
Francis Gugen
Board and Founder Member, POWERful Women
Currently:
- Director and chair Audit Committee of publicly quoted SBM Offshore, the world’s largest offshore floating production facilities provider, with a market cap of £2.5bn
- Senior Advisor to private equity backed Chrysaor Limited; previously chair from inception for 10 years until Chrysaor acquired a package of assets from Shell for c.£3bn; establishing it as the leading North Sea UK Independent E&P company
- Executive Chair of SML, a biotech spin out from Raft; commercialising a wound healing device to heal without a skin grafts, which will be a world 1st
- Founder member POWERful Women; government initiative re women in energy
Formerly:
- 1982-2000 helped grow Amerada Hess in North West Europe (then third largest operator on the UKCS), ultimately becoming regional CEO
- 2000-2017 Chair/founder/major shareholder AIM listed IGas Energy plc, leading onshore UK producer/shale player with >1m gross acres; market cap £100m
- 2002-2006 Chair/part owner/founder privately held CH4 Energy Limited, which developed c. 75mmboe of fallow UKCS gas reserves and was sold for £0.2bn
- 2003-2016 Board member and Chair publicly quoted Petroleum Geo-Services AS; now the market leading offshore seismic provider (3rd ranked when took chair)
- 2007-2018 Chair/founder/c.30% owner until sold of privately held Fraudscreen Ltd; producing an honesty index distinguishing ‘will pay’ / ‘wont pay’ customers
- 2001-2017 Chair for 7 years of Raft; a world renowned medical research charity
- Past industry Chair of Pilot and helped develop its concept with the UK Treasury
- Past President of Oil & Gas UK (the UK’s upstream trade body)
- Past Chair of CRINE (a UKCS cost reduction initiative)
- Past Chair of the cbi’s Environmental Affairs and member Economic committees
- Past Board member Britannia Building Society, chair elect Anglian Water in an aborted demerger and subsequently also in potential leveraged buy-out of company
Original profession:
- Chartered accountant having worked for Arthur Andersen for eight years until 1982, principally as an oil & gas specialist.
Background:
- Married with one daughter and two granddaughters
- Educated largely in the French system