Business Ventures

Current ventures

Mr Prest’s latest ventures include shepherding and positioning Bank of New Innovation Limited (BONI) . There, he is currently focused on marrying technology to underpin the banks growing global footprint and provide a banking proposition that meets global benchmarks of KYC and due-diligence and allows for seamless fungibility for new real time banking, cross border payment and digital products. He believes that technology today enables banking to diversify its wealth management offerings and investment services to better understand and accommodate new customer bases across Europe, Africa, Middle East, LATAM and South East Asia.

Mr Prest is also developing legacy oil and gas explorations assets in East Africa where he had been a first mover. The changing dynamics of the global oil and gas demand balance, changing global geo-politics and the new realization of the imperative of a balanced energy transition has provided the right confluence of events for these East Africa opportunities. This opportunity sits comfortably alongside Mr Prest’s investments in 1000MW solar energy project in southern Africa.

Mr Prest is also an early investor in a platform that is the worlds first API that turns passive content into active engagement and hopes to revolutionize viewer and fan engagement in sports.

Previous ventures and activities

In the past, his business activities have been pioneering, disrupting established networks in several markets. In Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Cameroon and Nigeria, his initiatives broke the established import and export chains in soft commodities. He also disrupted the monopolistic supply chains in the downstream oil sector in numerous countries across the African continent, such as Nigeria, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, Mauritania and Sudan.

Mr Prest’s long track record in business has prioritised ventures that have generated an economic and social dividend in the countries he has worked.

  • In 1989, he arranged one of the first pre-finance facilities in cocoa for the ‘Office National de Commercialisation des Produits de Base’ (ONCPB) in Cameroon.
  • Soon after that, in 1992, he broke the back of an existing arrangement and re-pointed the Crude Oil & Coffee export barter deal for Tanzania, saving the country tens of millions of dollars.
  • In 1997, Mr Prest arranged the first Time Swap, worth US$180 million, for Ghana’s National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), enabling Ghanaian refineries to operate and thus averting petrol shortages and allowing the country to maintain critical gasoline supplies for the general public.
  • In 1999, he established the template for oil product imports to Nigeria – notably, a template that is still used today – thus revolutionising the oil trade sector.
  • In 2000, Mr Prest arranged an oil product import facility for the then new Government of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, allowing the DRC to provide gasoline to its newly liberated people.
  • In 2006, Mr Prest was a first mover independent in oil exploration in Tanzania and Zambia, snapping up by way of competitive tender the Tanga, Latham and Kimbji in Tanzania and Block 7 exploration asset in Zambia.
  • 2010 created a GBP 17 million UK property portfolio.