Speakers

Over the course of his 25-year career, Matt Fernley has become one of the most-followed experts on the materials needed for the Energy Transition. He is currently Partner at RK Equity, Founder and Managing Director of Battery Materials Review and is a regular co-host of podcasts on Rock Stock Channel.

Matt has spent over 25 years as an equity and commodity analyst. Starting his career at Warburg Dillon Read (now UBS Investment Bank), he was an equity analyst and also a global strategist for Basic Materials (chemicals, mining, paper, steel, cement/aggregates). Latterly he was global strategist for the Chemicals sector. While at UBS his primary focus was on the secular material demand growth associated with China’s urbanisation event. He used previous economic take-off events in the US, Japan and Korea to model trends in materials demand in China. He was then able to apply this work to food and made one of the earliest calls in the market on the importance of fertilisers and agrochemicals in early-2005.

Following UBS, he spent two years in hedge funds before joining GMP Securities (Europe) LLP as a Senior Mining Analyst and latterly Head of Equities Research. After GMP he took a few years out of the industry before taking up the position of Materials & Cyclicals strategist at Haitong. Between 2019 and early-2025 Matt was Head of Research for an Energy Transition hedge fund advising on industry strategy as well as investments at all levels of the Transition, from raw materials to end markets, on a global basis.

Matt has published extensively on Batteries, Battery Materials and the Energy Transition.