Matthias Adler, Chairman of the Board of Directors

Principal Economist, financial and private sector, Africa, KfW.

Matthias Adler began his professional career in 1985 at the German Foreign Ministry in the Development Co-operation division. Prior to joining KfW as Project Manager for the West Africa Region, he served, among other activities, in the German embassy in Cameroon as Desk Officer for 2 years.

In 1999 Matthias Adler was appointed Senior Financial Sector Economist and worked as a Microfinance specialist in the Financial sector and policy department where he accompanied microfinance projects (fixed income and equity), and conducted due diligence analyses of MFIs.

Since October 2002 he has been Principal Economist at KfW, serving in the Africa Region dealing with sovereign risk assessments, and, since October 2007, in the Sector and Policy division Financial and Private Sector Africa.

 

Claude Falgon

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Horus Development Finance.

Mr. Falgon, a founding partner of Horus Development Finance, has been conducting studies and consulting missions for enterprises, development financial institutions and governments in the financial and agribusiness sectors in developing and emerging countries, for 30 years. Since the late nineties, he has been involved in private equity for the financial and microfinance sector in developing countries by first setting up La Fayette Participations, a specialised investment company, and then Advans S.A.  

Mr. Falgon’s consulting activity in the financial sector has been centered on the area of retail banking, microfinance and agricultural credit. His specific fields of experience include: financial, operational and institutional audits of financial and microfinance institutions, microfinance regulation, and management advisory services to help transform micro credit systems into sustainable MFIs.

Mr. Falgon has directed or participated in studies and consulting missions in the financial sector in more than twenty countries in Africa, Asia, Maghreb and the Mediterranean region.

Mr. Falgon is Chairman of the Board of Amret (Cambodia) and Advans Cameroun and sits on the board of several MFIs.

Hiti Singh

Senior Investment Manager, CDC. 

Hiti Singh is a Senior Investment Manager focused on Alternative asset classes at CDC Group Plc, covering private equity investments in microfinance and clean energy in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.  She currently manages approximately US$100m in exposure to Private Equity Funds focused on Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.  Prior to her current role, Hiti worked as a Senior Manager at Morgan Stanley, where she was a part of the Microfinance Institutions Group (MFIG), a commercial venture to facilitate institutional investments in microfinance. Hiti obtained her MBA from INSEAD in July 2006, and holds a Bachelors degree from the University of Colorado. 

Wolfgang Bertelsmeier

Consultant, International Finance Corporation.

Mr. Bertelsmeier holds a diplôme d'études françaises from the University of Poitiers and a degree in business administration from Frankfurt University. He also took executive education at Harvard Business School and Stanford University. He worked for various financial institutions and retired from The World Bank Group in 2009. He is now a financial advisor and is a non-executive director on the boards of several companies in Africa, Asia and Europe.

François Lagier

Consultant, PROPARCO.

François Lagier started his career as a consultant for several financial institutions, and then joined the Agence Française de Développement, where he was successively engineer head of project, head of the Asset Liability Management department, head of Finance Department and representative of the AFD in Morocco for five years. In this position he participated to the creation of the JAIDA refinancing fund for microfinance associations, of which he was a member of the Board. François Lagier now works as a consultant for the AFD Group. He is an engineer from the Ecole Centrale de Paris. 

Perrine Pouget

Investment Officer, EIB.

Perrine Pouget is an Investment Officer with the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Department at the European Investment Bank (EIB). Prior to joining EIB in 2009, she worked for MicroRate, the microfinance rating agency, as rating analyst in Africa and the Caribbean, and previously as an Investment Officer at Luxmint, an investment vehicle managed by ADA (now LMDF Fund).  Perrine started her microfinance career as Programme Officer with ADA Luxembourg, where she contributed to the setting up of different projects across Africa, Asia and Latin America, such as the EU-CGAP Rating Fund and trainings on performance indicators.

She is a member of governance bodies of various microfinance investment companies, including Rural Impulse Fund II, Regional MSME Fund for sub-Saharan Africa (REGMIFA), and FEFISOL. Since 2009, Perrine also serves as a member of the Board of the European Microfinance Platform. She holds a Master degree with a major in Finance from the Audencia Nantes Ecole de Management (France).