Managing Partner, Christopher Cloke-Browne, spent 12 years as an investment banker. He brings a global perspective to the business having worked in London, New York and Tokyo. Before founding BRAVE Partners, Chris was at BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse and other major investment banks.
During his banking career Chris moved from developing state-of-the-art risk models that were published in RISK Magazine, to developing businesses centred around advising investors on both regular and structured credit portfolios.
Chris has spent his career working with insurance companies and pension funds of a range of sizes and on a range of issues from asset performance through ALM and groundbreaking risk transfer transactions to M&A structuring, valuation and financing.
Chris has a Masters Degree and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.
Partner Chris Croft is a senior commercial lawyer with widespread business experience. An acknowledged expert in insurance. He has extensive experience in structuring and executing insurance and reinsurance transactions, most recently in a capital markets context. Moreover, Chris has wide experience in entrepreneurial activity and start-up operations, having been General Counsel for a dot com business and part of the management team that obtained a FTSE listing for the business.
Chris has been known to the BRAVE partners for many years, since joining Dresdner Kleinwort to work on the team's activities there.
Partner Anna Milic has 15 years of investment banking experience. She started her career in Corporate Finance at Flemings before moving to Dresdner Kleinwort to focus on Financial Institutions within investment banking. Within Dresdner she then joined the structured finance team and spent the last seven years in the Insurance and Pensions area. Anna brings a wealth of transactional experience in both investment banking and capital markets throughout the insurance sector.
Anna has been known to the BRAVE partners for many years, since working together at Dresdner Kleinwort.
Apart from English, Anna speaks German and Serbian and can converse in French.
Partner Veronica (Ronnie) Cloke-Browne spent six years with one of the oil majors working at a large refinery, where she was responsible for optimising the production of all finished products.
One of Ronnie's particular successes at the refinery was to identify the impact of environmental changes to fuel specifications on additive performance two years ahead of schedule. Working with the additive suppliers, Ronnie prepared the refinery to produce the new specification fuel exactly on schedule, giving her product a significant competitive advantage and contributing significantly to her employer's revenues. The company applied for a patent to protect this work.
Ronnie has a Masters Degree and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. She is a Fellow of the Energy Institute.
Ronnie can converse in Italian.
Advisors
Stephen (Steve) Graham worked for a major oil company for over twenty years variously implementing, devising and managing R&D projects, mainly concerned with developing advanced engine motor oils and optimising the company's additives used for their formulation. Some thirty years ago, from 1979 to 1981, Stephen was seconded by his company to Brazil. Initially, he ran the technical department responsible for the quality and performance of all the company's lubricants, including engine oils and industrial lubricants. Later, his responsibilities focussed on identifying and resolving the problems associated with the engine performance both of spark-ignition internal combustion ('petrol') engines running on pure ethanol, and of compression-ignition ('diesel') engines running on various vegetable oils and their derivatives. His responsibilities changed on returning to the UK in 1981 but he has maintained his interest in biofuels and in Brazil ever since.