Biwater Announces the Appointment of New Chairman

Water treatment company, Biwater Holdings, has announced the appointment of Mr Peter Earl to the he position of Chairman of the Company effective immediately.

Mr Earl joins the Board of the Company as Biwater enters a new expansionary phase and finalises an approved capital increase of £50 million in support of a number of important new water treatment contracts in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

Sir Adrian White, founder of Biwater, is to become President of the Company where he will devote his time to building Biwater’s worldwide order book, using the Company’s new comprehensive product range and, with its enhanced financial strength, moving Biwater into a new era of privately owned water treatment plants under nationally awarded concessions to own and operate entire regional water systems in partnership with institutional and sovereign wealth fund partners.

READ: Wastewater treatment: Biwater to build new facility in Morocco

Peter Earl is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Independent Power Corporation PLC, Britain’s leading developer and operator of power plants which, since 1995, has developed, owned or operated over 10,000 MW of conventional and renewable power capacity on five continents. Previously he led a corporate finance team specialising in utilities and infrastructure as well as cross-border mergers and acquisitions. He began his career at Boston Consulting Group before switching to investment banking at Orion Bank and later Arab Banking Corporation. He went on to work on utility privatisations in Latin America on secondment with the World Bank and UNDP before initiating the takeovers of Midlands Electricity and Yorkshire Electricity on behalf of a number of US electric utilities which entered the United Kingdom market in the 1990s.

Peter read Classics at Worcester College, Oxford, before switching to Development Economics as a postgraduate at Harvard University, where he was a Kennedy Scholar. He rowed for both universities. He serves as a trustee of a number of educational charities and recently stepped down from the Oxford Philharmonic Trust, which he chaired for ten years. He remains a Trustee of the Everest Memorial Trust having led the 1993 Everest Expedition on which Rebecca Stephens became the first British woman to climb that mountain.

Biwater has a 53 year track record of successfully designing and implementing drinking water and waste systems worldwide. It is by far the most important water company in the United Kingdom and has played a leading role in bringing fresh water to millions of people in Third World countries across the globe.

Sir Adrian White said: “I am pleased to welcome Peter to the Board of Biwater where his experience of financing large infrastructure projects in the energy field will complement Biwater’s undoubted leadership in cutting edge water treatment projects.”