Our board and management

(°1951, Belgian)

Luc Bertrand graduated in 1974 as a commercial engineer from KU Leuven. He began his career as vice president and regional sales manager for Northern Europe at Bankers Trust. He has been with Ackermans & van Haaren as a director since 1985. He became a financial director in 1986 and served as chairman of the executive committee from 1990 to 2016. He is currently chairman of the board of directors of SIPEF. His other positions include chairman of the board of directors of CFE, DEME, and JM Finn, as well as director of Delen Private Bank and Verdant Bioscience Ltd (VBS). Luc has extensive expertise in corporate governance and has served on various audit and risk committees, with a strong knowledge of risk management and internal control systems. He is also a founding member of Guberna, a Belgian institute promoting good governance. In addition, Luc serves as chairman of the Duve Institute and Middelheim Promoters, and is a member of several other boards of directors of non-profit associations and public institutions. He has been a director of SIPEF since 1996.

End of mandate 2026

(°1959, Belgian)

François Van Hoydonck graduated in accounting and taxation at Sint-Eligius Business School, Antwerp. He joined SIPEF in 1979, specialising in the palm oil sector, other agro-industrial activities, and their financial management. He served as chief financial officer of the SIPEF group from 1995 to 2007, managing director from 2007 to 2024, and chairman of the executive committee from 2014 to 2024. 

François retired as managing director of the SIPEF group on September 1 2024. 

End of mandate 2027

(°1966, Belgian)

Tom Bamelis is a qualified commercial engineer from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and holds a master’s degree in financial management from the VLEKHO Business School. He began his career in 1988 as an auditor at Touche Ross (now Deloitte) in Brussels and joined the financial department at Groep Brussel Lambert as management representative in 1994. In 1999, he moved to Ackermans & van Haaren, where he is chief financial officer and a member of the executive committee. He has been a director of SIPEF since 2018.

End of mandate 2026

(°1977, Belgian)

Priscilla Bracht holds a licentiate in art history and archaeology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and has studied European relations and international politics. She specialises as a director of family firms. She has been a director of SIPEF since 2004.

End of mandate 2026

(°1977, Belgian)

Alexandre Delen started his career in 1999 with The Capital Markets Company, where he was responsible for website projects for several banks. From 2000 until 2002, he worked as consultant for IP Globalnet on the development of a call centre for Belgacom Skynet. In 2002, he joined Delen Private Bank and completed a traineeship within Swiss American Securities. From 2004, Alexandre worked full-time at Delen Private Bank, mainly in the IT department. In 2014, he joined the executive committee and the board of directors of Delen Private Bank. Since 2017, he has been the managing director of the bank, responsible for information technology (IT) operations and logistics. During his time at Delen Private Bank, he played a key role as inspirer and coordinator of the IT team, which grew from around ten to 135 employees. He launched several innovative projects using new technologies, preparing the organisation for the digital revolution of the past fifteen years, including hyper-converged and cloud computing solutions. He advised on information and communications technology (ICT) for the Ackermans & van Haaren group companies. He has been a director of SIPEF since 2022.

End of mandate 2026

(°1958, Belgian)

Antoine Friling holds a bachelor of business administration in finance and marketing and a master of business administration in international management. He has been active in the banking industry for several years and has served as a director of family, industrial, and financial companies in Europe and South America. He is chairman of PRAXIS Private Office, a family office based Antwerp. He has been a director of SIPEF since 2007.

End of mandate 2027

(°1964, Belgian)

Gaëtan Hannecart is a civil engineer in mechanics and production policy, having studied at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He began his career at Kone Lifts in London in 1988. In 1989, he was awarded a European Commission Comet scholarship and joined IBM Germany in Stuttgart, subsequently moving to IBM Belgium in Brussels, where he worked as an industry specialist for manufacturing companies. In 1994, he earned a master of business administration degree from Harvard Business School. That same year, he joined Matexi, the Belgian market leader in area and real estate development and urban renewal projects, where he is chief executive officer. He is co-founder and director of the non-profit think-and-do tank Itinera Institute, co-founder and chairman of the non-profit YouthStart, and chairman of the non-profit Guberna. He is currently chairman of Financière de Tubize, the listed reference shareholder of the biopharma company UCB, and director at N-Side and Groupe Louis Delhaize. Since 2020, he has been a member of the SIPEF board, representing the Bracht group.

