The Blended Capital Group has offices in London, Amsterdam, Nairobi, Toronto and Vancouver, with partner firms in Brazil and South Africa. We operate globally and complement our own resources with sustainability specialists drawn from a long standing, world-wide ecosystem.
Paul Clements-Hunt, Founder
Paul Clements-Hunt coined ESG in May 2004 and as a United Nations official delivered the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) for Secretary General Kofi Annan in April 2006. PRI is now backed by 5400 institutional investors representing U$ 120 trillion in assets. Since 1991 Paul has operated globally and advised Prime Ministers, governments, corporate boards, capital markets, and civil society and community organisations on the mobilisation of finance at scale into critical sustainability challenges and opportunities. Paul’s particular interest is to scale climate finance to $ trillions.
After heading UNEP-Finance Initiative for 12 years, Paul founded The Blended Capital Group (TBCG) in March 2012. He splits his time between TBCG and the UK head-quartered law firm Mischon de Reya LLP, where he is helping to shape and drive their sustainability agenda. Paul is a Board Member at Global Infrastructure Basel, and Chair of the Board at Future Fit Foundation. Paul studied economics, trained as a journalist, and then created his first company, Environmental Business Group (EBG) Co., Ltd in Bangkok, Thailand in 1992. He took EBG inside the Swiss multi-national, SGS Group, the world’s largest testing, inspection, and verification agency in May 1994 to develop it as an Asia-Pacific business.
Michael Marais, Environment Partner
Michael Marais is Partner and Environmental Lead at The Blended Capital Group (TBCG) having been with the company for over a decade. Michael has directed advisory and capital raising projects across a range of sustainability sectors including recycling / upcycling; waste to bio energy; solar and agri-tech, on to AI/ML, microfinance, gender equality, and distributed infrastructure. Michael’s passion is to support businesses and projects aligned with impact through delivery of the 17 UNSDGs.
Working with a range of the most senior policy-makers and investment executives worldwide, Michael has delivered breakthrough sustainable finance and ESG events from the World Economic Forum in Davos (2013-2020) to Tokyo and Paris (CoP21) to Johannesburg and many financial centres in between.
Michael has also assisted the Executive Office of the UN Secretary General (UN EOSG) to deliver various events and presentations, including the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA) report on climate smart infrastructure launched at CoP21 in Paris on December 8th 2015.
Rob Karpati, Mining Partner
Rob Karpati is a long-term Finance leader. Focusing on strategic transformation and on global process optimization over 35+ years, Rob has developed a capability for integrating complex end-to-end ecosystems in ways that optimize cross-stakeholder value. Using Finance as a business improvement activator, Rob has worked cross-culturally and cross-regionally in bringing together diverse stakeholders toward common perspectives.
Rob has a strong belief in a balanced approach across multiple stakeholders, valuing the concept that sustainable development requires win/win outcomes that engage various corporate, regulatory and community stakeholders in specific aligned collaboration. Solutions that bring long-term mutually equitable value are critical for sustainable development in his mind.
As a Partner at The Blended Capital Group, Rob is currently focused on transforming the global artisanal mining sector in order to reimagine financial, social, environmental and economic value given the inherent potential of the 45 million person sector.
Roger Surridge, Branding & Communications
Roger has long experience in visual and written communications, creating graphic concepts and managing their implementation in traditional and new media.
A graduate of the Central School of Art and Design, London, he has worked in educational publishing as well as in intergovernmental projects and web-based e-learning initiatives. Between 2000 and 2012, alongside his associate Robert Hunter at the Paris design consultancy Rebus, Roger helped the United Nations define and deliver the look and language of the evolving concepts of sustainable finance and responsible investment. He worked to create the identity of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and UNEP Finance Initiative.
He is passionate about typography, likes to draw, and moves around Paris very efficiently by bicycle.
