For close to a decade, power outages in South Africa weren’t just an inconvenience, they were a part of daily life. Rolling blackouts left neighborhoods and businesses without power for hours at a time.
For South African-born Matthew Urquhart, CFA, Senior Investment Analyst at Tall Trees Capital, those blackouts - and the larger energy crisis they reflected - gave him a practical understanding of what drives innovation and transition in the global energy system.
It also intersects with another thread that’s run through his life: a deep interest in mining and commodities. As one of the largest coal-producing regions in the world, South Africa’s mining sector employs roughly half a million people, including several of Matthew’s friends and family members.
“Mining gets a lot of criticism,” he says, “but in South Africa, mining companies were among the first to seek out renewable energy solutions. You can’t send people down a mine shaft knowing the power is going to be shut off for eight hours. It’s not safe and it’s not profitable, so companies began to explore other energy sources like solar and wind via creative structures independent of the national energy grid.”
Eventually, alternative energy systems began to be deployed beyond the mining industry. “Most South Africans didn’t set out to reduce their emissions,” he explains. “The shift to households and business generating their own off-grid clean power happened organically -because it had to.”
Matthew’s experiences gave him an early window into a truth that’s now shaping global markets: the energy transition isn’t just about climate policy –it’s about enabling energy access across the world, competitively, reliably and sustainably. And it sparked a curiosity in him that extended beyond energy systems to capital markets and investing.
The Path to a Global Investment Career
Matthew’s interest in investing started early. At 16, he opened his own brokerage account and began building a portfolio of South African stocks. “That’s where the passion started,” he says, “and it just kept building from there.”
He pursued that passion at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, where he completed his Bachelor of Commerce degree, specializing in investment and financial management. The curriculum was demanding - but for Matthew, it came with an added challenge: Stellenbosch is one of South Africa’s last predominantly Afrikaans-speaking universities, and he had to complete his degree in a second language. While there, he also began the journey of sitting for the CFA exams, an uncommon step for undergraduates at the time.
After graduating, he accepted a position with Melville Douglas, a large, long-only asset manager in Johannesburg. “I started working under the Senior Mining Analyst, with the idea that I’d eventually take over the role,” he recalls. That plan came to fruition faster than expected. “I became the firm’s lead mining analyst and was regularly meeting with CEOs of mining companies only two years out of university.” And that set the tone for the start of his career.
During those conversations, Matthew began to see that the shift toward renewables and lower-emission technologies was no longer just academic -it was unfolding inside the companies he was analyzing. “The miners were actually early movers on this,” he says. “Not just in South Africa, but globally. Firms like BHP and Anglo American were starting to articulate real net zero ambitions, not just because it was good PR, but because it made economic sense.”
That realization deepened Matthew’s interest in sustainability and energy advancement. He began to advocate at his firm for a greater focus on companies innovating in renewables, utilities, and sustainable infrastructure. “A global shift towards an increased focus on sustainability was starting to gain traction,” he recalls. “It was a space that was rife with opportunity, not only to achieve better outcomes for society and the planet, but also financially.”
He pitched the idea of a new strategy to his firm: a global equity fund focused on companies aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The fund would look across sectors to identify public companies that were positioned to drive or benefit from structural shifts toward a more sustainable future. After a year of planning, Melville Douglas launched South Africa’s first Global Impact Fund with Matthew as co-founder and co-portfolio manager.
A Global Career Pivot
A couple of years later, as Matthew and his wife were considering a move to the U.S, an unexpected connection emerged. Tall Trees founder Lisa Audet’s daughter had traveled to South Africa to trial for the women’s national soccer team and, through a mutual acquaintance, met Matthew’s family. That was when he found out about Lisa and decided to reach out.
“I actually didn’t know what Lisa was launching at the time,” he says. “The intention of the introductory conversation was for me to learn more about the investments space in New York and get guidance from a long-term industry expert on where I should focus my efforts. We really hit it off in that first conversation, and Lisa phoned me three days later with a job offer to join her team as a founding member.”
The timing and alignment was right. Lisa was building and about to launch Tall Trees Capital, a global long short fund focused on the opportunities and dislocations created by the global energy transition. She needed someone who understood both the legacy commodity complex and the forces driving the shift to a lower-carbon economy. Matthew brought that rare energy and blend of experience.
A Journey Through Africa Before Wall Street
Matthew has always been one to seek out adventure and the challenge of getting to know the unfamiliar. Before joining Tall Trees, he took time off and set out on a long-planned road trip through Africa. “I’ve got a deep, deep passion for Africa,” he says. “Traveling the continent is something I’ve always wanted to do.” His goal was to drive his Land Rover up the East Coast to Kenya and back along the West Coast, passing through six or seven countries along the way. Although the job offer from Tall Trees ultimately shortened the trip, he spent three months on the road, crossing remote regions like Namibia, where he once went two full days without seeing another person.
“There were places where I had no cell service for days,” he says. “I carried a satellite phone just in case. It was incredibly grounding. It furthered my understanding of how most of the world actually lives from an emerging markets point of view.”
Matthew has seen many developing countries firsthand and has an appreciation for the complexities and nuances that come with day-to-day life across regions, which have helped shape his global mindset. He has developed an empathetic approach that digs deeper and goes beyond the surface level to maximize short-term opportunities while maintaining an understanding of long-term direction.
Insight That Informs
That grounded, global perspective now informs Matthew’s work at Tall Trees, where he works with Lisa to identify companies at the intersection of structural change and energy transformation, bringing not just an extensive and impressive professional track record, but a lived perspective on what energy transition looks like when it moves from policy to real-world necessity.