SPEAKERS

Awaiting biography.

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David has been at Phoenix since 2001 and has 20 years of experience in private equity. He’s Chairman of Phoenix’s management committee and a member of the firm’s investment committee.

He leads Phoenix’s investment activities in the Leisure & Consumer sector, and is currently a director on the boards of Riviera Travel and The Travel Chapter, for example.

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Chris Caulkin focuses his efforts on opportunities in the Business Services and Internet & Technology sectors across Eastern and Western Europe. He joined General Atlantic in their London office in 2011 and serves on the board of Studio Moderna and Hemnet.

Prior to joining General Atlantic, Mr. Caulkin worked for Warburg Pincus in London for four years where he focused on investments in the Media, Business Services and Education spaces. Before Warburg Pincus, Chris was an associate at The Boston Consulting Group in London where he worked on a range of Media, Technology and Financial Services projects.

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Nils has over 11 years of experience and a background as private equity investor. Prior to GFG, he spent two years as Managing Director and CFO of Lamoda in Moscow, the Russian & CIS business of GFG. Prior to joining Lamoda, he was a private equity investor with Morgan Stanley Private Equity and formerly worked in the investment banking division at Morgan Stanley and Bain & Company. Nils holds a mathematics Diploma from Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich and an Economics degree from Georg-August-University in Goettingen.

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Garrett Curran is a Managing Partner at Growth Capital Partners. Having joined the firm in 2001, Garrett has overseen the fundraising and realisation of Funds I & II, he has been key to the establishment of Growth Capital Partners and its success as a leading investor within UK SMEs.

Garrett currently has an active role in Fund III and is a member of the Investment committee. He has been a board member of A-Gas, Fishawack and Tangerine Confectionery where he delivered an excellent realisation to Blackstone. He is currently a board member of Cooke Optics Group Ltd and Chaucer Management Holdings Ltd. Garrett oversees GCP’s Fund IV fundraising activity and led the most recent investments into Shorterm Group.

Garrett is a qualified Chartered Accountant, having previously spent nine years with PwC. He has a BSc in Economics & Accountancy from City University.

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Tim Emrich was named Chief Executive Officer in 2014 and previously served as Chief Operating Officer and has been a member of the Board of Directors of UK Power Reserve and its operating subsidiaries since co-founding the firm in 2010. He is responsible for the day-to-day development, operations, and management of the business and has helped to drive UKPR’s significant growth in the niche UK energy security of supply industry.

Prior to UKPR, Tim held the role of Director of Business Development for US-based power developer Walters Power International LLC. Throughout his time at Walters Power, Tim was involved in the development of power projects and power generation asset transactions globally, including the UK, US, Western Europe and emerging markets. Walters Power UK was ultimately absorbed by UK Power Reserve in 2010.

Prior to his work in the power sector, Tim worked for US President Bill Clinton at the White House in Washington DC from 1998-2001. New York City.

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Nicol Fraser joined Dunedin in 2001 and has 21 years private equity experience. He has overall responsibility for Dunedin's New Investment Team and represents Dunedin directly on the Boards of Kee Safety and Weldex. Nicol has led investments across the Industrial, Businesses Services and Technology sectors.

He graduated with a BCom from the University of Edinburgh in 1988 and qualified as a chartered accountant with Tenon in 1991. Following qualification, he joined the corporate recovery team and subsequently qualified as an Insolvency Practitioner in 1996. He joined Bridgepoint in 1996, where he gained experience of buyouts throughout the UK.

Outside of work Nicol has particular interest in sport (triathlon, rugby and skiing) and music.

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George was elected to Parliament in May 2010 after a 15 year career as an entrepreneur in the bio-medical and bio-science sector in Cambridge and the Eastern region.

In 2016, he was appointed Chairman of the Conservative Policy Forum, examining new policies for science and innovation, infrastructure, localism, enlightened public services and a more inclusive society and economy.

In 2011 he was appointed as Government Adviser on Life Sciences to oversee the development of the Life Sciences and Agri-Tech Industrial Strategies, before being appointed in 2014 as the first ever Minister for Life Sciences at the Department of Health (DH) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), in charge of an £18bn portfolio covering health innovation and technology, including the NHS drugs budget, digital health and data, genomics and the Eastern region’s world-leading cluster of life science research and innovation.

As a former entrepreneur, George is passionate about supporting the Norfolk Innovation Economy, with his Norfolk Way Project, the Norfolk Innovation Awards, Small Business Manifesto and Rural Enterprise Bursaries, alongside leading major campaigns over the last six years to dual the A11 and A47, upgrade the Norwich-Cambridge ‘Innovation Corridor’ and secure further investment in high-speed broadband through founding the Digital Divide Alliance of entrepreneurs and businesses.

In Parliament, George co-founded the 2020 Conservatives in 2011 and currently serves as Chair of the 2020 Steering Group and sits on the advisory board of the think tank Bright Blue.

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Jonathan has over 20 years' experience building technology businesses. He joined NewVoiceMedia in October 2010 as Chief Commercial Officer to manage sales, marketing and product strategy and was appointed Chief Executive Officer in February 2011. Prior to joining NewVoiceMedia, Jonathan was SVP of Product at Mimecast and before that during his 8 years at MessageLabs (now part of Symantec) he was VP of EMEA, Global VP of Sales and VP of Product Management. Prior to that, Jonathan spent 10 years in the CRM and contact centre industry.

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Guy is one of the founders and joint Managing Partners of Tenzing. Prior to Tenzing, Guy was a managing partner of a special situations investment firm within which he also ran two portfolio businesses in need of repositioning. He helped these companies define their strategies, hire new talent, develop clear cultures, and bed in new systems and operating procedures. It was this experience that formed the basis for Guy’s admiration for management teams and their willingness to embrace challenges. This provided the inspiration to set up Tenzing; a firm to provide capital, material and operational support to high-energy teams and their businesses.

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Adam is EVP, Sage People (formerly CEO, Fairsail), having previously acted as Executive Chairman and Non-Executive Director at Fairsail.

Fairsail, now a part of Sage, enables mid-size multinational companies such as Skyscanner and PaddyPowerBetfair to manage modern workforces through its global cloud HR Software, transforming how organisations acquire, engage, manage and develop their people.

With a degree in Computer Science, Adam has spent over 30 years in the industry, shaping his expertise as Head of Global Software and European Technology at Russell Reynolds Associates, and prior to that a decade running implementation projects at Accenture.

In addition to his own career, Adam has a personal passion for encouraging school goers to further their technology education, leading workshops and promoting this education path. He also has a passion for ‘People Science’ and regularly leads discussions with fellow thought leaders on the shift from ‘Personnel to HR to People’.

Outside of work, Adam is a keen cyclist and enjoys spending time with his wife and daughters.

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Tim Hames has been Director General of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) since May 2013. He was previously Deputy CEO and Director of Policy at the organisation.

His first career was as an academic at Oxford University where he was a Lecturer in Politics, having previously been an undergraduate and graduate student at the university. He specialised In American Government and also taught British Government and Politics. He has almost thirty publications in various books and scholarly journals on American and British public policy. In 1996 he became a journalist at The Times where he was ultimately the chief editorial writer, a political columnist, an Assistant Editor and edited the newspaper as a whole on numerous occasions. In 2009-2010 he was the first Special Adviser to the Speaker of the House of Commons and responsible for pursuing a wide-ranging programme of parliamentary reform. He came to the BVCA as then Head of Public Affairs, Communications and Campaigns in July 2010.

Tim is an Honorary Visiting Fellow of De Montfort University and a Fellow of the Institute of Travel and Tourism.

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After graduating in Modern Languages & European Economics, Darren joined NatWest where ultimately he co-founded their last mezzanine fund in the late 1990’s. Since then, Darren has led mezzanine businesses at Legal & General Ventures and Barclays, giving him nearly 20 years experience in subordinated debt and a high profile in the market. He is a regular speaker at international conferences on the mezzanine asset class.

Darren has worked in credit risk as well as on the front line and his roles have spanned origination, debt and equity structuring, distribution, portfolio fund management, workouts and risk strategy, both in the UK and across Europe. The common theme is partnering with entrepreneurial management teams and investors in expanding businesses, from SME’s mid corporates.

