Our People

Russell Lermen
CEO and co-founder

Russell Lermen
Russell is Fuse’s CEO and Co-Founder, he helps companies in the tech sector for which conventional debt finance products are unsuitable. In particular, he structures and closes private debt finance deals that satisfy their needs and the needs of the private debt funds. Russell’s upbringing taught him the importance of a good work ethic. And a personal commitment to results.
Over the last thirteen years, he has started two companies. Sold one. Bought two and completed over 120 debt transactions. Securing debt played a big part in helping his first companies to grow, and indeed to assist his exit. He learnt how to explain clearly and coherently, the merits and risks of his finance deals and most importantly, learnt how to build relationships with lenders. From his experiences, in 2013, the idea to create Fuse Capital, a debt advisory and brokerage firm was born.

Ifti Akbar
CCO and co-founder

Ifti Akbar
Ifti is Fuse’s CCO and Co-Founder, Ifti oversees the development of the origination function and commercial strategies of a company. Ifti and Russell bootstrapped a start-up & grew it to a multi-million-pound company, which they then sold to a private equity firm, along the way they learnt some hard lessons about financing growth. Ifti saw first-hand the lack of debt options available to scale-ups compared to the US. In particular, he was frustrated by banks’ lack of understanding of & appetite for the tech space. Consequently, he decided to use his experience to relieve fellow entrepreneurial CEO’s & CFO’s growing pains & help them to get to the next level. Along with Russell, they founded Fuse Capital.

Kieran Reilly

Kieran Reilly
Kieran joined Fuse Capital 5 years ago, he is an Origination Analyst covering the UK market, which is a key strategic focus for the business in the next couple of years. Kieran builds up research data in terms of company profiles in specific industries and perform outreach to those companies he believes might qualify for our advisory service. He is the first point of contact for scaleup tech companies looking to employ Fuse Capital to source them debt finance and, once they have appointed Fuse, Kieran continues to work closely with our Account and Investment managers to get them the right result.
Since Kieran has been at Fuse, he has been directly responsible for booking over 1500 introductory meetings, whether that’s simply giving the client some friendly advice or going on to secure them debt. He has been focused on Fintech market for just over a year, his role involves supporting the account management of clients throughout their entire Fuse journey. Before Fuse Kieran was an application developer at a start-up company.

Hayden Smith

Hayden Smith
Hayden is our Head of Debt Advisory, you’ll find him securing financing, on the best possible terms, for our clients. Hayden joined Fuse Capital in December '21 to lead the deal team and build and manage relationships with our extensive global network of lenders including private debt funds, banks, and alternative finance providers. Since being at Fuse, Hayden has built a dynamic and global deal team spread across the UK, Europe and India.
Before Fuse, Hayden worked across the entire spectrum of the capital structure in structured debt and equity roles across the UK, Europe, and Asia Pacific in senior banking positions for HSBC and ANZ. He has particular expertise in structuring and executing complex, often cross-border, financing transactions involving PE and VC sponsors. He also led the commercial development and successful beta launch of an innovative Fintech lending platform in Australia. Hayden is tertiary qualified with a Master's in Applied Finance, and First-class Honours degree.

Luke Maguire

Luke Maguire
Luke is Fuse’s Senior Operations Executive, starting in February 2020, his role mainly persists of internal project management to help develop and grow the company. Working across departments conducting operational analysis to find ways to improve efficiency and performance. The role requires an understanding of the different units and how people work to keep the company working as a cohesive unit. From day-to-day, he’ll be managing projects, monitoring finances and assisting with legal documents.
Luke has worked on and lead a wide range of projects at Fuse, including Fuse’s rebranding in 2020, and implementations of various new tools and migrations within the tech-stack.
Luke graduated from the University of Sussex with a bachelors degree in law and went on to complete an LPC and masters in Law, Business and Management at the University of Law in London, Moorgate. With a keen interest in business, he took corporate-themed electives such as M&A, competition law and international commercial litigation.

Dom Walter

Dom Walter
Dom is something of a Fuse veteran having worked her for almost 5 years, this being his first job out of college. He works in the team covering mainland Europe, which is a key strategic focus for the business in the next couple of years. His main focus is researching key territories, with Germany, France and the Netherlands being our primary targets. Dom builds up research data in terms of company profiles in specific industries and perform outreach to those companies he believes might qualify for our advisory service. Dom is the first point of contact for scaleup tech companies looking to employ us to source them debt finance and, once they have appointed us, he continues to work closely with our Account and Investment managers to get them the right result.
Since he has been at Fuse, Dom has been directly responsible for originating 80 client sign-ups, the majority of which we have gone on to successfully close funding for. One thing he is particularly proud of is that he managed to carve out a niche in the micro-mobility sector and has now arranged meetings with every single micro-mobility company in Europe. His role involves supporting the account management of clients throughout their entire Fuse journey – he has a strong customer focus and thrive off delivering a high-quality service.
Before Fuse, Dom was a student and avid sportsman, both of which he keeps up to date with in his downtime from work.

