Having founded Kao Data in 2014, David served as Board Member and in September 2023 became the company's Chairman. David has a wide-ranging background with over 17 years’ experience in the technology, media and telecommunications industry as an investor, founder and investment manager. He has personally overseen the deployment of more than £500m of equity investment. A serial founder, David founded IPVision in 2007, Goldacre - now part of the Noé Group – in 2012 and NED Data Centres, an Israeli-based owner-operator for the Middle Eastern market in 2022. He is a skilled people manager, commercial negotiator, strategist, forecasting and budget manager and presenter.

Niall is a real estate investment professional with 20 years’ experience in commercial and residential real estate investment, development, equity, and debt. He has transacted or financed over £2bn of European real estate. Niall was previously with Castlelake, L.P., a global alternative asset manager with $20bn AUM, where he led UK & Ireland real estate and real estate credit. Prior to that, he was Investment Director at Development Securities plc, a FTSE Main Market-listed real estate investor and developer. Niall began his career in the Capital Markets Group at Cushman & Wakefield in London. Niall holds an LLB (Law and Accounting) from Queen’s University, Belfast, and an MSc (Real Estate) from the University of Aberdeen. He qualified as a Chartered Surveyor in 2007.

Nick Saner is a leading real estate partner at A&O Shearman, specialising in advising private capital real estate investors on complex investment transactions, joint ventures, preferred equity, development projects and high-value leasing arrangements. Nick is also a core member of the A&O Shearman Data Centre Group. He regularly advises data center investors, developers and lenders on data center development projects, joint venture structures, management agreements, mergers and acquisitions and financing arrangements in this rapidly evolving sector.

A Chartered Surveyor, Jess started her real estate career in office and retail capital markets. Jess fell into the data centre industry over 12 years ago at a time when Cloud was nascent. For the last 9 years, Jess has led the implementation of data centre infrastructure strategy and managed mission-critical, large scale global colocation and land acquisition projects across Europe for Google. Her current role is UK Lead of data centre acquisitions. Jess has witnessed immense industry growth, first driven by Cloud and now by AI. This growth has attracted increased capital and specialist capabilities to the industry to develop large scale data centre infrastructure that meets this demand. Jess has two young children and, when she can find the time, can be found either sailing in Chichester Harbour or running through the South Downs.

Michael is a former quantity surveyor and now practices as a construction lawyer specialising in Data Centres having supported clients in the procurement of hyperscale Data Centres in the Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium and England. Michael works on a range of contentious and non-contentious construction and engineering work and advises clients on different forms of construction and engineering contracts and professional appointments. Michael has spent time on secondment working in house with Mace Limited on both domestic and international construction projects.

George Harold is co-CEO and co-founder of Fexillon, a leading specialist in managing digital building information for the asset lifecycle. Fexillon have been pioneering digital transformation in the built environment for over 25 years across sectors and mission-critical infrastructure, supporting a number of leading blue-chip companies across Ireland, the UK, Europe and the US. The Fexillon Platform and industry experts assist Owner Operators with the delivery and management of Buildings and Infrastructure data, ensuring clients receive the right information at the right time, creating a golden thread of information and approved Digital Building record at handover, ensuring Soft Landings for Facilities Management and providing the foundations to monitor ESG goals on the path to Net Zero.

Richard is a partner in the Technology & Commercial Transactions Department, specialising in high value and complex commercial contracts, collaborations and outsourcings.

Richard has developed a fast-growing practice in the energy and infrastructure, digital media and financial services sectors, focusing on transactions which are underpinned by long-term contracts, to exploit new markets, technologies or delivery platforms.

In the energy and infrastructure sector, Richard is regularly called upon to help clients devise, structure and implement cutting edge net-zero transitions and investments, across heating and cooling, renewable energy, fibre, last mile networks, smart meters, data centres and energy data platforms.

Richard is also very experienced in successfully structuring the carve-out elements of complex M&A transactions.

Richard leads the firm’s General Counsel and In-house Lawyers Programme and also serves as a member of the firm's ESG and Impact Group.

Industry recognition

Richard is listed ranked in The Legal 500's Hall of Fame and as a Band 1 Lawyer in Chambers and Partners for Commercial Contracts.

Tim is responsible for power strategy across the Tritax Group – developing and implementing a co-ordinated, resilient and futureproof offering. Tim joined Tritax in January 2022 after 10 years at National Grid working across a number of technical and leadership roles. His project experience spans managing significant asset management portfolios, developing cutting edge and innovative designs for the UK power system, and working on some of the UK’s largest projects. Most recently he was focused on the strategic development of the UK power system to facilitate net zero transition, notably developing in conjunction with government a national charging strategy for EVs and facilitating the connection of the first battery storage portfolios to the transmission system.

Pete is a Connectologist® at Roadnight Taylor, developing grid connection strategies for demand and generation projects from distribution to gigawatt-scale transmission. He guides data centres and large-scale developments through complex grid challenges. Pete's industry influence includes membership of Ofgem's Curate Advisory Group (Demand Connections Reform), the CMP417 working group on securities arrangements for demand customers, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies.