IJGlobal Awards 2025 – London Judging Panel
We are delighted today to announce the Europe and Africa independent panel of judges for IJGlobal Awards 2025, identifying a team of experienced industry professionals that will deliberate the company categories.
To access the IJGlobal Awards 2025 submissions portal click here...
We believe that the IJGlobal Awards are the single most transparent and peer review in this sector, and we pride ourselves on fielding regional teams of experts who assess submissions and vote (in secret) on the organisations that are shortlisted – and ultimately, the winners.
The judges for Europe and Africa have been refreshed this year and will meet in London for Judgment Day in mid-January (2026) to debate the merits of companies that closed deals – project finance, greenfield and refi – in those regions over the course of 2025.
Judges are recused from casting a vote where they are conflicted. In effect, this means that lawyers cannot vote in the legal segment and bankers are not allowed to sway the decision in the MLA category.
The judges (in alphabetical order) for London Judgment Day are:
- Richard Abadie – ex-PwC, now NED
- Elizabeth Baxter – Apatura Energy
- Gayatri Desai – CIBC
- Manish Gupta – Transport for London
- Emma Haight – Private Equity
- Nicola Johnson – Pulse Clean Energy
- David Lee – A&O Shearman
- Cassandra Ng – Aon
- Nicholas Stockdale – QIC
- Serene Tan – Equinor
- Joe Taylor – Apterra Infrastructure Capital
- Bart White – Santander
Richard Abadie
Ex-PwC
Richard is best known to the international infrastructure community for the many years he served at PwC as global leader of the capital projects and infrastructure group.
He retired from partnership in early 2024 and has since taken on NED roles at – among others – IFM Investors and Invesis.
While Richard – a South African national – did spend some time in the early years of his career working for other organisations, it’s without question his time at PwC and a stint in HM Treasury that make him such a valued member of this panel.
This is a long way from the first time that Richard has served on the London judging panel, but he has not been on it for some years and makes a welcome return for the 2025 awards.
He continues to operate out of London, but his NED roles remain as international as his career has always been.
Richard has worked on many of the market defining project finance transactions to have closed around the world and made a significant impact on the market through his time in Treasury.
Elizabeth Baxter
Apatura Energy
Elizabeth is head of capital markets at Apatura Energy, one of the UK’s largest developers of renewable energy and energy storage projects, which she joined earlier this year.
In this role, Elizabeth is responsible for raising capital for battery storage and data centres.
Apatura has a pipeline of 10.6GW of BESS projects and 2.3GW of data centres in the UK.
Elizabeth also serves as a non-executive director of POWERful Women, an organisation advancing gender balance in the UK energy sector.
She was previously director of finance for Green Volt, Europe’s first commercial scale floating offshore wind project.
Elizabeth has also served as director of project finance at Sonnedix, a global renewable energy independent power producer backed by JP Morgan Asset Management; and as a principal banker at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), where she closed almost €1 billion of power and energy financings over 11 years.
She joins the IJGlobal judging panel this year for the first time.
Gayatri Desai
CIBC
Gayatri is the London-based managing director and head of energy transition and sustainable finance at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) – and she first joined the IJGlobal judging panel for the 2024 awards.
She has been at the Canadian bank since the summer of 2014 having joined as an executive director, responsible for the origination, structuring, negotiation and execution of financing solutions for greenfield and brownfield project finance transactions with a primarily focus on transport, renewables, digital, core plus and sustainable finance.
At the start of 2021, Gayatri was promoted to the role she currently holds and in which she is responsible for project finance and infrastructure origination, structuring and coverage.
Gayatri is a lawyer by training, having cut her teeth in the magic circle at Clifford Chance, before moving on to a role at Latham & Watkins.
However, after 8 years as a lawyer, the heady world of lending lured her across to the other side of the table, and she joined Royal Bank of Scotland in May 2007 – a time when legal experience was likely welcome at the monster infra lender suffered a reversal of fortune thanks to the Global Financial Crisis.
