John Behar has more than thirty years of finance and investment banking experience covering a wide range of financial products and deals across a broad geographical span including the European, Asian, African and US markets.
He has a particular focus on leveraged and structured transactions having been centrally involved in private equity backed leveraged acquisitions worth more than €8bn., but also has experience of corporate leveraged acquisition, structured trade finance, securitisations, FCCB/GDR listings on the LuxSE, and London listings of international companies on both AIM and the Main Board. Prior to establishing Prospect Capital in 2004, John was a corporate financier with Commerzbank and at its inception consulted to ICICI Bank on setting up its independent UK corporate banking subsidiary.
An established member of the investment community in London and internationally, John combines comprehensive technical expertise, insights into the needs of management teams and owners, and an informed feel for investor appetite to provide effective solutions to financing problems. He is a graduate of Durham University and holds a finance MBA from Bayes Business School. John has served on and advises a number of public and private company boards across a variety of sectors including natural resources, renewable-energy, clean-tech, fin-tech, and financial services. He is a dual citizen of the UK and Guyana and is actively involved in the development of the rapidly growing Guyanese economy.
Raj Mann has more than twenty years of energy and utility investment, finance, trading and engineering experience covering power, gas, oil and renewable energy deals across a broad geographical span including the European, African and US markets.
He has been engaged in private-equity transactions for over 12 years, including capital-raising and execution, with his most recent experience focussed on developing, structuring and financing complex liquefied natural gas-to-power projects across Africa on behalf of private offices. He has also provided capital introduction services to a number of funds, projects and prospective entities offering yield generation in renewable energy.
In 2006, he co-founded Oxara Energy, an investment platform targeting the development, construction and sale of wind and solar portfolios across Europe, with a particular focus on the Italian market given previous principal investment experience. He also held roles with major energy trading companies (American Electric Power, RWE Trading and Enron) focussed on structured commodity transactions, deal origination and asset acquisitions across Europe. He started his career as an oil and gas engineer with Halliburton and co-founded a technical risk consultancy that provided services to the energy and insurance markets. Raj holds a PhD, with Distinction, in Process Engineering from Manchester University, and an MSc in Finance from London Business School.
Peter is a veteran power sector project-financier having worked on many of Europe’s landmark power deals over the course of the last 23 years, including both conventional and alternative energy.
Having begun his career at British Telecom where he was engaged in the financial adjudication of tenders for BT's cable and satellite investments he took up a management consulting role with Touché Ross in the late 80's and advised the UK Government, Department of Environment, on the privatisation of the water industry, involving the generation of detailed valuation methodologies. Peter's extensive project finance experience was built during subsequent appointments, between 1988 and 2002 at J Henry Schroder Wagg, Babcock & Brown and Commerzbank where he structured and executed project finance deals for Lakeland Power, the first retrofit of a UK tax lease into a project finance credit, Derwent Power, the first true combined heat and power project in the UK, and developed and managed close relationships with major European players in the waste to energy sector. At Commerzbank he built a team to originate, execute and distribute structured finance products, amongst many other deals creating Commerzbank's first US lease structure, a USD1.5bn transaction, and the bank's first tax based preference share transaction. More recently his focus has been on providing high quality, independent, advisory services to clients in the renewables sector across Europe, North America and India. Peter is a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in the United Kingdom.
A Canadian national of Indian descent Sastry Karra is one of the most experienced and respected operators in the independent oil & gas arena. In a career spanning more than four decades, and counting, Sastry has been engaged in every aspect of O&G.
Starting as a hands-on reservoir engineer for Husky Oil Limited, Calgary, which at the time operated 9000 heavy oil wells, he took a turn into academia, taking up a position as senior lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, the start of a long and constructive professional and philanthropic association with that country, later in his career culminating in the award of the traditional chieftaincy title Enyi Oma of Eziala Mbaise in Imo State. A return to industry in 1976 with Ashland Oil, Canada, where he was chief reservoir engineer saw him develop oil and gas fields in Alberta. Over the next ten years significant senior roles followed including advisor to Gulf Canada Calgary, chief engineer for Occidental of Libya and a senior advisor position with Petronas Carigali in which he was instrumental in transforming Petronas into an operating company, developing several fields along the way, including Dulang. During this re-engineering exercise Sastry interfaced with the Boston Consulting Group and went on to work with them on the establishment of BCG’s business in India. In 1997 he made the entrepreneurial leap creating his own company, Jehan Energy. The creation of Jehan resulted in the acquisition of Hardy Oil & Gas, a fully fledged independent E&P company with offshore exploration and production, where he acted as CEO. Notable achievements during that period included the extension of PY-3 life by 7 years, and a tripling of production. Hardy was first listed on AIM and then moved up to the main board of the London Stock Exchange and in 2008, amongst other accolades which followed, Sastry’s achievements were recognised when he was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. From 2010 onward he took an increasingly arms length role at Hardy and, true to his strong entrepreneurial instincts, formed a new enterprise, Inergia, in which he is leveraging his experience and relationships in Nigeria to crystallise some of the extraordinary opportunities that exist for strong independents in that region. Since the commencement of that business he has already successfully exited certain assets delivering exemplary returns to investors.
Sastry holds a B.Sc. from Osmania University, a B.Sc. in Chemical & Petroleum Engineering from the University of Alberta and an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Calgary. He is a member of APEGGA, the Society of Engineers, the founding, and current, Chairman of the Association of Oil & Gas Operators of India, and has been widely published in industry periodicals such as the Society of Petroleum Engineers Journal, and the Canadian Journal of Petroleum Technology. His wider personal interests include traditional music forms, in pursuit of which he produced a multi award winning documentary film named “The Laya Project” which showcases music from six countries affected by the 2004 Asian tsunami.
