Dave Noakes

Dave Noakes is a Co-Founder and Senior Managing Director of Prostar Capital, a private investment firm he helped establish in 2012 to invest across the mid-market energy value chain, with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region. He sits on the firm's Investment Committee and is responsible for deal origination, financing, structuring, execution, asset management, monitoring and reporting. Prostar operates from Old Greenwich, Connecticut (its U.S. registered adviser, Prostar Capital (US) LLC, is based in Greenwich, CT), with a portfolio spanning South Korea, the United States and the UAE.

Noakes brings more than 25 years of corporate-finance experience, including nearly two decades as a private equity investor. Before co-founding Prostar, he was a Principal at Alpine Grove Partners, a roughly $5.0 billion global real estate private equity firm in New York. Earlier in his career he held two senior roles advising on M&A and equity capital raises, with an emphasis on infrastructure, energy and other real assets. He is reported to have attended the University of Melbourne.

In his current role, Noakes takes an active ownership approach to portfolio companies. He serves as Chairman of Kyungnam Energy (a South Korean city-gas distribution business) and as a director of several other Prostar portfolio companies. Under his tenure the firm has evolved from classic midstream oil-and-gas infrastructure toward energy-transition and decarbonization assets — notably positioning Kyungnam's hydrogen operations as, in the firm's words, "the largest private capital-owned hydrogen power generation business in Asia Pacific."

• Strategy: Control and significant-minority investments in essential energy infrastructure — the "picks and shovels" that move energy from source to end-user: gathering, processing, storage, transmission and distribution.
• Stage: Mature/operating infrastructure and platform build-ups — this is institutional infrastructure private equity, not venture or seed-stage investing.
• Deal size: Targets companies with enterprise values under ~USD 1 billion; Fund I was targeted at roughly USD 400 million.
• Geography: Primarily Asia-Pacific, with a strong South Korea focus and expansion into OECD Asian markets (e.g., Australia), alongside legacy U.S. (Eureka Midstream) and UAE (Fujairah) assets.
• Thematic tilt: Increasingly oriented toward the energy transition — natural gas as a transition fuel, plus renewables and hydrogen. The firm frames itself as "investing in Asian opportunities in clean energy and decarbonization towards net zero."
• What makes them say yes: Cash-generative, asset-backed infrastructure with strong local partnerships (e.g., co-investing alongside SK Holdings and BlackRock), where Prostar can add value through active ownership, refinancing and operational build-out.