Dylan Chauhan

Dylan Chauhan
Dylan joined Fuse Capital in March '21 to run deals from start to finish. Introducing clients into the Fuse Process, Building the IMs and Model and all the way through to Termsheets, DD and Funding. He will be there to craft the narrative and present the best facts to ensure your success through the lending process. He is your trusted advisor through the process. At Fuse Dylan has achieved £50m in debt deals across a range of clients.
Dylan is an ACA-qualified accountant having trained at the National Audit Office, covering Strategy and Audit across Technology and Financial Services in the UK government. He also worked as a Finance Manager at Tandem, a UK-based Neo-bank, helping them through Fundraising, M&A and Commercial Finance.

Sai Kumar Dasa

Sai Kumar Dasa
Sai started with Fuse in August 2021 as an Origination Analyst. Working in the MEA patch, Sai is the first point of contact for companies looking for debt finance. Once they have signed up he continues to work closely with our Account and Investment managers to see the process through. In Sai’s first year at Fuse he has signed 10 clients and generated over 185 DO’s.
Before joining Fuse Sai completed a Master's in Business Administration from BITTS affiliated OU university.

Goonjit Pahwa

Goonjit Pahwa
Goonjit started his career with Fuse Capital in October'21 as a Senior Investment Analyst based out of India, where he helps our clients to secure private debt financing by creating IMs, financial models and working cohesively with the clients to towards getting them a better deal.
Goonjit has worked on various deals ranging from £2m-£15m across different geographies and help us secure multiple debt offers for the clients over the last one year.
Before joining Fuse, Goonjit has worked in various roles with EY, Cognizant and Capgemini consulting as part of their advisory services team where he supported clients towards building financial models to secure debt/equity financing, M&A, project finance, performing business valuations and financial research across broad range of sectors such as technology, power & utilities, healthcare etc. He has expertise in building financial models, creating dashboards, writing research reports and tackling limited information availability to create exceptional value for the clients. Goonjit is tertiary qualified with MBA (Finance) and First-class Computer science degree.

Benjamin Tresham

Benjamin Tresham
Ben is our Head of Marketing. He started at Fuse at the beginning of 2022 and is responsible for setting the pace and strategic direction of the marketing team. With the help of some great colleagues, he has re-organised Fuse’s GTM strategy proving more successful every quarter. Ben has achieved a 300% QoQ increase in leads from marketing.
Before Fuse Ben worked for a scrappy start-up called Hello Customer. Before that, he was head of CRM marketing for The Body Shop. And prior to that, he ran his own CX firm working with clients like SKODA, Pure and Arriva advising them on how to manage customers effectively.

Matt Di Giorgio
Business Development Director

Matt Di Giorgio
Matt is a Business Development Director at Fuse and he is the first point of contact for clients in the EU looking to raise private debt. He believes that, given the prevailing macroeconomic headwinds, now is the perfect time for Founders to explore solutions to protect their shareholdings through Fuse Capital’s debt advisory service.
Matt speaks, on average, to 15 new potential clients per week as well as account managing the client portfolio that has already trusted Fuse Capital with their debt mandate
Matt has over 25 years’ experience in scaling and managing teams in the corporate and startup worlds, and has also raised finance from Angels, Corporates and VCs for his own startups on several occasions. Having worked as a headhunter in the past, he has an exceptional global network and is never short of a referral to help clients solve a problem or move their business forward.
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Amber Ragless
Office and Employee Experience Manager
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Amber Ragless
Amber joined Fuse in June 2022 as the Office and Employee Experience Manager. A day at Fuse can vary from establishing and enforcing policies and procedures, managing HR activity and recruitment, to helping in the Marketing team and managing projects.
Amber has over 6 years’ experience as an office manager in legal and recruitment firms. She studied at Plymouth University and has a BSc in Criminology and Sociology and is currently studying for a level 5 CIPD diploma in HR.
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Jakob Haentjes
Investment Manager
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Jakob Haentjes
Jakob joined Fuse in October 2022 as Fuse’s first Investment Manager in Germany. Jakob helps start-ups and scale-ups in Europe to get the best possible funding options to grow their business. Since joining Fuse Jakob has met many ambitious founders learning about their disruptive business when visiting them in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin. Before Fuse Jakob worked on the investment side, and also for a start-up doing their credit and equity fundraising.

Hubert Rapinat
Junior Copywriter

Hubert Rapinat
Hubert joined Fuse in November 2022. Hubert is a Junior Copywriter, he writes content for blogs in two languages, and assists the Marketing department with social media and marketing campaigns. Immediately before joining Fuse, Hubert was a part-time journalist, part-time barista. He graduated from King's College London in 2021 with a BA in theology and politics.