Westbeck Capital

Graham MacLachlan, the co-founder, serves as Chief Investment Officer and is the primary decision-maker for the portfolio. He previously ran BP's internal hedge fund, where he managed a multi-billion-dollar proprietary energy book across equities and commodities. His brother Andrew MacLachlan co-founded the firm and leads business development out of the Dubai office.

Westbeck operates as a liquid public-markets hedge fund, trading long and short positions in energy equities and commodity futures. The firm does not deploy into private equity, venture capital, or direct infrastructure project equity. This public-markets mandate means institutional investors can redeem capital on quarterly or annual cycles rather than locking up for a decade.

The firm invests across the full hydrocarbon and low-carbon spectrum: upstream oil and gas producers, refiners, integrated majors, renewable developers, battery-metal miners, and midstream infrastructure companies. The commodity sleeve trades crude oil, refined products, and natural gas futures. This means Westbeck can hold a long position in a solar developer while shorting a gas-exposed utility it believes is mispriced relative to regional power dynamics.

The Dubai International Financial Centre places the firm inside the Gulf Cooperation Council time zone, closer to the sovereign wealth funds, national oil companies, and family offices that dominate Middle Eastern energy capital. Proximity to these actors gives Westbeck earlier insight into regional policy shifts, state-company spending patterns, and demand trends that frequently drive global energy prices before Western markets react.

Westbeck is an external asset manager that accepts institutional capital via its Cayman Islands fund structure. It is not a family office. The firm's regulated DIFC entity, Westbeck Capital (DIFC) Limited, received its asset-management license from the Dubai Financial Services Authority in November 2022, confirming its status as a third-party manager open to qualified investors.

Westbeck's origination process relies on fundamental commodity supply-and-demand modeling combined with company-level financial analysis. The team's legacy relationships with Middle Eastern national oil companies and Asian demand centers — built during Graham MacLachlan's BP trading years — provide a proprietary view into physical crude flows and refining margins that screens-based managers in London or New York typically access with a lag.

The firm does not structure co-investment vehicles or syndicated club deals. As a public-markets fund, it executes all positions through listed equity and futures markets. This means every holding is marked to market daily, with no side pockets, special-purpose vehicles, or illiquid private exposures that might create redemption-gating risk.