The Institutional Funds team and key employees
Building a business like Octopus takes a lot of people. Today Octopus Group is home to over 4000 employees, including more than 125 investment professionals across several alternative investment businesses.
Our Institutional Funds team work closely with institutional investors across the Octopus Group. They will be your first port of call if you’d like to find out more about our institutional investment capabilities. We manage money for over 70 institutional investors and profiles of these key employees are also detailed below.
Leadership team

Jonathan Digges
He joined Octopus in February 2015 as Product Head for Octopus Inheritance Tax Service. Before joining Octopus, Jonathan ran a team at Lloyds that looked after the bank’s non-core equity portfolio. He also undertook stints at BNP Paribas, Robert Fleming and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Jonathan is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has an MA in Geography from the University of Oxford.

Chris Hulatt
Chris spends his time championing British entrepreneurialism and promoting policy ideas to drive business growth, by meeting UK business leaders and stakeholders such as MPs and government ministers.
Before founding Octopus, Chris led one of the global equity research teams at Mercury Asset Management. He has a first class MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Jennifer Ockwell
Jennifer joined Octopus with a 20-year track record in institutional fundraising, working with some of the industry’s most successful fund managers, including Franklin Templeton and Janus Henderson, where she served as Head of UK Institutional.

Mark Williams
Mark spent the early part of his career in Private Client roles with HSBC Private Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mark is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has a degree from Warwick Business School.

Simon Rogerson
Much of his time is spent looking for new opportunities for Octopus, such as moving into the commercial energy sector with Octopus Energy.
Before founding Octopus in 2000, Simon spent two years working at Mercury Asset Management. He holds a first-class MA in Modern Languages from St. Andrews University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
Institutional Funds Distribution team

Jason Bermont-Penn
Prior to that, he spent 4 years running his own retail start-up and was previously covering hedge funds and institutional investors as an equity sales-trader at UBS.
Jason obtained a 1st class honours degree in Mechanical Engineering at UCL and is a qualified financial adviser (DipFS).

Robert Cashmore MBE
Prior to Octopus, Robert was a senior British diplomat specialising in Gulf investment into the UK. He spent four years as the UK Government’s Head of Investment for Saudi Arabia, based in Riyadh, and two years as the Director for Investment Middle East, based in the UAE, during which time he played a leading role in securing the £10bn UAE-UK Sovereign Investment Partnership. He received an MBE in the 2020 Queen’s Honours for services to UK Trade and Investment.
Prior to Government, Robert spent five years in the City of London working for a number of investment banks, including UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Robert holds degrees from the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics.

Penny Chedzey
Penny joined the team having worked at Octopus for more than eight years. She was instrumental in planning, designing and project managing the Octopus Investments office move from Old Bailey to 33 Holborn.

Angela Gyulveszy
Prior to joining Octopus she was at Pensions Infrastructure Platform (PiP), where she was Investor Relations director, responsible for establishing new institutional investor client relationships for fund and co-investments. Before PiP, Angela worked at AXA Real Assets and was responsible for business development for new investor markets and products.
She is a graduate of the Corvinus University Budapest and is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst.

Semi Kim
In her previous role as an Inward Investment Manager at the UK Department for International Trade, Semi provided strategic advice to large UK infrastructure fund managers on distribution to large Korean institutional investors such as pension funds, asset managers and insurance companies.
Semi has a degree in English Linguistics and Literature from Sahmyook University in Korea and an MA in International Relations from University of Warwick.

Emma Whittingham
Prior to joining Octopus, Emma spent 10 years at Institutional Investor in London and New York. As Director of Investor Relations and Content she established and built relationships with single family offices, launching Institutional Investor’s private network of family offices in 2013.
Emma has a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) (Hons) from Liverpool John Moore’s University.

Matt Sheppee
Matthew has a first class degree in Mathematics from Oxford University.

Tom O'Hare
Tom is a graduate of the University of Reading where he studied Politics and International Relations.
Octopus Renewables team

Alex Brierley
Prior to joining Octopus, Alex was Director in the Energy and Environmental Infrastructure team at EY LLP where he provided a wide range of corporate and project finance services to leading players in the Renewable Energy industry. Alex is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, qualifying in 2003.

