JPMorgan’s sustainable growth equity team – a unit of the bank that invests in decarbonisation-related technology businesses – has hired Alex Bell as partner, a little under a year after Bell joined Tikehau Capital’s North America team.
Bell’s appointment at Tikehau was announced in February 2022 alongside another high profile hire in New York; the firm is raising a number of decarbonisation funds across Europe and North America.
Bell spent four and half years at Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ), where he helped launch a C$500 million ($368.3 million; €339.9 million) platform investing in late-stage venture and early-growth private equity opportunities. At JPMorgan, he will be the eighth dedicated team member in the sustainable growth equity team, which is currently investing from a pool of up to $150 million capital committed by the bank.
The sustainable growth equity team is co-headed by Tanya Barnes and Osei van Horne. The strategy is to back growth stage technology companies in the climate mitigation and adaptation space serving heavy polluting sectors, like real estate and heavy industry. It previously invested in MineSense, a technology company for the mining industry that measures production, purity and carbon intensity of mining operations.
On whether the climate tech space has become overcrowded with capital, Van Horne said that the scale of the decarbonisation challenge and opportunity meant “you could easily make the argument that it is underallocated and underresourced”. Capital has gravitated to early stage venture or later stage large buyouts, he told New Private Markets: “We find there is a missing middle.”
The bank declined to comment on the possibility of additional strategies or fundraising plans.
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