Stephen Wermert
Director
Stephen is a Director of Castlerock Consulting Pte Ltd in Singapore and has over 35 years in structuring PPP infrastructure project financings and serving as financial advisor for infrastructure project development including electricity related projects in Southeast Asia. As his focus has been on limited recourse finance debt driven assignments, he has broad experience to technical, commercial, legal and insurance due diligence and risk allocation on infrastructure projects and the orientation with which governments, project developers, investors and lenders approach such projects.
Stephen has undertaken major assignments in the Indonesia energy sector since the time of the Asian currency crisis, where as a lead lender, he restructured a long-term loan with a recycled lube oil plant company. Subsequently, he has worked on Indonesia finance related assignments for a natural gas pipeline, geothermal field development and power generation, solar PV generation, hydropower generation and water treatment. He served as Executive Director and Finance Director of LPI Singapore, a conventional power developer active in Bangladesh and Indonesia. Outside of Indonesia, he developed financing structures for private electricity generation, transmission, and distribution projects as well as industrial energy efficiency. At Castlerock, he has a senior role in both ADB and MENTARI project assignments focusing on renewable power project support and low carbon development.
Stephen has conducted extensive electricity / PPP related training in project development, financial modeling, sovereign loan and renewable power financing for National University of Singapore Lee Kuan Yu School of Public Policy and Singapore Management University as well as with Mercados Aries training programs for electricity utility officials. He wrote and taught the capstone case (Sarulla Geothermal Power Project in Sumatra, Indonesia) for five consecutive years for the Asia Infrastructure Leaders Program in Singapore.
Outside of the electricity sector, Stephen has extensive experience in advising developers and governments and lending to private infrastructure projects across multiple sectors including the environment sector (water, wastewater, and solid waste treatment/collection) and the transportation sector (highways, parking facilities, rail, mass transit, seaports and airports). He has wide geographic experience across Asia and the Middle East regions outside of Indonesia including in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Timor-Leste, PRC, India, and Singapore.
Stephen has been an active consultant for World Bank, ADB and other private and donor agency clients from 2014-2021 across Asia and the Middle East. Stephen spent nine years as a manager at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) including as Kazakhstan Country Director where he was responsible for re-engineering ADB sovereign and private lending and adapting ADB engagement to a changing policy/economic environment. His other important roles at ADB were as Private Sector Operations Business Head for Central Asia – South Caucasus region and as PPP Investment Project Task Manager (with primary responsibility for Indonesia and the Philippines).
Stephen has been engaged for the last three years as PPP financial consultant for the MENA, Central Asia, and Africa regions with the Singapore office of Khatib & Alami, a major Middle East based engineering design firm. Prior his time with ADB, he worked for 12 years in Singapore in the Asia-wide limited recourse PPP project finance industry as Director at BNP Paribas and as an Associate Director at Deutsche Bank. At the start of his career, he worked for 8 years as an advisor and underwriter in the US municipal bond market, and he has since undertaken multiple assignments for private market development of municipal finance in Asia. Stephen completed the Senior Executive program at IESE Business School in Barcelona in 2011 and holds an M.A., Public Policy from the University of Chicago, and an B.A. from Columbia College (Columbia University – New York).