Darren was invited to join Santander in 2011 to create and lead the Bank’s Growth Capital proposition which is aimed at supporting high growth SME’s though development capital and M&A projects. To date, the team has completed over 90 investments, supporting over 70 businesses who are in the process of creating nearly 4,000 new jobs through their growth. Total new debt facilities committed through the programme now exceed £250m.

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Alice Hu Wagner leads Strategy, Economics and Business Development at the British Business Bank. She is responsible for the overall strategy of the British Business Bank, all economic forecasting and analysis, as well as leadership on business / product development and innovation.

Alice joined the British Business Bank in April 2015 from Barclays plc, where she was the senior lead director for Group Strategy. Prior to spending 5 years at Barclays and Barclaycard, she worked in London for Lloyds Banking Group and Prophet, a strategic marketing and brand consultancy. She began her career at McKinsey and Company, latterly specialising in corporate finance and strategy.

Alice earned her undergraduate degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and her MBA from INSEAD.

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Wol joined Livingbridge in January 1993 and is Managing Partner of the business which now has assets of £2.1bn under management. His role encompasses overall responsibility for the strategic development of Livingbridge, and active involvement in investments. Wol initially trained as an engineer, having studied civil and structural engineering at Kings College, London. After obtaining an MBA at the University of Exeter, he spent three years with Barclays in various head office roles before joining Livingbridge.

Wol was previously a Chairman of the BVCA - British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association - in 2007/2008, a Council Member from 2002 - 2009 and Chairman of the Responsible Investment Advisory Board from 2009 - 2010. He is a Governor and Former Council Member of the London School of Economics and Political Science and a former non-executive Director of Social Finance.

Wol became Chairman of the Guys and St Thomas' Charity in 2015. It is one of the largest medical charities in the UK with assets of £600m and awards grants to facilitate improvements to healthcare services in the London Boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Exeter in 2014.

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Sean joined Santander in June 2012 to help build out the Structured Finance business in the Corporate & Commercial Bank. The team now incorporates a Financial Sponsor focussed team, a team focussed on complex and/or leveraged corporate transactions such as M&A/IPO’s, a Growth Capital team providing debt solutions to high growth SME's and a Renewables and Infrastructure team, all provided from London and key regional centres in the UK.

Prior to joining Santander, Sean was Managing Director of the Corporate Banking business in the South of England for RBS.

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Malcolm MacDougall is a corporate lawyer specialising in private equity and mergers & acquisitions.

His experience includes a wide range of both UK and cross-border M&A and private equity work including acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, reorganisations, private equity investments and exits.

Malcolm heads up the wider Private Equity team at Charles Russell Speechlys, who advise on all aspects of private equity transactions including MBOs, MBIs, buy-and-builds, secondary buy-outs and exits. As a firm, we have an unusually broad range of skills and experience across the full spectrum of business and personal needs, which enables the team to originate deals and refer transactions to Private Equity houses.

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Chris McBean is passionate about building and developing businesses and successful teams. E-Leather has developed from a start up to be market leader in the USA aviation seating sector and has a strong growth strategy into other sectors including transport, automotive and upholstery. He has lead international high added value service and manufacturing companies developing new markets and new technology. His early career was within Unilever and ICI where he carved out a niche driving the development and innovation of new businesses development in a buy and build environment. Chris has an MBA specialising in shareholder value from Henley.

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Karen is a Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Beringea responsible for making new investments and working with portfolio companies through to exit. Her investments include BlisMedia, Monica Vinader, Watchfinder, InContext Solutions, Utility Exchange Online, Tossed, and Sealskinz.

Karen was previously with the Boston Consulting Group and ran the Watches division of Swiss Army/Wenger. She also has experience with start-ups as both a founder and advisor. Karen has lived and worked in the US, Europe, and Asia, and has an MBA from INSEAD and a BSBA from Boston University.

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Nazo has spent 20 years in the technology sector with the past fifteen years as a growth capital investor. She is the Managing Partner of C5 Capital, a European specialist technology fund focussed on cybersecurity and big data. Prior to C5 Capital, she invested in technology buyouts for The Carlyle Group starting with Carlyle’s first European tech fund in 2000. Prior to her move to London, Nazo served in an operating role as the Director of Marketing and Business Development for a publicly listed laser technology subsidiary of Thermo Fisher.

