Speakers
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Griff Williams Mr. Williams is a New Zealand national and comes from a farming family in the North Island where he continues to have dairy farming interests. Prior to joining Milltrust, Mr. Williams was Head of Europe and interim CEO at Itaú Asset Management in London, responsible for Institutional sales across the region. Previous to this he was Institutional Solutions Strategist at Pioneer Global Investments in London and prior to that Investment Director for Railpen Investments, one of the UK's largest Pension Funds, where he managed the global equities portfolio. Mr. Williams also has experience as an Investment Consultant at Gissings in London and as a portfolio manager and Investment analyst at Westpac Investment Management and Banco Bozano Simonsen in Wellington and Rio de Janeiro respectively. Mr. Williams is a CFA Charterholder and holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration degree from Victoria University, Wellington. In addition to English, Mr. Williams is a fluent Portuguese speaker. He resides with his family in London.
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Hugo Montgomery Hugo Montgomery is a founder and Managing Director of Southern Agricultural Resources ("Southern Ag"), which acquires and manages agricultural land in Australia on behalf of institutional investors. Southern Ag incorporates finance expertise with farm management capability in Australia, with a track record of acquiring and managing farms for leading global institutions. Mr Montgomery has 18 years' investment banking experience which includes 5 years in South America incorporating agribusiness transactions. He owns a mixed farm in Ireland. As an investment banker, Mr Montgomery was a Managing Director in the London offices of Trillium Partners and also Quayle Munro, where he focused on advising clients in the media and technology sectors. Prior to this, Hugo was a VP with Merrill Lynch’s TMT investment banking group in London. Hugo began his investment banking career in Santiago, Chile, in 1993 and subsequently moved to London to work with Kleinwort Benson’s investment banking division, first covering Latin America and then as part of the TMT group. Hugo graduated from Edinburgh University with an MA Honours degree in Economic History.
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Simon Hopkins Simon Hopkins is CEO of Milltrust International Group, Chairman of Milltrust Agricultural Investments, Chairman of British Innovation Fund and Executive Committee Member of Kickstart Initiative launched by National University’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. He has been a senior figure in the international investment management industry for more than three decades. He was an early advocate of hedge fund investing for institutional investors, and has been a prolific capital raiser for single manager funds, funds of funds and listed closed-end funds.
After a successful investment banking career spanning more than a decade at S.G. Warburg, UBS, HSBC James Capel and Nomura, in 1996 Mr Hopkins created one of the industry’s first dedicated research and investment consulting businesses, Global Fund Analysis, to provide truly objective analysis for investors. At its peak, GFA had over 27,000 registered users around the globe.
Concurrently, Mr Hopkins played a pioneering role in seeding many successful hedge funds through the Fortune Group, an award-winning alternatives investment banking and advisory business, raising over 10 billion USD. Fortune merged with Global Fund Analysis in 2000 and the group went on to become one of the UK’s pre-eminent hedge fund advisory firms with clients in 24 countries and a focus on pension funds, charities and endowments, as well as a number of the world’s leading families. The firm was successfully sold to UK-listed, financial services group, Close Brothers Group PLC, in 2006, culminating in its full integration in January 2010.
Mr Hopkins is a regular commentator on fund industry topics in the financial media and has addressed numerous conferences on both agriculture and alternative investments, as well as the OECD and the London School of Economics. He was profiled in a significant interview with the Financial Times in December 2008.
In addition to the group companies, I serve as an investment advisor to the British Innovation Fund, a U.K. University Venture Fund. I also serve as director of Swallowcourt, a healthcare business, Xoomtrip, a GCC-based online travel agent, and Roslin Technologies (University of Edinburgh). I serve as a member of NUS Medicine International Council (NIC) and chair Singapore-based investment firm, Milltrust Ventures.
On 13 April 2020, Simon was also appointed as one of three members on the Executive Committee of the Kickstart Initiative launched by National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine for his expertise on commercialising medical innovation and breakthroughs in the MedTech and HealthTech space.
He was until recently a director of CITIC Securities’ One Belt One Road Fund (CSOBOR) and of Novare Fund Manager, an Africa- focused fund manager.
Mr Hopkins graduated from the University of Bristol Faculty of Law (LLB Hons) in 1986 and now resides with his family in Singapore.
