Team — Kanako Sekine

Kanako Sekine was the Managing Director, Portfolio, of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) until 2018. Her team monitored the management of the Bank’s portfolio of debt and equity. Ms Sekine first joined the EBRD in 1993 and for 15 years enjoyed a career within the Financial Institutions team, heading the Bank’s in-house fund of private equity funds and co-investment programme. Between 2008-10, Ms Sekine left the EBRD to live and work in Moscow, working both as Managing Director of the Russian investment bank Troika Dialog Group and as Chief Operating Officer of their investment arm, Troika Capital Partners. She re-joined the EBRD in early 2011 and later left in 2018. Ms Sekine’s career in finance began in 1984 when she worked as an analyst in corporate finance with Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co in New York. She went on to work in their M&A advisory and financing department for top-tier US money managers investing in the emerging markets in the early 1990s. She now principally serves on boards and performs senior advisory roles with focus emerging markets-focused funds and financial institutions, currently including a Guernsey-based PE fund focusing on financial services and technology in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as a Kyrgyz commercial bank. Ms Sekine graduated from Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo and was awarded an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. She has a CFA designation.