Philip Southwell
Board Member, What Media Group
Phil is a Partner at Chapel Hill Denham and Chairman of the Nigeria Infrastructure Debt Fund (NIDF) Investment Committee. He has spent more than 30 years in investment banking and principal investing, mostly focused on emerging and frontier markets in Asia, the Middle East, Central Europe, and Africa, and has advised on and financed many of Africa’s largest M&A and capital markets transactions.
Phil’s investment banking career started in 1994 with Smith New Court (now Merrill Lynch). He then spent 13 years at Deutsche Bank (of which 5 were based in Asia), where he held a variety of leadership roles for emerging markets including Head of Asia-Pacific for ECM; Head of Europe for ECM; Head of Coverage for Corporate and Investment Banking (“CIB”) EMEA; Board Director of DB Russia; Head of CIB for Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa; COO for CIB in EMEA. He later moved to Dubai firstly with EFG-Hermes as CEO of their GCC region and Head of Coverage, then with Bank of America Merrill Lynch as President, MENA region and ExCo member for Emerging Markets (ex-Asia) for all products and was then recruited as CEO of Exotix Partners.
Philip has raised capital and invested in real assets throughout his career and has listed and funded REITs in Australia, Asia (including Singapore’s first ever in 2001), and Europe (including the UK’s first ever in 2005). Philip is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales and graduated from Durham University and Eton College.
