Ashley is a highly experienced professional in the project and infrastructure finance sectors with over thirty years of relevant experience.  He has led transactions as financial adviser, equity investor, lender, M&A adviser and financial guarantor in the transportation, water, waste, social infrastructure / PPP, midstream, and power and renewables sectors.

Having started his career at NatWest and joining its Project Advisory team in 1992, Ashley moved to Dexia in 1996 to head its London Project Finance team and then to Assured Guaranty in 2004 to head its global infrastructure business.  In 2007 he joined Depfa as its Global Head of Infrastructure Equity before moving to Natixis for whom he worked for almost fifteen years and held various senior roles including Head of Infrastructure Finance, EMEA, Head of Infrastructure Fund Coverage and Managing Director, Transport, Environment & Social Infrastructure.  Since mid-2023 Ashley has been providing consultancy services to various clients in the project finance / infrastructure sector.

Highlights of Ashley’s career include:

• Arranging in excess of £40 billion of project and infrastructure finance for transactions in the UK, Europe, Canada and the GCC.  His key areas of activity included the waste sector where he led the financing for ten waste to energy plants; toll roads where his credentials include the €3 billion refinancing of APRR amongst others; and rail where he financed Italian high speed rail operator, Italo, as well as rail wagon and tank container lessor, VTG.  Ashley was very active in the PPP market and when he left Dexia his team was ranked as the #1 arranger of loans for UK PFI projects by Project Finance International.  In recent years he has led a number of green and sustainability-linked financings in the water and waste, rail and airports sectors.
• Acting as debt adviser on various water, waste and transportation schemes; and buy- and sell-side M&A adviser on transactions in the midstream and transportation sectors.
• Successfully restructuring large, complex project financings including in the Greek toll road and biomass-fired power plant sectors.
• Leading the investment of equity in various school PFI projects in partnership with a major UK construction company.  He also sat on the advisory committees of various private infrastructure funds.

Ashley is a regular speaker at conferences and has considerable experience of dealing with governments and regulators as well as the press.

Ashley holds a BA (Hons) in Spanish & Business Studies from the University of Sheffield.

Ashley Blows | +44 (0) 7771 885135 | ashley.blows@portlandadvisers.com