Global food and agribusiness bank Rabobank added Claus Hertel as a managing director to its Project Finance Americas team in New York. Hertel will report to Greg Hutton, head of Project Finance Americas.

“Claus joins our deep roster of relationship bankers at Rabobank,” Hutton said. “He is very well known in the industry and has broad expertise in the project finance sector, especially in energy storage, which is an emerging focus for us and the industry.”

Hertel has more than 20 years of international banking experience and has been active throughout his career in the origination, structuring and execution of complex structured and project financings. Before joining Rabobank, he was managing director at battery owner-operator SGEM Group, which had been working on an energy storage project in northern Illinois.

Hertel also spent time during his career in the project finance groups of numerous financial institutions including WestLB, Santander and Investec. He has broad transactional experience in the Americas energy space, including spending a considerable amount of time covering Latin America and living in Brazil.

In the past 10 years, his activities have focused on financing and advisory of various sectors in the renewable energy sector, including developing and project financing a 220 MW wind project in Panama for Goldwind, a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer.

Hertel will support the growth of the existing core renewables business at Rabobank’s Project Finance Americas team. He will help expand the client coverage and increase the bank’s footprint in the emerging sectors of the industry such as energy storage and other clean technologies that support the organization’s sustainability objectives.

Rabobank Group is a global financial services leader providing wholesale and retail banking, leasing, and real estate services in more than 38 countries worldwide. Founded over a century ago, Rabobank today is one of the world’s largest banks with over $660 billion in assets.