Alessandro Merlo

Strategic growth initiatives manager
Alessandro Merlo
Alessandro Merlo

Alessandro is a managing director of Rivage Investment, overlooking their strategic growth initiatives.

Alessandro have over 20 years of experience in infrastructure finance. Until May 2023, Alessandro led UBS AM infrastructure debt business, raising and investing over EUR 2.0bn in more than 30 investments and across 14 jurisdictions. Before that, Alessandro worked at Moody’s, covering EMEA infrastructure clients, at Citigroup in the infrastructure M&A and debt teams and Intesa Sanpaolo.

Alessandro hold a Master in Economics from Toulouse School of Economics and a Degree in Economics from Università di Genova.

Veralda Nikolla

Investor Relations
Veralda Nikolla
Veralda Nikolla

Veralda joined Rivage Investment in March 2023 as an Investor Relations to help raising assets under management in Europe and from Institutional clients. She will manage the Client Servicing team and coordinate calls for tenders.

Previously she spent 5 years as Investment Director of one of the largest French pension funds, La CIPAV, in charge of monitoring investments: € 7 bn equities, bonds, private equity, infrastructure, and unlisted debt on several funds. Structuring the investment portfolio, asset allocation and fund selection. Conducting calls for tenders for management mandates. Bringing innovation to the Pension fund and working for the progress of Responsible Investment and climate policy: analysis, elaboration and structuring of the policy. Veralda started her career as an assistant bond manager at UBS Asset Management in 2007 and then join Groupe Berri, a group of four French pension funds, in 2010 where she worked for 8 years as financial analyst managing € 6 bn.

Veralda holds a Masters in Finance from Ecole Nationale des Pont et Chaussées and Nanterre University.

Patrick Raffard

Head of business development
Patrick Raffard
Patrick Raffard

Patrick joined Rivage Investment in 2016 as the head of business development.

Patrick started his career as an interest rate swaps trader for BNP and Commerz Financial Products in Paris, Frankfurt and Prag. He moved then to a marketing position, in charge of sales of derivative products to East European corporates for Credit Lyonnais London. From 2000 until 2012, Patrick worked at Edmond de Rothschild Investment Managers as the Head of Business Development. He was responsible for the coverage of many European institutional investors and distributors on asset management products such as structured products, fixed income funds and hedge funds. He moved to Kepler Cheuvreux in 2013 where he intermediated illiquid assets. During this period he met Rivage Investment and started a fund raising activity during the first marketing campaign of a multi investors infrastructure debt fund by Rivage Investment.

Patrick graduated from Sciences Po Paris.