Rothschild & Co infrastructure banker Vivek Kapoor is leaving after more than a decade to join Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) later this month, two sources familiar told Infralogic.
Kapoor, a director at Rothschild, will join Mumbai-headquartered diversified group RIL's strategy and planning division to focus on the new energy business, one of the sources said. His focus areas will include mergers and acquisitions as well as the expansion of the clean energy unit.
Kapoor joined Rothschild in 2011, where his work included transactions in the renewables space. Before this, he was at BNP Paribas in London. He interned at Macquarie Bank in Singapore.
Rothschild and Kapoor declined to comment, while RIL did not respond to queries.
Led by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, RIL - India’s largest private sector company by turnover - has traditionally been active in hydrocarbon exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, retail, textile, telecommunications and digital services. In 2021, the group set up the new energy business to include manufacturing of photovoltaic panels, energy storage, green hydrogen and fuel cell systems.
RIL has pledged to invest USD 10bn in alternative energy over the next three years as well as set up a renewables financing business by mobilising long-term institutional capital. It has announced that it will set up a Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar with a target to enable at least 100 GW of solar energy by 2030.
The new energy segment aims to produce 20 GW of solar by 2025, Chairman Mukesh Ambani said in August last year.
The business has acquired and invested in a string of companies since 2021. These include buying Norway-based equipment manufacturer REC Solar Holdings, as well as taking a 40% stake in Indian turnkey contractor Sterling & Wilson Solar. The clean power unit has invested in US energy storage company Ambri and also acquired assets from Netherlands-based Lithium Werks, a manufacturer of lithium-ion cells, custom modules and energy storage systems.
