Singapore-based investment firm Ivanhoe Capital has appointed former Lehman Brothers bankers Jonathan Dubois-Phillips and Blake Olafson to senior roles in its corporate finance division.
Ivanhoe Capital is a principal investment company that also provides strategic and financing support to the Ivanhoe Group of companies. Dubois-Phillips will be based in Hong Kong and Olafson in Singapore. They will have a direct reporting line to Robert Friedland, founder and chief executive officer of Ivanhoe Capital.
Both Dubois-Phillips and Olafson spent eight years with Lehman's principal transactions group in Asia. Dubois-Phillips worked in Southeast Asia, Greater China and then South Korea for Lehman, then joined Nomura following the Japanese bank's takeover of Lehman’s Asia businesses in 2008.
At Nomura he was a managing director in the asset finance group. Olafson worked in Lehman’s Thailand and Singapore offices before joining Arcapita, a Bahrain-based investment fund, in August 2008. At Arcapita Olafson ran the Asian real estate group.Ivanhoe Capital has offices in Beijing, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Sydney, Yangon and Ho Chi Minh City, as well as a North American base in Vancouver. The main activity of the firm is to invest venture capital and arrange project financing for investment opportunities in natural resource development, housing, communications and manufacturing.
Companies associated with Ivanhoe Capital include Ivanhoe Mines, Ivanhoe Energy, SouthGobi Energy Resources, Ivanhoe Australia, and Ivanhoe Nickel and Platinum. Except for Ivanhoe Nickel and Platinum, which is closely held, the others are all listed on one or more of the Hong Kong stock exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Australian Securities Exchange.