Executive Bio
Pierre-Etienne FRANC
Chief Executive Officer, Hy24
Co-founder & Chairman, FiveT Hydrogen
Pierre-Etienne Franc is the CEO of Hy24 and is considered as one of the leading architects of the hydrogen economy.
During 2011- 2016, Pierre-Etienne served as the Chair of Hydrogen Europe. In 2017, he co-founded and coordinated the World Hydrogen Council for five years as Secretary. Then in 2021, he co-founded FiveT Hydrogen investment platform and created with Ardian a 50/50 regulated Asset Manager, Hy24.
Hy24 currently manages the world’s largest clean hydrogen infrastructure fund, which is today up and running with 2 billion euros of allocations and has already made 7 investments. The fund’s ambition is to invest in the entire clean hydrogen value chain, deploying large scale projects in the most dynamic geographies across Europe, Asia, and America.
Pierre- Etienne had held senior leadership positions in several global business, strategy, and operational management in Air Liquide where he spent more than 25 years of his career and of which 10 years were dedicated to leading advanced technology companies, venture capital, and Hydrogen energy activities for the Group.
Franc graduated in 1993 from France’s HEC business school, where he was awarded the HEC Foundation Prize and the second prize of the Ernst & Young Foundation for his final thesis on industrial joint ventures.
Sacha Thacker
Sacha has over two decades of global investing experience across industries; including transportation, energy (conventional and alternative), infrastructure, automotive, real estate, industrial, consumer, and technology. He was a co-founding partner of a multi-billion dollar investment firm managing public and private equity assets globally for a range of endowments, pension funds, family offices and other large institutions.
Prior to that, he was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong investing the bank´s own capital across Asia. He began his career in the risk arbitrage group at Goldman Sachs in New York and Tokyo.
Alicia Eastman
Non-Executive Board Member
Alice Eastman is a non-executive Director on the Board of InterContinental Energy.
She was formerly President of InterContinental Energy. Before co-founding the company in 2014, she was a founding General Partner and Fund Manager of Asia Pacific Capital Fund II and the Mongolia Opportunities Fund. Previously, Alicia led international strategy and acquisitions at Elan Biopharmaceuticals and was Vice President of Prudential Asia Infrastructure Mezzanine Capital Fund. She was also a Founding Principal at NetFuel Ventures (acquired by the University of Chicago) and has held international strategy and investment positions at Gemini, Lend Lease, and AirTouch International (Vodafone).
Alicia holds a B.Sc. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Alicia is also a co-host for the podcast ‘Everything About Hydrogen’.
Philippe Sauquet
Strategic Advisor
Philippe is the Founder and Chairman of KréVal, an advisory company in the field of new energies, and he sits on the Boards of several industrial companies including Axens, an IFPEN affiliate, and Arkema, listed on the Paris stock exchange.
Philippe held several high-level executive positions within the TotalEnergies Group for more than 30 years, including as a member of the Group´s Executive Committee between 2014 and 2021, President of the Refining-Chemicals branch between 2014 and 2016, President of Strategy Innovation between 2016 and 2019, and President of the Gas, Renewables & Power branch between 2016 and 2021. For the past ten years, he has also been a key contributor to the TotalEnergies diversification strategy into renewable energies and low-carbon solutions.
A French citizen, Philippe is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and holds a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
