Room151’s LGPS Place-Based Impact Investing Roundtable

Andrew is Assistant Director – Investment Strategy for the South Yorkshire Pensions Authority and is responsible for overseeing SYPA’s £11bn of assets.  As a resident of Sheffield, Andrew was delighted to join SYPA in October 2024 following his second stint with Legal & General Investment Management.  He has also previously worked at Border to Coast (Head of Customer Relationships) and in investment consulting roles at Towers Watson and KPMG.  Andrew is a qualified actuary, music nerd and barely adequate junior football coach.

Gemma leads Big Society Capital’s property investment and market building strategies which aim to increase the supply of good quality, safe and secure affordable housing in the UK. Gemma’s built environment experience spans impact investment, property and regeneration, consultancy and Local Government.

Prior to Big Society Capital, Gemma worked at Lendlease, a global investment, property and construction company, with roles across construction ops, corporate sustainability and urban regeneration. Gemma was previously the Head of the Lendlease Foundation and a social enterprise, Be Onsite, that supports long-term unemployed including current serving prisoners and ex-offenders into employment. Gemma’s earlier career was in environmental consultancy as a Contaminated Land and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) specialist working on due diligence for land acquisitions, remediating heavily contaminated sites and delivering environmental protection programmes for some of the UK’s largest infrastructure projects.

Gemma is a Trustee and a volunteer, has a degree and Masters in Chemistry from the University of Surrey and is a Chartered Environmentalist.

Simon started his career with Kleinwort Benson Bank in Frankfurt in 1994 as a graduate trainee. The
bank was acquired by Dresdner Bank in 1997. Simon joined the UK & European Equities division where
he worked in ECM and Equity distribution. Simon joined Cazenove in 2000 as a Director of equity sales.
He enjoyed a 7-year career with Cazenove as a senior team member, which included the merger with
JP Morgan and the globalisation of the business

In August 2007 Simon left JP Morgan Cazenove to co-found Liberum, a UK based equity brokerage.
Simon oversaw the development of Liberum from 5 staff to 150. Over the 7 years that Simon was a
main board director, Liberum was established as a significant player in UK equity IPOs and research.
Simon oversaw numerous equity capital market transactions in that time.

Simon changed from equity markets to debt capital markets in 2013 when he founded MW
Eaglewood, an asset manager focused on the provision of non-bank debt to individuals, SMEs, and
real estate developers. Simon led the $1bn IPO in 2014 of a listed fund, P2PGI plc. In 2018 MW
Eaglewood was sold to private equity, and shortly afterwards Simon and his team from MWE created
Newstead Capital LLP, an independent private credit asset manager.

He lives in Chiswick with his wife and two children. He enjoys most sports, is a keen tennis and padel
player and enjoys taking his children to Brentford FC football matches.

Colin is an Executive Director at CBRE and Head of UK Investment Properties.  Colin has 30 years’ experience in executing major real estate transactions in the both the UK and US. Prior to joining CBRE, Colin spent 18 years at DTZ where he headed the Manchester Capital Markets team and subsequently in New York where he was a Chief Operating Officer of DTZ’s American business. Whilst at CBRE, he has led a number of important mandates including taking a lead position in advising the joint venture at Airport City which is the largest development project in the UK outside of London – over £850m.   Colin’s core areas of responsibility include the provision of advisory services to UK and overseas clients in respect of investment sales, acquisitions, structuring joint ventures, equity raising, asset recapitalisations and development funding across all sectors of commercial real estate.

Ross Morrow is a Co-Founder & Executive Director of DunPort Capital Management. Prior to establishing DunPort, Ross was a Senior Analyst at BlueBay, where he was responsible for the origination, execution and management of debt investments in Irish SMEs. Ross also worked in the debt advisory and restructuring team at Lazard, where he advised European middle market and high yield borrowers. Prior to Lazard he worked for Hawkpoint’s debt advisory & restructuring practice, Acision as Group Treasurer and Anglo Irish Bank as a leveraged finance banker focused on the UK and Ireland.

He has a BComm degree in Finance from University College Dublin, an MSc in International Business from the Michael Smurfit Graduate School in Ireland, is a CFA charter holder and has an MBA from Cass Business School in London.