Welcome to ILA
We invite you to meet and learn a little bit about some of our new members, welcome to the ILA network!
Carole FARINE
Carole Farine has been working in Luxembourg since 1999, her professional background in Luxembourg is Corporate Officer in various fiduciaries, among them HRT. She has also a bank working experience within SEB/Intesa Group in particular in the private equity sector.
She has a professional experience in France, namely in the political sector, where she worked for a Deputy Mayor for almost 10 years. She has some experience in the catering field, always useful to taste good food and wines.
Carole's educational background is in France (Metz and Nancy) where she studied Literature and Foreign Languages, Tourism and then International Commercial Exchanges.
She is generally interested in many topics, but in particular going to concerts and live shows. She has a wide range of interest in music from classical one to today artists.
She also usually reads a book a week and could be mostly historical novels or today writers, in particular Marc Levy, John Grisham, Harlan Coben…
She is fond of travelling and discovering other cultures and landscapes, mixing seaside and sightseeing events.
Carole likes practicing sport such as pilates-streching-swimming and Nordic walking and also yoga, even if it could be considered not just a sport but a relaxing way of living. She also loves meeting friends and sharing with them good moments.
Sohail Essa JAFFER
Sohail Jaffer is a dynamic and experienced international senior executive with a successful track record of new business development in Europe and the growth markets. He is one of the pioneers of setting up an alternative investments business, and later on established a scalable Bancassurance business in multiple growth markets. He also deployed digital applications to enhance the customer engagement, augment advisor productivity and upgrade overall customer experience.
Mr Jaffer enjoys sales and business development and building and nurturing new business and market entry initiatives. He appreciates shaped market entry strategy into several growth markets and establishing strategic business partnerships. Bi-lingual (English and French), he has international experience in UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa and South East Asia. He is also a qualified UK accountant (FCCA).
Mr Jaffer also promoted industry thought leadership in the banking, asset management and life and pensions business. He is a former Chairman of the Alternative Investment Management Association, AIMA (1997 to 2000), member of the ALFI Hedge Funds Working Group and a member of the Gulf Bonds and Sukuk Association. Sohail also contributed to several trade publications and edited several publications on Alternative Investments, Wealth Management, Asset Management and Life Insurance and Pensions industry.
Sohail Jaffer has a strong international industry network with institutional investors, regulators, service providers and trade associations. He recently joined ILA in Luxembourg with a view to learning more about corporate governance, NED best practice standards and active interaction with the existing members.
Edward KISALA
Edward is a Chartered Surveyor with over 30 years’ real estate experience including the start-up of overseas operations; fund, asset and property management; investment acquisition, development, valuation, equity raising and business generation. Edward has worked as both adviser and principal across many European jurisdictions and most real estate asset classes.
Edward was previously Head of UK and co-head Europe for US Fund Manager, Heitman, ($23 bn. assets under management). He oversaw the investment of over €1.5 billion in the western, central and eastern European markets, negotiating numerous joint ventures and securing third party debt finance on a large proportion of transactions. Prior to Heitman, Edward helped establish the European operation for Lend Lease which, at the time, was the largest real estate manager in the world.
Edward’s early career was with DTZ (now Cushman & Wakefield) where, after an early grounding in valuation, property/fund management and investment work, he re-located to Wars to establish their Polish operation. Edward was one of the first real estate professionals to operate in the Central and Eastern European markets after the fall of the iron curtain and is regarded as one of the most experienced professionals in the region.
Edward is now based in Luxembourg where his current roles include Chairing/sitting on Boards of various Luxembourg and Guernsey-based Funds - including Investment Committee and Valuation Committee positions – and he is an adviser to a Luxembourg-based Manco.
Edward has been a frequent speaker/panel member at numerous Industry seminars and events and is former Secretary and a founding member of the Polish Branch of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
Jean-Marie PAQUET
Jean-Marie started his career as Officer in active duty within units of the Belgian Para-Commandos Regiment. In 1991, he joined the pan-European I.B.M. - RINET (Reinsurance and Insurance Network) joint-venture as consultant for the design and the implementation of a Value-Added-Network, based upon UN-EDIFACT standards.
In 1993, he moved to Luxembourg and was appointed as senior consultant within KBL epb S.A. From 1996 to 2000, he successively joined the managing staff of Brown, Shipley & Co (London – UK) and of KBL Swiss Private Bankers (Geneva and Lugano – CH) to supervise the implementation of core-critical banking packages and ensure smooth Euro and “Year 2K” transitions.
Back in KBL epb S.A., he pursued his career as senior manager in operations. As Head Of Asset Servicing, he supervised Financial Services, Corporate Actions, Tax and Securities Reference Data.
In 2013, he founded NET-CONSILIUM to provide consulting, audit and educational services. In 2015, he was appointed senior lecturer at the University of Luxembourg where he is mentoring and advocating Resilience, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.