Manish Gupta
Transport for London
Since last appearing on an IJGlobal judging panel, Manish has started in a new role and is now group director for corporate finance at Transport for London (TfL).
Another judge who has deep roots in the Big 4, Manish regularly secures himself a role on IJGlobal judging panels by dint of being the single most engaged person on Judgment Day, having analysed submissions to an extent that puts some judges to shame!
He is best known to the international infrastructure community for his 20-year career at Ernst & Young (EY or EY-Parthenon if you must) where he had been an infrastructure partner for the last 15 years of his tenure.
IJGlobal reported on his “retirement” in September 2023 as he hung up his advisory spurs to take a break, with plans to return in a different guise – and that role is the one his now fulfilling at TfL.
Manish has a strong track record of primarily advising on transport projects, but in the last 18 months of his tenure at EY, he was exclusively focused on infra fund coverage and post-deal value creation.
With a good bit more than 20 years’ experience in infrastructure financing and M&A, Manish has worked on transactions that range from project finance, refinancing and complex restructurings… in truth, there’s not a lot he hasn’t done in this space.
Prior to joining EY, Manish spent more than 6 years at Bechtel where he represented the US construction giant in Mumbai and then London. Prior to that, he was with the famed APAC infra group IL&FS.
Emma Haight
Private Equity
If you take a look at Emma’s LinkedIn profile, you will see that she states her current role as parter at a private equity fund and the role she plays there is “stealth mode”.
Emma is an old friend of IJGlobal and last served on the Investor Awards for 2024.
Emma was until May 2024 head of infrastructure debt at Fidelity International, having joined in December 2023 and rather famously exited with the entire team as her employer had a change of heart.
Prior to that, she was a partner at Ares Management and her career has spanned an interesting spread of roles that gives her a unique view of the infrastructure and energy sectors.
She was head of infrastructure debt for Europe at AMP Capital and flipped over to Ares in February 2022 to head the team in the organisation that acquired the AMP book of business.
However, her origins in the infra/energy world started at Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman) when she worked with the famed husband-and-wife team of Graham Vinter and Anne Baldock. She even had a spell working in banking at NIBC.
Nicola Johnson
Pulse Clean Energy
Nicola is chief financial officer at Pulse Energy – an investor, developer and holder of flexibility assets backed by Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO).
Pulse develops, builds and operates battery energy storage systems (BESS) that are needed to increase the uptake of intermittent renewable energy.
Nicola spent 18 years in the property and construction industry at Australian multinational Lendlease, gaining experience across large scale property development, PPP infrastructure projects, investment management of large retail and infrastructure funds, as well as corporate accounting and treasury-focused activities in both Australia and the UK.
She then transitioned into the renewable energy sector, working with Lightsource BP – the solar developer, owner and operator – where she started as head of performance management and rose to finance director of the AssetCo.
Nicola joined Pulse Clean Energy motivated by its purpose driven culture and is “excited to work at the heart of the energy transition”, according to the company website.
David Lee
A&O Shearman
IJGlobal has known David for a very long time and this year he makes it on to the panel once again, bringing his depth of market knowledge to bear on what will doubtless be a lively Judgment Day – debating the merits of organisations that have submitted for highly regarded awards.
David is a dyed-in-the-wool Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman) lawyer who broadened his exposure to the infrastructure world by spending a couple of years on secondment to HM Treasury.
As with so many of his colleagues, David has worked on the biggest and brightest infra transactions over the years and likely has the scars to prove it.
In the infrastructure and energy community, the A&O Shearman team is highly regarded for its first-class skills and it regularly leads international league tables for working on standout transactions.
David continues the pedigree from Graham Vinter who dominated the market alongside his wife Anne Baldock who took over the reins from him – between them establishing foundations for a market-leading practice. They were followed by Gareth Price who went on to become managing partner of A&O and has since retired.