End of mandate 2028

(°1971, Malaysian)

Yu-Leng Khor has a Master of Science in economics from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Politics and Economics from Oxford University. Yu-Leng started her career in the financial industry in Malaysia with a pioneering online broker-banker and stints with Citigroup and other financial institutions in Singapore. Since 2003, she has worked as an international economic consultant and specialist on Southeast Asia, as lead on actionable reports for many Fortune 500 companies, Asian corporations, Government agencies (including the EU Commission), NGOs, including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and family offices. She specialises in agribusiness (palm oil, rubber, sugar and more), infrastructure, trade and China-Asian economics. From 2014 until 2017, Yu-Leng worked extensively on the economics of commodity supply-chains, sustainability and smallholders, as the research head for Southeast Asia at LMC International Ltd. In addition to her ongoing work as a market and ESG trade analyst, she is an Associate Director and Senior Fellow (sustainability) at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, research associate of the Institute of China studies at the University of Malaya, and council member of the Malaysian Oil Scientists and Technologists Association. From 2018 until 2023, she was an independent non-executive director of Rohas Tecnic Berhad, active in regional EPC and fabrication for power transmission, telecommunications, and water infrastructure. Since 2022, she is an independent director of Rimba Collective Pte Ltd, a Southeast Asia forest conservation and restoration fund. She is also Chair of the Malaysia Palm Oil Board’s PAC Sustainable Development Sub-Committee for the 2024-2026 term. She is a director of SIPEF as from June 2021.

End of mandate 2029

(°1981, Italian)

Giulia Stellari has a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Harvard University. In 2004 she started working as a graduate research assistant in the laboratory of Molly Jahn at Cornell University focusing on Molecular breeding, Genomics, Biochemistry and Genetics. She successfully completed her PhD program in 2009. The same year, she co-founded AgSquared, a technology platform helping farmers to improve productivity, profitability, and sustainability by designing software tools for task management, farm planning, and cost accounting. From 2015 until 2022 she was active at Unilever as Director for Sustainable Sourcing, Digital and Carbon Solutions. In March 2022, she joined Fall Line Capital, a private equity firm focused on investing in US farmland, ag tech and food tech startups. She works across the firm’s investment areas, leading ESG risk management and impact assessment for the firm. Giulia has been appointed to the EU Expert Group on Carbon Removals and is a member of the SBTi Technical Advisory Group and Field to Market’s Innovative Finance Committee. Since 2023, she is a director of the SIPEF Board.

End of mandate 2027

(°1959, British)

Nicholas Thompson has an honours degree in agricultural science (plant breeding, agronomy and soil science) from Nottingham University, a master of science in agriculture from Reading University, a certificate in rice production from the International Rice Research Institute (Philippines) and a master of business administration from Bath University. He began his career in Papua New Guinea in 1984 as assistant manager at New Britain Palm Oil Ltd (NBPOL), where he was promoted to deputy director plantations in 1991 and managing director in 1994. Under his leadership, NBPOL grew into one of the largest employers in Papua New Guinea and a renowned sustainable palm oil company, which was taken over by Sime Darby Plantations in 2015. That year he was awarded the honour of ‘Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’. He sat on the board of directors of the National Development Bank PNG, West New Britain University Centre and various palm oil industry professional organisations in Papua New Guinea. He has been a member of the SIPEF board since 2019.

End of mandate 2027

(°1973, Dutch)

Petra Meekers holds a qualification in biomedical sciences and a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry. From 2006 to 2008, she worked in the renewable energy industry as an independent consultant at BioX Sdn Bhd. She then served as a group sustainability manager at New Britain Palm Oil until 2015, when she was appointed director of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development at Musim Mas Holdings Ltd. Until March 2021, she was vice-president sustainable sourcing at Unilever Asia Pte Ltd. From 2017 until 9 June 2021, she was a director of SIPEF, and since 10 June 2021 she has been a member of the executive committee.

Petra succeeded François as managing director of the SIPEF group on 1 September 2024.

(°1984, Belgian)

Bart holds a master’s degree in commercial sciences, majoring in international business, from the Lessius University College, Antwerp. He began his career in 2008 as a financial auditor at Ernst & Young (now EY) in Antwerp. He joined the financial department of SIPEF as financial controller in 2014 and was promoted to group controller of the SIPEF group in 2018. Since 1 January 2024 he has been SIPEF's chief financial officer and a member of the executive committee.

(°1975, Dutch)

Robbert Kessels earned a master’s degree in international business from Maastricht University. He began his career at Cargill Rotterdam as a commercial trainee at the trading desk and held various positions in Cargill’s tropical oil trading department in Indonesia and Singapore over a seven-year period. In 2012, he left Cargill after more than twelve years to join SIPEF, where he was appointed marketing commodities manager in 2013. In 2014, he became chief commercial officer and a member of the executive committee.