Board of Directors Team
Who We Are / The New Forests Company
Jon Aisbitt - Director
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.
Willem Olivier - Director
Willem was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1945 and obtained a BSc. (Hons) Forestry degree at the University of Stellenbosch during 1969. He had 11 years working with the South African forestry department and then 18 years with Sappi managing large-scale plantations of eucalyptus and pine in South Africa, ending his Sappi career as General Manager of Mpumalanga Region, where he was responsible for 136,000 hectares of forest producing pine pulpwood, eucalypt mining timber and eucalypt pulpwood. He was for four years President of the Southern African Institute for Forestry during which time he edited the definitive two-volume Forestry Handbook. He has recently published the history of forestry in South Africa, titled "There's honey in the forest".
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.
Ed Marlow - Director
In September 2007, Ed formed HSBC's Principal Investments Emerging Markets Africa team, having previously worked and travelled extensively in Africa for more than 20 years. He has over 5 years of specific investment and advisory experience in Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular emphasis on mining and exploration. A former British Army Officer, Ed has an MBA from Cranfield University, is a graduate of the US Army CGSC and Manchester University and is a member of the UK CFA Society. Prior to HSBC, Ed worked for Insinger De Beaufort, UBS and Citigroup.