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Mr. Cumberland, 47, is a Senior Managing Director and co-founder of Arctas Capital Group. He has extensive experience in the development, structuring and financing of infrastructure businesses, as well as M&A and direct equity investing. His international experience includes Asia/Australia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. He founded or co-founded 3 successful start-up project development companies.

He was a Senior Managing Director at El Paso Corp responsible for new strategic business development, reporting directly to the President of El Paso Merchant Energy. Before Enron’s bankruptcy, he pursued establishment of a distressed energy fund within EP (which became the precursor for establishment of Arctas); he also originated concept, analyzed and recommended, as an "energy logistics" play, the acquisition of Burlington Northern railroad -- one of two western railroads (many years before Warren Buffett announced his significant investments into BNI and against the advice of the leading investment banks covering the sector). [Since that time, BNI stock has significantly outperformed all of the Oil Majors, in spite of 4-6x increase in price of oil.] He also headed Asia Origination for EP’s Petroleum Group and served as Chairman of Subic Bay Terminals, the largest independent petroleum products terminal in the Philippines.

Prior to EP, as President of Enron Caribbean, he was responsible for a portfolio of fifteen energy businesses in eight countries ($1B in book equity; $60MM in net income). He served as director on the board of two listed companies with public shareholders in Latin America: Ventane (the largest LPG company in Venezuela – 42% market share) and Promigas (the largest gas pipeline system in Colombia – 58% market share – with both gas transmission and distribution subsidiaries). He co-founded Enron Freight Markets, an innovative domestic brokerage for intermodal and long-haul trucking services.

In 1994, he founded Power Pacific Company, an energy development company concentrating on bringing equity capital into power projects in China. He established a team of 20 professionals with offices in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, building a database of over 300 project opportunities. He raised and placed $200MM of strategic equity into 7 joint venture power projects.

Prior to that, he co-founded and developed projects for The Wing Group, another company involved in development of energy infrastructure and privatization projects. He wrote the first proposals, feasibility studies and energy sales agreements submitted to the Ministry for the first large-scale IPP completed in Turkey (Marmara 500MW) and established the group’s China presence in 1992. He also led the negotiations with the group’s major financial sponsors, involving $8MM per annum multi-year funding for the group’s exploratory development efforts.

Mr. Cumberland has advised various energy and financial companies on structured transactions, including AES, GE, British Petroleum, PSEG, Midlands Electricity, Illinova, Montana Power, Northeast Utilities, Enron, National Power, Hawaiian Electric, Deutsche Babcock, ANZ Infrastructure, Reservoir Capital, Mubadala and Ashmore Energy.

He started his career as an M&A, corporate securities and project finance attorney in the Houston and London offices of Vinson & Elkins, where he advised on many major energy M&A and financing transactions. On Enron’s 1725MW Teesside Power project, he was responsible for negotiations with ICI for the sale of 257MW of the power station's capacity and the Site Services and Steam Agreement (the largest cogen steam supply in the world); he was also involved in the £795MM syndicated bank debt financing for the project. Other representative transactions include, Halliburton's acquisition of Gearhart; Cooper Industries’ acquisition of Cameron Ironworks; British Gas' acquisition of the international E&P assets of Tenneco; FDIC’s bailout and restructuring of FirstCity Bank of Texas; Presidio Oil’s 3-tranche financing of its Home acquisition; the sale of The Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Southern Florida to Coke; SCI’s acquisition of Morlan; Amerada Hess' acquisition of Transco's E&P MLP; and conversion of Unocal's publicly-traded MLP into a corporation.

He received his BBA in Accounting with highest honors and JD with honors from the University of Texas.