bfinance has made four new appointments to its Business Development Team. Francis Dubois, Rupert de Laszlo, Ottavia Sebastiani and Peter Wright each will have a responsibility for growing a specific area of bfinance’s business.
Francis Dubois joins bfinance’s Paris office as senior director in a business development role covering large French corporates. He reports to David Laugier, MD bfinance France. Dubois spent most of his professional career with Barclays, where he successively took marketing and management responsibilities in Spain, USA and France, where he ran the Barclays Large Corporate Division from 1990 to 1994. After a few years as a corporate relationship director at Barclays Capital, he was made in Head of Barclays Commercial Banking in France and subsequently merged this activity within Barcap in 2006.
Rupert de Lazslo will be responsible for initiating bfinance’s activities in the Middle East. Before joining bfinance, de Lazslo worked for Bluebay Capital, a GCC headquartered family office, where he advised clients on a variety of alternative investment opportunities. He has also worked for Salford, a leading emerging markets private equity fund. De Lazslo will report to CEO David Vafai.
Ottavia Sebastiani joined bfinance in the UK as relationship manager covering UK and Italian business development. She reports to Michael Hart, senior director, business development UK. Sebastiani joins from a private consultancy in the hotel and leisure industry. Previously, she worked for Goldman Sachs in London as a european sales and sales trader to institutional clients and in Milan, where she was responsible for large Italian institutional investors.
Peter Wright joined bfinance’s Canadian practice as director of business development, eporting to Marc Godin, managing director Canada. Before joining bfinance, Wright, who has over 20 years of capital markets and investment experience, was a vice president at Fiera YMG Capital, a Canadian fund manager. He also has over 10 years with London-based investment managers and banks, such as Fleming, Chase/Chemical, Merrill Lynch, Bankers Trust and CIBC.
Vafai says, “Our success to date has been built on an innovative and focused approach to investment manager selection delivered by a highly skilled and world class team. These new team members are all extremely motivated and experienced specialists and are welcome and valuable additions to the team.”