Marcel van poecke biography of albert

Marcel van Poecke joined Carlyle in 2013 to run the US private equity firm’s new energy fund and immediately signed its first deal, buying his family office’s stake in a Swiss oil refiner.

In the decade since, the veteran Dutch investor has turned London-based Carlyle International Energy Partners into an unusual outpost of the buyout world by snapping up unloved oil and gas assets across Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

While Carlyle’s main private equity rivals, including Blackstone and Apollo, have backed away from fossil fuel projects citing climate concerns, van Poecke and CIEP have persisted, arguing that it is better to invest in reducing emissions from oil and gas businesses than to divest.

“Not owning them doesn’t make them disappear because there’s obviously demand on the other side for that supply,” said Megan Starr, Carlyle’s global head of corporate affairs. “We’d rather be the owners of that supply and have a much more aggressive hand in the average emission