Jean-Marie is holding a master’s degree in Applied Military and Social Sciences from the Royal Military Academy (Brussels-BE) and graduated from the “ICHEC-ISCSL-ISFSC Group” (Brussels-BE) with a master’s degree in Business Engineering. He is fluently speaking French, English, Dutch, Luxemburgish and German. He is married and father of two daughters. One may find him out at sea when time permits, and more often in mountains and forests to defend and protect bio-diversity.
Andy SCHMIDT
Andy Schmidt is a trusted advisor to senior leaders at a number of multinational for profit companies and non-profit organisations. He brings over twenty years of experience working across a variety of sectors and industries in Europe, Asia and America.
Andy is Managing Director at Impact Advisors, a Luxembourg based Corporate Social Responsibility consultancy (CSR), and Partner at Pearl Consulting, a Singapore based social impact consultancy. He has been recognised by the non-profit B Lab as a B Leader and regularly uses the B Corp framework to help companies better understand and improve their impact in the world by applying an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) lens to their activities.
Prior to consulting, Andy spent nearly a decade at Skype’s global Headquarters in Luxembourg. Over his career there he held a variety of roles across compliance / government relations and communications, brand and marketing. For the last half of his time at Skype he looked after the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility program globally. At Skype’s HQ in Luxembourg, he was President of the Staff Delegation for 5 years, including through the acquisition by Microsoft.
He holds an MBA from Sacred Heart University in Luxembourg and a Master’s in Public Relations from George Washington University in Washington D.C.
He is the father of two young daughters and focuses his professional efforts on opportunities with the greatest opportunity to create a safe, healthy, prosperous and fair future world for their generation. He is exploring opportunities to drive positive impact as a non-executive independent director and within the ILA community by leveraging and sharing his CSR, governance and sustainability knowledge and experience.
Winfried SCHWATLO
Winfried Schwatlo is Managing Director of Schwatlo Management GmbH in Munich and a Professor of Real Estate Economics, in particular Business Ethics and Conflict Management at the CoRE Campus of Real Estate of the Nuertingen-Geislingen University.
Until 2013, he was an honorary board member (most recently Deputy Chairman) of the world's largest real estate association, the RICS Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Ltd. Germany, Frankfurt.
He has also been a member of the Board of the ICG Institute for Corporate Governance of the German Real Estate Industry since 2015.
After many years on the Management Board of FOCUS Real Estate AG Munich - which he founded alone and then gradually became a partner - he moved to the other side as Chairman of the Supervisory Board for three years until spring 2013.
Since March 2013 Winfried Schwatlo has been a member of the Supervisory Board of CD Deutsche Eigenheim AG Berlin. 2017 he moved to the operative board to prepare and execute the construction project "Mein Falkenberg" (Volume: approx. 250 Mio Euro) in Berlin for 15 Month.
Since 2018 he is also the Chairman of the advisory council of Brenta Real in Berlin.
Since 2016 he is also “qualifizierter Aufsichtsrat” and certified as an “Financial Expert” by Deutsche Boerse AG and member of the Society of Friends of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) e.V..
Dieter STEBERL
Dieter Steberl is acting as independent director and consultant. He has more than 20 years relevant professional experience in the Luxembourg fund industry with particular focus on legal, compliance and governance matters, including the set-up of UCITS and AIFMD fund management companies in Luxembourg.
Dieter was acting for more than half of his professional career as CEO and conducting officer of Luxembourg fund management companies of renowned Swiss private banking groups covering traditional and non-traditional asset classes and in parallel as director for various fund companies and funds. Currently, he is serving as independent director of various Luxembourg based funds and fund companies (covering alternative investments, real estate, infrastructure) in addition to his advisory activities with focus on fund governance, regulatory and compliance matters.
Dieter is a German trained lawyer at J.D. level, he is fluent in English, French and German.
Claude STEINMETZ
Mr Claude Steinmetz, who joined ILA end of August, is the former CEO of the group Luxlait (2003-2018) and acquired a lot of experience in the field of boards as he was board member during this period in more than 10 different companies in Luxembourg and in Brussels.
The boards have been quite diversified in the sense that Mr Claude Steinmetz assisted in boards of real estate, recycling, dairy products, restaurants, distribution companies and European boards representing the whole European farmers for lobbying with the EU – Administrations. He was as well Vice-Chairman during the last years of the “European Dairy Association” in Brussels representing all dairy companies in whole EU, which represents however a huge European turnover in dairy products.
Mr Claude Steinmetz was the Chairman of the board of 3 different companies mentioned above during 10 years in Luxembourg and acquired as well a lot of experience in this field of management. Before being CEO of the Luxlait group, Mr Claude Steinmetz was during 3 years CEO of a fund in Luxembourg.
He is an economist, licensed in management and he got a Master in Finance and Accountancy in 1992. That’s why Mr Claude Steinmetz is as well interested by the finance sector and as well in the fields of expertise mentioned above.
His professional experience covers the entire management of a production and commercial company from strategic, operational, regulatory and commercial perspectives.
His business experience over the last 25 years covers as well areas such as product development, marketing, human resources, structuring of investment strategies, legal & compliance and the administration in general of companies.
Mr Claude Steinmetz is Luxembourgish citizen, fluent in Luxemburgish, French, German and English.
