ERGAPOLIS PEOPLE
Being at the crossroad of different worlds to better provide expertise in various dimensions from sustainability, consulting, tech, agri, finance with practitioners having interacted at various levels in public and private domains and driven by entrepreneurship.
Estelle's Bio
Estelle founded Ergapolis Singapore in 2018 leveraging her pioneer and recognised experience in sustainability applied in fields such as offsets and urban design.
After 10 years in the financial sector, she has been helping companies define their CSR strategy and improve their ESG performance for the past 15 years. She also acts as a non-executive director on CSR committees within boards of directors, in particular for SMEs.
She works with governments and local authorities to develop public-private partnerships.
Named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France’s Minister of Culture she has written several articles on sustainability and urbanisation and recently published an essay on Singapore’s urbanisation and planification which was widely distributed among France’s high levels policy and decision makers.
She was a member of France’s presidential delegation at COP21.
Estelle has a background in law. She graduated in sustainability from the University of Paris-Dauphine: master in sustainable development and responsibility of organisations. She is also a graduate of the ESSEC executive for the implementation of partnerships: Countertrade and offset.
Frederic's Bio
Frederic is a commodity and structured trade specialist who has spent most of his 25 years banking career in Asia Pacific leading regional teams covering clients across commodity supply chains in energy, agricultural, metals and mining.
Entrepreneur at heart, he was at the start of the business for 2 large global banks in Asia Pacific.
He built business units and teams in several countries in the region with expertise across banking products in relationship management but also specialised in trade, structured trade.
Prior to that, Frederic started his own company in trading and was a business consultant for French corporates and SMEs.
He has been a member of various senior internal working groups on sustainable palm oil.
He currently is on the board of Safe Water Gardens, an initiative with global vision to provide safe and affordable sanitation for every home in rural areas.
Frederic graduated with a Master in Management from the E.D.H.E.C. Business School.
Arnie's Bio
Arnie is a Managing Partner with AV Group, an investment manager based out of New York, Luxembourg and Cayman Islands. He is also the Principal of the Abzlute Family Office.
With the above portfolios Arnie works with several Sovereign funds and Private Equities around the world in deal flow, deal structuring, capital structuring for major global deal constructs in the areas of technology, renewables, Industry 4.0 and hospitality.
An investor in several DeepTech, AI, FinTech, Gaming, Ecommerce and CleanTech companies, he also previously co-founded Chaatz, a Social Messaging, Media and Payments (PayWallet) application that elevated the entire messaging experience via introduction of video, media and payments interactions.
Arnie has over 20 years of experience in Senior Leadership and Executive positions. He is recognized as one of the leading experts in the Payments, Fintech and Mobile industry in Asia and often invited to speak at various forums.
Arnie is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and holds a Bachelors degree from the University of Southampton, UK in Electronic Engineering. He is also a Certified Service Manager accredited by the Marketing Akademie, Hamburg Germany.
Clement's Bio
Clement has been involved in the palm oil and related commodities industry over the past 20 years. As a founder and ex-CEO in the development and operations of plantation estates since 2008, he had extensive involvement and experiences in trade and financing, ESG and Sustainable policies relating to RSPO/ISPO and on traceability concerns including undertaking local Social Impact Assessment (providing clinics, schools, roads, and clean water to villages) and High Conservation Value (biodiversity) studies within the development.
In the initial start-up phase of the projects, Clement worked with various international VC/PE Funds to raise seed capitals and subsequent successful exit of the venture.
Prior to that he held the position as Biz Dev Director for Cargill/Temasek Plantations (CTP), totaling 105,000Ha in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea (2005-2007) and Group CFO with Commonwealth Development Corporation, a UK Government’s plantations (2000-2005), subsequently divested then to CTP Singapore.
Previously a CFO for Novartis (ex-Ciba) and MD for Novartis Ag Singapore (a Swiss Pharma and Chemical MNC).
A Chartered Accountant by training in London and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales. Previously of Ernst & Young Singapore.
Fouad's Bio
Co-founder (2002) and EXCOM member of Vigeo Eiris (2002-2020), a leading ESG Rating Agency acquired by Moody’s in 2020.
Group Head of Institutional Relations (2003-2020) and as CEO of the Moroccan Branch (2003-2020) of Vigeo Eiris.
Led 350+ consulting and audit cases in which he advised senior executives of listed and non-listed corporations on topics related to sustainability, CSR and risk management.
Lecturer on sustainability, climate change, human rights and environmental strategies for several international institutions (ILO, UN, OECD, EU, ISO, “Commissariat général au Plan”, “Conseil National de la Comptabilité”, “Association Française de Normalisation”).
Published several articles and interviews on CSR (600+ citations in interviews).
Teacher at Paris-Dauphine University (Master “Organisations et Développement Durable”).
Member of the Moroccan Economic and Social Council (“catégorie Expert”) for which he has been the main author of six reports.
In 2014, he was made “Knight of the Kingdom of Morocco’s Order of Merit”.
Fouad Benseddik holds a “Doctorat D’Etat” (PhD) in political science from University Paris-X, obtained in 1989.
Laurent's Bio
Laurent is a seasoned risk, treasury finance and regulatory specialist with 25 years of experience in banking and financial services who worked with leading financial institutions such as Standard Chartered, Barclays, Credit Agricole CIB and S&P Global, in both global and Asia Pacific roles.Laurent has deep domain knowledge across risk, treasury, finance, regulatory compliance, data strategy, business analytics, fintech and digital finance.
His track record includes the successful delivery of large-scale risk, finance and regulatory transformation initiatives including credit risk scorecard/rating models, risk adjusted pricing, portfolio analytics, Basel II / III regulatory compliance, risk-based capital adequacy, risk data aggregation and reporting, stress testing, capital & liquidity optimization, business and customer profitability, data strategy and analytics, data governance, metadata taxonomy, scale up project for a challenger bank.
Laurent is a strategic, delivery-focused trusted business partner and adviser to the C-suite providing advanced analytics, subject matter expertise and insights while acting as a bridge between business and technology senior stakeholders.
Laurent graduated with a Master of Science in Mathematics & Information Sciences Engineering from E.I.S.T.I / CY Tech in France.
Laurent is based in Singapore.