DONG Energy’s UK Asset Manager Introduces His Responsibilities

DONG Energy has been publishing a series of articles on the different jobs and experts that it has in the UK. The following is an interview with Mads Skovgaard-Andersen, who is based in the London office and is the Asset Portfolio Director for a portfolio of UK wind farms and has just been voted one of the top 50 executive talents from Denmark.

Mads, give us a basic overview of what an asset manager does?
I’m basically profit and loss responsible for managing the investment we have made in our wind assets and making sure we get the return on the investment as per the business plan. I also look our co-investors.

We have financial partners like Marubeni at our Gunfleet Sands project and we also have industrial partners like Scottish Power at our West of Duddon Sands project.

How  does that fit in with the operations manager?
The operations manager is at the wind farm to make sure it is running day to day. Our job is completely different – it’s about the commercial management of the asset. We evaluate and manage the risks and opportunities from a shareholder point of view. Each wind farm is set up as a company so each asset has Asset Manager who is like a fund manager being responsible for the investment and the investors/partners.

What makes a good asset manager?
Someone who is commercially experienced – maybe a consultant, a banker, a lawyer or someone who works in corporate finance. It has to be someone who understand how a business partnership works and how divestments work.

The asset manager will be involved in a project from the start of construction to make sure everything is structured correctly in terms of the ownership and the operational set up.

And what sort of things do you work on?
It really depends. Each one of our wind farms is different and the partner setup are different. We participate in the  establishment and management of the partnership, we are responsible for the business case etc.

We are also responsible for the divestment of the offshore transmission assets once the project is up and running – legally the owner of the wind farm cannot own the cables and the substations that transport the electricity so we have to sell them through the regulator OFGEM. It really is detailed commercial work.

Press release, March 20, 2014; Image: DONG Energy