Cassandra Ng
Aon
Another newcomer to the IJGlobal awards panel, Cassandra has been brought on board to give a bit of an insurance angle as it increasingly crops up in our coverage.
Cassandra is director of infrastructure M&A at Aon and has been working at the insurer since early 2023.
However, her roots are very much in banking and a good deal of that across the infrastructure and energy sectors.
She started off at Lloyds Banking Group where she rose to the level of associate on the infrastructure and project finance team before joining Santander in late 2018 to work on the banking and corporate finance team covering industrials, infrastructure and utilities.
While working at Santander, Cassandra spent some time on secondment with a senior credit risk partner covering industrials and real estate.
Nicholas Stockdale
QIC
Nicholas joined QIC in November 2021 as partner and head of Europe for private debt infrastructure, operating out of London.
He is responsible for the origination, structuring and asset management of the UK and European investments for QIC private debt infrastructure and is a member of the private debt infrastructure investment committee.
With 30 years of experience in project, corporate and infrastructure finance, Nicholas has worked across senior and junior debt, in both private and public markets across the power, utilities, infrastructure and telecoms sectors.
Prior to joining QIC, he was deputy head of infrastructure debt investments at Whitehelm Capital, where he was instrumental in building the firm’s infra debt business.
He also held senior roles at Barclays Investment Bank for more than 16 years, including leading the export and structured finance team.
Earlier in his career, Nicholas worked as a modeller in the project finance department at Edison Mission Energy and qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC in 1997.
Serene Tan
Equinor
Another first time judge for the IJGlobal Awards, Serene’s experience lies very much down the energy side of the infra / energy divide.
She is currently vice president and head of structured finance at Equinor and operates out of Norway.
Serene leads a diverse team of professionals and oversees all structured finance advisory and execution of Equinor’s projects globally.
In recent time, under her leadership, Equinor has raised more than $20 billion in gross project financings.
She has more than 20 years of experience in corporate finance, treasury, equity and debt financings.
Prior to joining Equinor, Serene worked at Statoil in a role that took her from Stavanger to Singapore and where she was predominantly involved in driving forward renewable energy projects.
Joe Taylor
Apterra
Yet another new judge to join the IJGlobal panel for the first time this year, IJGlobal rather cheekily reported on his resignation from NatWest as the letter hit the table in the summer of 2024.
However, the cheek did not end there as we next wrote about his joining Apterra as managing director and head of Europe the next month… and he finally joined his new home in September 2024.
In his new (ish) role at Apterra, Joe is responsible for originating and structuring infrastructure financings across the European and UK markets.
He brings more than 15 years of sector experience having joined from NatWest Markets where he acted as head of infrastructure, project and asset finance.
In this role he was responsible for the product team executing transactions in infrastructure and other real assets sectors across Europe and the US.
Another judge who traces his career back to lawyering, Joe started off as a structured finance lawyer at Linklaters.
Bart White
Santander
Serving as EMEA head of energy structured finance at Santander out of London, Bart’s rise has been fairly meteoric.
He stared off life in the infrastructure space at RBS in 2008 – not the best of times to join a bank that had been leading IJGlobal’s project finance league tables for years… but had smashed into the buffers.
In this role, he worked on the secured / structured corporate financing team, with a primary focus on supporting event-driven secured financings in the EMEA infrastructure space.
He spent 5 years at RBS and then left to join UBS as head of infrastructure and utilities finance across the EMEA region, before moving on to Santander where his career has continued to flourish.
Bart started at the Spanish bank’s European structured finance advisory practise, before stepping up to take on the UK and Nordics structured finance business.
That evolved into his current role – which he has held since the summer of 2022 – running Santander's energy financing activity across Europe, the Middle East and parts of Latin America.
He has a team of around 50 professionals that is primarily focused on financing and financial advisory of renewable energy where Santander has a strong presence, but also in hydrogen, CCS, BESS, biogas, EfW, smart meters and other tangential subsectors.
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