Matt Setchell
Prior to Octopus, Matt was an investment manager at Shore Capital and a manager at PwC. He has an MBA from Cambridge University and an Economics degree from Bristol University.
Octopus Ventures team

Alliott Cole
Alliott worked closely with the food e-commerce business Graze (acquired by Unilever), the ecommerce platform Rangespan (acquired by Google), the machine learning tech startup Magic Pony (acquired by Twitter), the pet food company Tails.com (acquired by Nestle) and the property portal website Zoopla (that listed on LSE and was later acquired by SilverLake).

Emma Davies
Most recently she has spent 5 years as a partner at Marylebone Partners, building and leading their direct investing capability. She has an acute understanding of growing and managing teams whilst solving for investment returns, and has a particular interest in ESG/Impact considerations.
Emma has an MA from Oxford University and an MSc from LSE.

Malcolm Ferguson
Malcolm is a Non-Executive Director of various portfolio companies including BoughtbyMany, By Miles, DeadHappy, Metrasens, Segura, Semafone and Sofar Sounds. Prior to joining Octopus, Malcolm spent a number of years in the investment banking industry, firstly within the TMT team of Bank America Merrill Lynch in London then at GP Bullhound, a leading boutique investment bank, focusing exclusively on technology businesses.

Joe Stringer
Prior to joining Octopus, he led Google Health in the UK, and the Ventures and Healthcare practices for EY in the UK. At EY, he was the global healthcare supply chain leader, ran a UK team of 120 healthcare specialists and founded and jointly led three technology businesses in the UK NHS. He has led some of the most significant and high profile transformation programmes – for example a four year / £14bn programme to transform the NHS supply chain.

Kirsten Connell
Prior to joining Octopus Ventures, Kirsten ran CyLon, a deep tech accelerator programme investing and supporting over 60 startups. She was also part of the original Seedcamp team and part of the growth journey taking them from a portfolio of 30 startups to over 200.
Kirsten is an angel investor in some of the UK’s hottest cybersecurity startups inc. Tessian, Immersive Labs, Senseon, Cybersmart, Zamna, RiskLedger and eCora.

Richard Court
Richard has been an investor in UK and international SMEs since 2006. He previously worked in TPG’s direct lending fund, at RJD Partners, a UK-focused Private Equity fund, and at Dresdner Kleinwort in the Principal Finance group. He qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC and holds a first class degree in Banking and Finance from the University of Birmingham.
Octopus Real Estate team

Benjamin Davis
Prior to joining Octopus, Benjamin was at YFM Group where he led numerous transactions and was a board representative for companies in sectors including technology, healthcare, retail and leisure. Before that, he was an associate director at investment bank Interregnum where he worked across the VC investment and corporate finance teams in the UK and USA.

Andy Scott

Michael Toft
Prior to joining Octopus, Michael was at Lothbury Investment Management, where he spent over a decade as an Executive Director and Senior Fund Manager, managing institutional real estate funds, implementing a growth strategy and expanding the flagship fund by more than threefold. He has also worked at KBC Asset Management and Fuller Peiser, and has a degree in Land Economy from the University of Aberdeen.

Ludo Mackenzie
Prior to joining Octopus, Ludo was a Partner at Melford Capital Partners LLP, UK Property Director at Janus Henderson Investors, and an Associate Director at JLL. He has an Estate Management degree at Oxford Brookes University.

Kevin Beirne
Since receiving a Masters from Oxford Brookes School of the Built Environment, Kevin has clocked up over 25 years in the real estate development and healthcare sector. He was one of the founders of ARCO and has served as an advisory board member for the Homes and Communities Agency (Homes England) and spent five years on the National Housing Federations development committee.

Steve Matthews
Octopus Alternative Investments team

Rob Skinner
Prior to joining Octopus, Rob was a director in the M&A team at RBS (formerly ABN AMRO) working across various sectors specialising in infrastructure. Rob has a degree in Mathematics from Warwick University.

Lukasz Michalak
Lukasz was born and raised in Poland and has two master’s degrees, one in Mechanical Engineering and a Civil in Indoor Climate and Energy.