Investment Forum | MENA // Panel: Who’s backing MENA’s data center boom? Trends in financing and M&A

Gulfraz has a distinguished track record advising communications operators and infrastructure providers on strategy, mergers and acquisitions, capital raising and other investment banking business. Over a career spanning 24 years, he has accumulated deep and diverse experience across markets, sub sectors and with a multitude of clients and capital providers. He has advised on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of advisory deals and successfully executed over $100 billion of strategic capital raising for large corporates and investors. Today, Gulfraz’s major clients are global, Western European and emerging markets large-cap telecom operators. Gulfraz has held offices in London, New York, Singapore and Dubai.

Gulfraz holds a Masters in Finance from London Business School and a BSc with first class honours in Mathematics with Computer Science from University College London.

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Luke Hanson is the Sector Lead for Telecoms Structured Finance in EMEA at SMBC Group, based in London. He joined the firm in 2014, bringing experience from KPMG's Infrastructure Corporate Finance group.

Luke has played a pivotal role in SMBC Group’s involvement in data center financings across EMEA, leading transactions totaling more than €5.3 billion in 2024 and €3 billion in 2023. His expertise spans both lending and advisory mandates across digital infrastructure, transport, and social infrastructure sectors.

He holds a Master of Engineering degree from Oxford University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales.

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Thomas is a highly experienced professional in infrastructure development and investments with over 20 years of experience, having advised on the development and financing of over USD 10Bn of infrastructure assets in the Middle East, Africa, South and South East Asia.

Thomas has previously held leadership positions with the Big 4 advisory firms, his previous position being the Capability Leader/ Head of KPMG Lower Gulf’s Infrastructure, PPP and real estate advisory practice, involved in advising clients in structuring and project financing of complex transactions in the Utilities, Transport and social infrastructure sectors in Middle East, S. Asia, S.E. Asia, Africa and CIS region.

As the Head of Investments & Financing at DataVolt, he is part of the Management Committee and leads the team responsible for evaluating and developing financing solutions of both greenfield and brownfield data centre assets being developed globally, with sustainability, innovation and scalability at the core of DataVolt’s business model.

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