KKR, a global investment firm, has hired a co-head for the firm’s global climate strategy, rounding out a refreshed leadership team focused on climate-related investments as part of KKR’s infrastructure platform.
Charlie Gailliot (pictured), who is based in New York, joins global climate co-head Emmanuel Lagarrigue, also based in New York, and Neil Arora, who leads the strategy in Asia and is based in Singapore.
Gailliot joins KKR after 20 years as a private markets investor at Goldman Sachs, where he most recently served as a partner and head of the energy transition and the diversified industrials investment teams.
He was a member of the investment committees for corporate equity, infrastructure and climate. He also served at various times as a member of the sustainability committee, the diversity and inclusion committee, and the physical commodity review committee.
Earlier in his career, he spent two years in Goldman’s Hong Kong office working on investments across Asia.
Lagarrigue, prior to joining KKR, was an executive committee member at Schneider Electric, where he led the transformation of the company into a leader in energy management infrastructure, industrial software and sustainability services.
Arora joined KKR from Macquarie where he was the head of the firm’s Green Investment Group for Asia-Pacific, with a focus on renewable energy asset development.
Raj Agrawal, partner and head of global infrastructure at KKR, said: “Since the launch of the KKR infrastructure platform 15 years ago, we have invested billions into renewable energy and climate solutions.
“However, transitioning to a low-carbon economy at the pace and scale needed requires trillions of dollars in investment, and we are still seeing a significant gap in climate funding.
“By forming a dedicated climate leadership team – leveraging Charlie, Emmanuel and Neil’s decades of expertise – we can sharpen our focus on the deployment and scaling of net-zero solutions and accelerate the transition of higher-emitting assets.”
KKR has committed more than $40bn to sustainability-focused investments, including more than $30bn to climate and environmental sustainability investments since 2010.
Examples of the firm’s investments in the energy transition to date include multiple renewables-focused partnerships with NextEra Energy, a leading generator of energy from the wind and sun; Virescent Infrastructure, a renewable energy platform in India; and Viridor, a UK-based waste-to-energy company, among several others.