Marketing at Carrousel Capital Ltd, a London-based boutique hedge fund, & at Smith New Court, from 1994-1998 through its takeover by Merrill Lynch. Earlier in his career, Chris worked for Industrial Bank of Japan and for the Royal Bank of Scotland. Outside of the industry, Chris has been a freelance motoring journalist, writer & editor since 2000, and has designed & constructed his own sports racing car from scratch.
