Aaron Howell has joined Rothschild as managing director and head of oil and gas for Southeast Asia.
Howell joined the the advisory firm’s Singapore office in the week of March 9 and reports directly to Claire Sudden-Spiers, head of Southeast Asia in Singapore, and Roger Ader, global head of oil and gas in London, according to a source close to the company.
Howell replaces Martin Hull, who relocated from the Lion City to London last year. Hull, who previously held the title head of oil and gas for Southeast Asia, is now a director of global oil and gas at Rothschild, the source said.
Hull’s position in Singapore had been vacant until Howell joined two weeks ago. Howell will now look after all of Rothschild's oil and gas-related interests when it comes to mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, and debt capital markets in Southeast Asia.
Prior to joining Rothschild, Howell founded and ran his own advisory firm called Howell & Co Petroleum Advisors out of Singapore and Perth, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before that, he worked in Citi’s investment banking unit as a director of its global energy group from November 2011 to January 2014, also in Singapore.
Before joining Citi, he worked at Standard Chartered, where he was a director at oil and gas corporate advisory from December 2007 to October 2011.
Howell was a director at Harrison Lovegrove, the specialist oil and gas advisory boutique, for two years when the firm was acquired by Standard Chartered, the source said.
He previously spent nearly 10 years at Royal Dutch Shell, most recently as a commercial finance minister at the oil and gas producer’s exploration and production division in the Netherlands. Before that, he spent two years as a commercial and planning manager and M&A advisor at Shell’s gas and power unit in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.
He first joined Shell in 1998 as a corporate M&A advisor and a commercial and economics advisor, working at both Perth and Melbourne, according to his LinkedIn profile.
