Charles Field-Marsham is the CEO of Kestrel Capital. Charles is a Canadian entrepreneur whose business and charitable interests are concentrated in East Africa. Mr. Field Marsham's businesses range from companies dealing in the sales and service of heavy construction and mining equipment throughout East Africa, to a mining operation in western Kenya, and a Nairobi-based financial services firm.
His other businesses include:
- Panafrican Trucks & Equipment, distributor for Komatsu construction equipment in East Africa;
- Panafrican Mining Services, provider of technical services to Komatsu and Cummins equipment at mining sites in Tanzania;
- Kenya Fluorspar Company, a fluorspar mine in western Kenya
Born in Toronto in 1968, Charles Field-Marsham earned a bachelors degree, with distinction, in economics and political science from McGill University in Montreal in 1990.
From 1991 to 1993 he worked as a financial analyst in New York for the investment banking firm Credit Suisse First Boston.
Mr Field-Marsham moved to Kenya.
During 1993 and 1994, Mr. Field-Marsham did consulting work and analyzed numerous investment opportunities in Kenya. In 1995, he obtained a stock brokerage license on the Nairobi Stock Exchange and founded Kestrel Capital. The company is now both a brokerage and a licensed investment bank catering to Kenyan and international institutional investors and providing corporate finance and M&A services to Kenyan companies.
In 1996, Mr. Field-Marsham acquired Kenya Fluorspar. The company produces 100,000 tons of fluorspar (calcium fluoride) ore per year and employing 400 people, for whom the company provides housing, health care and children's schooling.
In 1997, Mr. Field-Marsham founded Panafrican Trucks & Equipment and acquired the distributorship for Komatsu construction equipment in Kenya. Panafrican subsequently secured distribution rights in Tanzania and Uganda and now operates in seven locations in East Africa, serving such customers as Barrick Gold and Anglogold, and employing some 250 people.
In addition to the enterprises he owns and directs, Mr. Field Marsham is also a non-executive director of Kenya Oil Company, Ltd, an oil marketing company listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The company operates more than 400 gas stations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and Ethiopia.
Mr. Field-Marsham's charitable work began in 1999 when through Kenya Fluorspar, he donated a school wing to a remote school in Muscut the Rift Valley. Throughout the time he lived in Kenya, Mr. Field-Marsham witnessed the great works of Amref, the leading health development organization in Africa. Upon his return to Canada, Mr. Field-Marsham offered to help Amref in Canada and in 2006 he joined the Board of Directors.
In 2004 Mr. Field-Marsham learned of a fledgling effort to help a few exceptionally bright students from rural western Kenya secure scholarships to top American universities. He offered financial support, and since then the program, KENSAP - the Kenya Scholar-Athlete Project, has placed a dozen students a year at such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT, all with full scholarships.
