Leo Kirby is an Independent Investment Committee Member for WaterEquity’s Infrastructure Fund. In addition to this role, Leo a Managing Director of Principled Investments, a firm he established, to invest in clean energy and climate technologies companies and funds in which he holds a number of board advisor and investment committee positions. In parallel, Leo provides investment strategy, origination and execution advice to a range of other investors in these sectors.
Prior to this, Leo was a Managing Director for GE Energy Financial Services and led Global Capital Advisory across Asia-Pacific. In his role at GE Capital, Leo was responsible for developing creative financing solutions to support global growth objectives for the power and renewables businesses of GE. To deliver this, he worked with development finance institutions, export credit agencies, commercial banks, infrastructure investors and other sources of debt and equity financing for energy projects. Within GE, Leo led the creation and ongoing management of 2 funds with a total committed capital of $1.25 billion which was fully deployed by accessing deal flow and structuring investments from across the GE global network.
Over his career Leo has gained extensive experience in leading over $50 billion of M&A and capital markets activity including securing equity finance, project finance, debt finance and managing complex deal structuring. He has previously held corporate development experience in senior roles in strategy development, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and financial planning in the energy sector. Prior to joining GE Capital, Leo worked at Macquarie Capital and Lehman Brothers and began the first 10 years of his career with BP plc.
Leo is based in Singapore and holds a Bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Canterbury and has continued his life-long learning journey in sustainability leadership, sustainable finance at the University of Cambridge CISL and and corporate governance at the Corporate Governance Institute.