Between myself (Peter), Bernard and Marchand, we have a tremendous amount of experience and expertise in the financing, renewable energy, commercial deal structuring, and corporate management areas and we apply this expertise on a “horses for courses” basis depending on the situation.
Bernard and I are front and center during every client and every shareholder interaction and we both draw on our individual expertise. Our clients who are renewable energy developers love the fact that I have the scars of having been a developer and that I understand their needs and their pain, but they also love the fact that Bernard brings an outside perspective from the mining industry and has a financial creativity that is unusual in the renewable space.
Similarly, our shareholders love the fact that Bernard is incredibly financially literate and can use his accounting background to help them understand how we can protect their investment and offer secure cash flows in return. However, they also appreciate the fact that they can rely on my experience developing and building renewable assets, and my understanding of what it takes to make money in the renewable space.
Marchand uses his experience to help guide the company and ensure top quality corporate governance and transparency in his role as Chair of our Board of Directors. He also uses his substantial commercial structuring experience to help guide our investments as Chair of our Investment Committee.
Our experience combined delivers: corporate discipline; financial creativity and commercial focus; hands-on “been there, done that” experience; and a desire to help entrepreneurs to deliver on their promise to reduce global fossil fuel emissions.
Bernard and I were the only two full time employees for the first year, and we used a variety of consulting and part time resources who we knew from our previous lives. Our third full time employee, Bryce Anderson, was introduced to us by one of our fund raisers.
I remember our first interview with Bryce. He was a recently graduated engineer who was working on his Chartered Financial Analyst designation and we were very impressed with his knowledge base and his energy. We started to talk potential compensation and told him that the good news was that we could offer him the CEO or COO pay package. His eyes lit up, and then we told him the bad news; the CEO and COO package at the time was minimum wage! To his credit Bryce took the job and his hire is one of the best hires I have ever experienced. He is now a Chartered Financial Analyst and VP of Investments and has become an integral part of our team. And yes, he is no longer earning minimum wage!
Since the company first started in 2016, we have added a few more team members to RE Royalties!
Luqman Khan joined us as our Chief Financial Officer and Talia Beckett-Davis joined us as the Vice President of Communications. Shane Grovue joined us to help leverage sustainable finance and ESG integration and evaluate investments in clean energy. Alistair Howard joined us to help get our renewable energy projects off the ground quickly! We've also had a few interns work with us over the years to gain valuable experience in renewable energy finance, Will, Andrew and Faria.
This is the third start up I have been involved in, and the first couple of hires are incredibly important. A small team needs to hire to fill knowledge/experience gaps and as a start-up you need to hire people with a passion for the business. Most importantly though is team fit. A small team needs to be able to communicate well, deal with stress (both deadlines and unexpected crisis) in a positive manner, and to take on all work. It really must be “one for all and all for one”.
Our team strongly believes in giving back through volunteering, donating to charitable causes, or attending community-led charitable events. Over the past year, we have volunteered and donated at Union Gospel Mission, Covenant House and Vancouver General Hospital. This is central to our team building and bringing together our shareholders values at RE Royalties.
Peter Leighton is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of RE Royalties, an innovative finance company specializing in renewable energy. In 2016, RE Royalties officially launched as the first company to take the royalty-financing model, well proven in other industries, and apply it to the renewable energy sector. RE Royalties is a publicly traded company on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol “RE”.
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