London Team
Who We Are / The New Forests Company
Julian Ozanne - Managing Director
Julian has widespread knowledge of Africa - its countries, politics, influential people and the business environment. In 1986 he graduated with an Economics Degree from the London School of Economics (LSE). Between 1987 and 1997 he worked for the Financial Times and was foreign correspondent serving as Middle East Correspondent and Africa Bureau Chief. Between 1994 and 1999 he advised a number of US and European investment banks on business and political risk in Africa and worked for the World Economic Forum. Born in Kenya, raised in Southern Africa, semi-fluent in Kiswahili and Sesotho, he has long and deep political and personal links with Africa.
Paul West - Commercial Director
Paul is a Zimbabwean national with over 12 years experience working within multinational corporations across Africa. After completing his schooling in Zimbabwe, he graduated from the University of Cape Town and qualified as an accountant whilst at Ernst & Young. Most recently, Paul has worked as a Director of The African Lakes Corporation. He was part of a small team, which worked with UK-based investors raising the necessary funding to roll out a consumer broadband infrastructure in Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana, which was followed by the successful disposal of the business to Telkom South Africa.
Ron Carlier - Director
A veteran senior executive with more than 35 years experience in the international reinsurance business. He has been a director of Lloyds, CEO of Minet Re, part of JH Minet, a large publicly quoted international broker and was from 1988 to 2005 CEO of RK Carvill, a private international reinsurance company with group turnover of $750m.
Robert Devereux - Director
Robert was one of the founding shareholders of The Virgin Group and Chairman of Virgin Entertainment. He left Virgin after 17 years in 1996 to invest and start-up several new businesses in the UK, largely in the hotel and restaurant sector. He has a home in Africa and a keen interest in environmental businesses.
Ofelia Burton - Chief Financial Officer & Company Secretary
Ofelia is a senior finance professional with over 15 year's international experience of strategic planning, business development and financial reporting structures. She has been the CFO of Sultan Energy Ltd, a South East Asian energy/mining concern in the process of AIM listing and spent the majority of her professional career prior to this with the Timex Corporation. Ofelia is a Certified Public Accountant and is an Accredited Associate of Institute for Independent Business International.
Farooq Raja - Non-Executive Director
Farooq Raja is a founding member of UKM Ltd., the venture partner with Shell in the C-Fix business. He is currently Chairman and CEO of C-Fix B.V., the holding venture company. He is also the Co-founder of Mokum Change Limited and Mokum’s Managing Director.
Farooq is an accountant by profession (FCCA) and has in his earlier career held senior finance positions in the UK National Health Service, British Telecom and Unilever.
He has also been instrumental in the start-up and operation of a number of other successful businesses in the consulting and healthcare sectors. In the mid 90’s, Farooq was with the consultancy division of Coopers and Lybrand, where he undertook assignments in the public and private sector in the areas of financial management, business transformation and systems implementation/integration. He left Coopers and Lybrand to create a management consultancy company of which he is Managing Director, Mokum. This is an Oracle Applications consulting and managed services business offering high-quality services to organizations that have selected Oracle as their strategic ERP investment.