Thor Johnsen

Managing Partner at Digital Gravity Infrastructure Partners (DGP)

Speaker

Thor is the founding partner of Digital Gravity (“DGP”) and leads all investment committee activity. Thor has over 18 years’ experience in infrastructure investment and has been the Fund Manager of two leading European infrastructure portfolios. Thor has invested ~$5.3 billion of equity and has a realised track record of ~2.8x gross MOIC, returning over $2 billion to investors.

Thor was fund manager of Digital 9 Infrastructure and developed the investment strategy in 2018 and launched the investment trust after several years leading direct digital infrastructure investments for a prominent high net worth family office of a senior executive of Vitol Group, one of the world’s largest private companies. The family office has continued to remain a supporter, having made large investments in DGI9 and an anchor commitment to DGP.

Prior to DGP and DGI9, Thor was Head of Infrastructure for Arcapita. Arcapita held a prominent infrastructure portfolio across renewable energy, transportation, and utilities. Thor had responsibilities across all transaction aspects, including financing, M&A and post-acquisition investment planning. Thor’s expertise lies in building partnerships, join-ventures and growth infrastructure platforms; in 2008 Mr. Johnsen led the £160 million acquisition of the leading UK rail-freight business, Freightliner plc and later sold the business in 2015 for over £530 million, after developing the international rail-freight infrastructure business in Europe, Australia and the Middle East.

Before Thor’s role at Arcapita, he held senior investment banking roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch focused on Infrastructure and Energy Technology M&A. Thor worked across the New York and London office leading a focus on sustainability and renewables which has since helped define DGP’s portfolio digital energy strategy. Thor began his career at Credit Suisse working in utilities M&A.

Thor accepted a commission in the U.S. Navy, serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve (inactive) as a Lieutenant Commander. Thor holds a J.D. from Georgetown Law, an MBA from Georgetown (with a semester at University of Melbourne) and a BA in Economics from Northwestern (with honours). While at Northwestern, Thor spent a semester in Beijing at Peking University where he studied Chinese.