Sastry is an advisory board member of Prospect Capital.
Dr Mahmoud Abul Eyoun is a highly distinguished figure in Middle Eastern finance. A former Governor and Chairman of the Board of the Central Bank of Egypt. A former CEO of the Kuwait International Bank (KIB) and board member of both Suez Canal Bank and Arab International Bank (AIB) of Egypt.
He was also a director in the British Arab Commercial Bank (BACB) in UK.In a career thus far spanning 43 years he has served in the international banking and finance sector applying his considerable knowledge and experience to a wide range of corporate, governmental, sovereign wealth fund, and multilateral organisations.
He is the co-founder and Managing Director of FA Group in Egypt, an advisory firm dedicated to macroeconomic and real sector assessments, banking, risk management, monetary policy, corporate finance and restructuring, project and investment appraisal and finance, credit assessment, business valuation, deal structuring and distressed turnarounds.
The FA Group are Prospect’s key institutional partner both in Egypt and the wider Middle Eastern markets.
Mehmet Kahya, is the Founder and Managing Partner of Kronus Corporate Finance and cooperates closely with Prospect Capital on Turkish transactions. He oversees and works in deal origination, structuring, diligencing and closing activities for the Turkish markets.
Mehmet has over 30 years of entrepreneurial, business, investment and, specifically, hands-on turnaround experience. He has presided over, and led for shareholder value creation, the following companies in his distinguished career, MKM (in Holland), Temsa Toyotasa, Crown Turkey, Uzel Makina, DYO, Gierlings Velpor (in Portugal) and Assan Aluminium. Mehmet received his double major BS, with Cum Laude, in Chemical Engineering and Economics from Yale University, and an MBA, with top honour's, from Kellogg. He is a former member of the Board of Governors – Association of Yale Alumni, an Associate Fellow of Saybrook College – Yale University, and serves as an independent Board Member in various privately held and listed companies. Mehmet and his team provide an exceptional depth of experience in identifying and managing distressed and turnaround opportunities in general and the Turkish markets in particular.
Harry Sihra is a highly qualified, deeply seasoned, hands-on, primarily UK real estate, leisure and hospitality investment and financial structuring professional with 28 years of experience encompassing several of the UK’s landmark commercial property transactions.
Between 1988 and 1991 whilst training for the ACCA qualification he held finance and accounting roles involving the transition and eventual sale of a family business to a FTSE 250 group, and supporting the restructuring of a division of Canadian listed Thomson Corporation. Harry then became fully focussed on real estate during subsequent and increasingly senior finance roles within several property subsidiaries of Blue Circle Industries PLC, the major FTSE100 listed international building materials company.
This period culminated in his appointment as the CFO of the property group between 1997 and 2000 during which time he was responsible for a portfolio of property investment, development businesses and large projects valued at over £600m. Key projects included Bluewater Shopping Centre, Chafford Hundred Development, Crossways Business Park, and Ebbsfleet International Station. He served as a member of the Blue Circle Property Executive Committee reporting to the PLC Board, responsible for overseeing all property matters and defining global real estate policies. During the hostile bid by Lafarge, he helped raise £200m for a share buy-back through review and selected sale of assets from the property portfolio, including Blue Circle’s interest in the £1bn Bluewater Shopping Centre. During this period he also completed his MBA.
In 2003, seeking a more entrepreneurial challenge, he took up the position of executive director at Buckingham Securities Holdings PLC a private group actively investing in real estate and leisure businesses. Beneficially owned by investment trusts of the Halabi family, Buckingham managed a portfolio of assets worth £4bn, ranging from commercial investment and development property to multi-site operating leisure businesses. Harry oversaw all commercial and investment activities, reporting to the Executive Chairman. He managed growth of the business from £0.5bn portfolio to £4.0bn. During this period his remit was wide ranging, originating investment deals, negotiating and structuring acquisitions via offshore tax-efficient vehicles, negotiating and structuring debt, equity and corporate finance including hedging strategies. He led high value property development projects comprising offices, hotels and residential, and provided asset management of the portfolio, with a focus on identifying exits. In total, between 2003 and 2007 Harry led transactions worth circa £6bn involving a mix of structured equity and debt including securitised debt; and in 2006 he led the largest single securitisation (£1.45bn) by a private company in the UK. In this time Harry developed key relationships within the London investment community, including investment companies, funds, lending banks, investment banks, niche investors, agents and legal advisers.
Since the financial crisis Harry has a held a variety of C-Suite interim roles primarily focussed on the analysis, review, and restructuring of real estate assets and financings. Roles have included Joint CEO of City Lofts Group and interim Finance Director of Heron International, the leading property investment and development business established in 1956, which has developed over 150 commercial buildings in 9 key global cities.
Latterly since 2012 he has acted as Group Finance Director for Queensway Group, a successful multi-faceted real estate and leisure group, with a large portfolio of property, hotels and restaurants in the UK and internationally, operating under global brands including Holiday Inn, Tune Hotels, KFC and Starbucks, employing circa 1,000 staff. With a small executive team, he led several business functions including Investment Management, Asset Management, and Legals. He planned and executed a sound corporate finance strategy for the group, involving a series of joint ventures, buy-out of a financial (Private Equity) partner, entry of an institutional long term partner, and raising of substantial new debt facilities for properties and for operating businesses.
Harry holds an MBA from London Business School, specialising in Leadership, Strategy and Corporate Finance. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants (FCCA). Away from business he is a keen photographer, traveller and amateur chef. He speaks English, Kiswahili, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi.