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Edward van Kersbergen, Interview Financieele Dagblad

Former Shell Engineer Earns Millions from Sale of Scottish Energy Consultancy

Jan Verbeek, Amsterdam
Edward van Kersbergen (48) has just finalized his third exit and is said to have earned tens of millions of Euros. With the sale the Dutch investor has become an unprecedented success in the oil and gas industry.
In early July, Van Kersbergen sold his majority stake in the consultancy Xodus to a Japanese group. His The Hague-based investment group Sunrise Energy, in which his partner also plays a role, sold its shares less than two years after acquiring a stake.
Van Kersbergen’s career is anything but boring. He studied physics at university and worked at Shell as an engineer on several oil and gas installations. At the turn of the millennium, he decided to start his own company in subsurface consultancy and services. His team built complex simulation models for large energy concerns and governments for the development of difficult-to-exploit oil and gas fields. They simulated underground terrain and were sometimes involved in the management and developed alternative extraction methods.
In 2008 Van Kersbergen sold his first company, Horizon Energy Partners. By then he had set up another company, Oyster Energy, selling it in 2009.
Non-compete agreements in the sales kept Van Kersbergen and his entrepreneurial endeavours quiet for a brief period. Two years ago, once the non-compete period had expired, Van Kersbergen stepped back into the arena. He acquired a stake in Aberdeen-based Xodus. His involvement in the company brought success. He and his partner invested $16 million in the British enterprise. Later, they invested an additional several million to finance Xodus’s growth plans. With the investment Van Kersbergen became majority shareholder. “Energy services is a rapidly growing market,” says Van Kersbergen. He built a network of specialists focused on that specific area of expertise.
In 2011, Xodus needed a capital injection to expand its services portfolio. Following his investment that year, Van Kersbergen took on the role of executive director alongside the CEO.  Prior to that he served as a non-executive board member. With the new owners on board the Scottish company took great strides, doubling revenue and solidifying its global presence. “Xodus was like an oil company without oil fields,” he reflects.
Xodus currently realizes an annual revenue of £80 million (€92 million). The company services all the large energy concerns and has offices in Perth, Houston, Oslo, Lagos, Dubai and The Hague.
Xodus’s buyer is a Japanese company called Chiyoda. The company has Mitsubishi as its majority shareholder and is known in the energy industry as the builder of dozens of LNG installations. The amount of money he received for his stake is something Van Kersbergen does not want to disclose. The Japanese media says he received $100 million for 80% of Xodus.
The size of investment fund Sunrise Energy’s stake in Xodus has not been shared with the public.  What is known is that Van Kersbergen acquired Xodus together with an American private equity firm.
Van Kersbergen is one of two founding partners at Sunrise Energy. Before the sale of Xodus, Van Kersbergen partnered with Frenchman Stephane Constant. Constant withdrew following the sale.
Van Kersbergen aims to stay active in the industry. He will look for new investment opportunities. “We have money and expertise. We are looking for interesting technologies to alternatively develop oil and gas fields.”
According to the former Shell engineer, money is not the only thing that matters in the industry. “The limiting factor is usually not capital. No, it’s finding the right people. For this kind of consultancy work you need specialists who bring both technical smarts and creativity to the table.”
 
 
This is a translation of the Dutch-language original in Het Financieele Dagblad, 15 July 2013. © Het Financieele Dagblad.