Our board of advisors includes highly experienced investment professionals and financiers who have extensive emerging markets private equity experience.
Board of Advisors
Robert Binyon
Robert brings more than 40 years of Finance and Private Equity expertise to the board. He started his career in London with Morgan Grenfell in 1972, was appointed to the Board 1985 and led their Asian operations from 1986 to 1991. He then served as the joint CEO and Managing Director of Tokai Bank Europe from 1991 to 1994 before joining the CDC in 1994 to run the Financial Markets Department, responsible for investments and private equity funds. Robert also managed CDC’s operations in the Asia-Pacific Region until 2003. Since then, he has served as Chairman of Aureos SE Asia, Chairman of Lakeshore Capital Partners (SME focused PE fund) and Chairman of Khronos Advisory Limited. He has also held a number of non-executive Chairman and Directorship roles for Aureos and served as a Director of Schroder Asia-Pacific Fund until 2015. Robert graduated from Christ Church, University of Oxford.
Don DeVivo
Don has spent more than three decades in investment and capital market industry. He was Managing Director at Zesiger Capital Group LLC, a New York-based investment advisory firm he co-owned which managed substantial client assets investing in the global emerging and frontier markets. He lived in Thailand for most of the 1980’s while working for the UN, advising Government Boards of Investment throughout Southeast Asia on FDI policies and capital market development. In 1990, he left the UN and co-founded several ventures in Vietnam, including Indochina Building Supplies Pte. Ltd. and Megastar Media, the leading multiplex cinema exhibitor and distributor in the country. He has also founded and been an active board member of several Venture Capital investments by Zesiger Capital over the past 20 years and has directly managed the full cycle of numerous venture investments in the US and Southeast Asia. Don holds a BA in Physics from Vassar College and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto.
Jo Yamagata
Jo Yamagata is one of the most experienced infrastructure financiers in Asia and was most recently the Acting Director General of the Private Sector Operations Department, overseeing all private sector financing, including equity investments, debt and project financing. He has served as a Board member of several infrastructure companies as well as the ADB’s investee banks/companies. He was also Chair of Public Private Partnership (PPP) Community of Practice at ADB. Before joining ADB in 1994, he worked for Toshiba Corporation in Japan, where he was involved in development of various power and industrial projects both domestically and abroad. He holds a Master's degree in International Management and Finance from Sloan School of Management, MIT and graduated from School of Law, Seikei University, Japan.