The Team
The Team
Experts in their field
The Scipion team has more than 150 years of cumulative experience in banking, corporate finance, project finance, impact investing, equities and portfolio management in emerging markets.
Experts in their field
The Scipion team has more than 150 years of cumulative experience in banking, corporate finance, project finance, impact investing, equities and portfolio management in emerging markets.
Nicolas Clavel
Chief Investment Officer,
Swiss
Nicolas is Scipion Capital’s Founder and CIO. He oversees the investment processes for all of the firm’s strategies and is responsible for the development of all new products.
Nicolas has over three decades of experience in trade finance. After beginning his career with Credit Suisse in Switzerland, he worked at Midland Bank Plc’s Trade Finance subsidiary in Lausanne and London before joining Citicorp Investment Bank in London covering EMEA structured trade finance in 1984. He left Citibank in 1992 as CEO of their West Africa Head Office in Dakar having been headhunted to start DOC Finance, a merchant bank based in Geneva focused on trade finance in Emerging and Frontier Markets.
Julie Ferguson
Chief Operating Officer,
British
Julie is Scipion’s Chief Operating Officer. She has over 18 years’ experience within the financial services industry. She started her career at Morgan Stanley in Glasgow working in a variety of roles across middle office and prime brokerage operations. She moved to London in 2007 becoming a VP within the Morgan Stanley Prime Brokerage client service team.
In 2012 Julie moved to Northern Trust as a senior onboarding manager for fund administration clients. Julie then spent 6 years as Head of Operations, COO and CCO for Ashenden Capital Management LLP, a London based quantitative investment manager. She was responsible for corporate governance, operations, fund accounting, legal, operational risk management and compliance.
Cobus Campher
Regional Head Southern Africa,
South African
Cobus is Scipion’s Regional Head for Southern Africa and Group Agronomist. Based in Gaborone, Botswana Cobus project manages Scipion’s multi-layered agri-businesses.
Cobus began his career in the early 2000s as a farm manager in the Viljoenskroon district of South Africa, where he managed both the cattle and broiler business as well as over-sighting the farms planting programme of sunflower, sorghum, soya beans and peanuts. Having gained experience at this large commercial farm, he returned to the family farm to oversee upgrades on its poultry operation, comprising 81,000 chickens and on its cereal business. The latter involved a specific focus on crop cultivation over 900 hectares.
Chris L Rogers
Regional Head Francophone Africa,
American
Christopher L. Rogers is Scipion’s Regional Head of Francophone Africa and independent credit oversight officer. Based in Rabat, Morocco Chris has more than 40 years’ experience of working in Africa – having held senior positions in the banking sector and developed high profile joint venture projects in countries across the African continent. Chris started his career at Citibank as the senior country manager in Kinshasa, Libreville and Dakar, in the corporate, merchant and private banking sectors with a specific focus on public and private sector credit. At the time of his departure from Citibank, Christopher was Africa Global Market Manager, Private Banking, for Citibank’s Paris and Johannesburg operations and in total spent a total of 27 years with the Bank.
Stephen Kemp
Director – Trade Finance,
British
Stephen is one of Scipion’s senior trade finance transactors and has over thirty years of experience in trade finance. Stephen began in banking at the National Westminster Bank and has spent his career at major international banks covering middle office, structured export finance, business development and global trade finance before joining Rand Merchant Bank of South Africa, in 2003 where he was responsible for creating and establishing the banks merchant banking presence in London. Before joining Scipion Stephen established the trade financing business for Europe Arab Bank plc.
Paul Baker
Director – Trade Finance,
British
Paul is Scipion’s Director – Trade Finance and has responsibility for generation and managing of trades. With more than 30 years of experience in trade finance, his career has focused on identifying, structuring and closing trade facilities that meet the financing needs of commodity traders and producers.
Paul joined Scipion from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Europe Ltd (SMBC) where he was an Assistant General Manager in the Structured Trade and Commodity Finance Department.
Ian McNeil
Head of Operations,
British
Ian joined Scipion in 2017 as Head of Operations after a distinguished 30 year career in the commodity and trade finance industry. Ian has managed teams for major banks in London, Hong Kong and the Netherlands, holding various positions up to and including Global Head.
Before joining Scipion, Ian was a Senior Manager with Standard Chartered Bank in their London Collateral Management team with responsibilities ranging from Head of Europe to Global Coordinator for the Structured Inventory business. Prior to this, Ian was Global Head of Collateral Management for Fortis Bank. He previously managed their Hong Kong team for over 4 years, during which he helped to establish a unit in Shanghai.
Cathy Garnier-Ramirez
Group Financial Controller,
French
Cathy joined Scipion in 2012 and is a bi-lingual financial assistant with many years’ experience in bookkeeping, payroll, cash management with specific skills in VAT return and year end accounts preparation. She has for a number of years worked in the Accounts Departments of large international Companies prior to joining Scipion Capital LLP as Accounts Officer before being promoted to Group Financial Officer in 2016.
Cathy works closely with Scipion’s COO on the accounting and operational aspects of both the management company and fund.
Johnnie Puxley
Associate Director,
British
Johnnie works closely with the directors helping them to structure and implement facilities. In tandem with this, Johnnie works with all Scipion portfolio companies to build and instal an ESI dedicated strategy. These focus on addressing an array of issues such as food security alongside delivering a return to investors. Johnnie chairs the Scipion Capital ESI Committee.
Prior to joining Scipion in September 2019, Johnnie graduated from Cass Business School with a MSc degree in Energy, Trade & Finance. Previously Johnnie worked in East Africa trading coffee, initially for ECOM Trading in Nairobi, where he spent time working on the origination of coffee and its trade out of Africa into Europe. After this, he worked for Engelhart Commodity Trading Partners in Addis Ababa where he was given oversight on the export process of coffee from Ethiopia.
Mark Robertson
Head of Corporate Services,
British
Mark is Scipion’s Head of Corporate Services. Mark is a former solicitor and brings with him over 20 years of experience in the banking, structured and trade finance sectors. Mark started his legal career at Clifford Chance before moving to White & Case acting as lead associate in the firm’s structured finance practice (both cash and synthetic transactions), traditional capital markets programmes and stand-alone issuances, repacks, future flow receivable transactions and general LMA and bespoke lending arrangements. In 2005 Mark moved to Speechly Bircham LLP where he specialised in structured finance and banking, including post-credit crunch fund restructuring, fund related litigation and security enforcement on behalf of trusts.
Peter Ullmann
Investment Committee,
British
Peter acts as an external member of Scipion’s Investment Committee. He is an experienced risk and general management professional, with an expert knowledge of international trade and commodity finance. He began his career in Lloyds Bank International, holding management positions in Brazil, the UK, Spain, the Netherlands and France. He then joined Allseas SA as a member of the management team and financial director, gaining experience in the raising of debt finance in the offshore energy industry. This was followed by a move to the Russian Federation where Peter was the managing director for AIOC Corporation, a leading US commodity and financial services house with significant presence in the CIS.