Outside her investment duties, Nazo has served on a number of public sector boards including The Charity Commission, the regulator to the £60 billion voluntary sector in England and Wales and Arts Council England, the grant making body which contributes £500 million per year to England’s vibrant arts and culture sector.

Nazo has a Bachelors Degree in International Economics from UCLA and an MBA from Columbia University.

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Ajit Nedungadi is a Managing Partner and co-heads the Core Investment Committee. He also heads TA’s European efforts out of London and is actively engaged in investments in India.

Ajit is a member of TA’s Executive and Portfolio Committees, and Co-Chair of TA’s Core Investment Committee. He joined TA in 1999 and has more than 18 years of experience in the private equity industry. Ajit’s primary focus is in the technology industry, but he has also sponsored investments across the asset management, insurance brokerage, medical device and healthcare services and consumer/e-commerce sectors.

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As a Managing Director on ESO’s investment team, Natalia is responsible for the sourcing and execution of new investments across a number of geographies. Whilst at ESO, she has completed transactions in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. Prior to joining ESO, Natalia was a distressed debt analyst at Arrowgrass Capital Partners and served as an independent advisor for several corporates and investors. Previously, Natalia was part of Cerberus Capital Management’s private equity team in Germany. She began her career as an Analyst in Goldman Sachs’ M&A Group in Germany. She is fluent in English, German, and Polish. MBA, Harvard Business School; Dipl.-Kauffrau, European Business School (Oestrich-Winkel).

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Ben Pugh started Farmdrop in 2012 having spotted an opportunity to use mobile technology to cut out the middlemen (supermarkets and wholesalers) from the food supply chain, and in doing so give a better deal both for farmers and for local customers. Ben is a former retail broker who has worked at Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and PwC. He also worked on the IPO for Ocado back in 2010.

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Mike focuses on consumer and software investments.

He is Board member or observer at DynamicAction (now in Redwood City, CA), Rated People (London), McMakler (Berlin), OrderDynamics (Toronto) and Dealflo (London). He was previously lead Frog investor at GB Group Plc and eCommera (now DentsuAegis). Through these companies and other activities, Mike has experience of ecommerce, fintech, proptech, SAAS software and online consumer propositions.

Mike grew up in Africa, Thailand and Australia before settling back in the UK, and graduating from Bath University.

He started investing in tech growth companies in 1996 with 3i, where he worked with tech companies in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany and the US for over twelve years.

Mike co-founded Frog Capital in 2009 to invest growth equity in the best up-and-coming European tech companies. Now with five Partners, Frog is investing its second fund.

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Since taking the helm at Funding London in late 2009, Maggie has transformed the organisation from an inactive investment vehicle to an investment management organisation focussed on early stage. Maggie’s focus has been the planning, creation and launch of new funds. Under her leadership, two venture funds have been launched: the MMC London Fund (launched in late 2012) and the London Co-investment Fund (launched in December 2014).

Maggie began her career at Hawkpoint Partners (now part of Canaccord Genuity) in mid-market M&A and capital markets and was later a corporate finance partner at Mazars.

Maggie holds a Masters in Materials Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She also holds ICAEW’s Corporate Finance qualification and is a member of the board of the Corporate Finance Faculty.

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John Rosenberg joined TCV in 2000 and leads the firm’s European efforts. His primary investment focus is in the software, Internet, and financial technology sectors. John currently serves on the boards of Believe Digital, Dough, Elevate, NewVoiceMedia and WorldRemit. He was also actively involved in TCV’s investments in Automated Trading Desk, Capella Education, FinancialForce.com, FXAll, Interactive Brokers, kgb (118-118), Orbitz, Spotify, Thinkorswim, and Travelport, among others.

Prior to joining TCV, John was a Business Development Manager at WeddingChannel.com where he focused on strategic development and financial reporting activities. John started his career as an Analyst in the technology investment banking group at Robertson Stephens & Company in San Francisco. John also previously served on the board of Rocketship Education, a non-profit public school system for low-income elementary students.John received a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University.

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Jan Rutherford joined SEP in 2004 and has 17 years of venture capital experience. She has responsibility for new investments and investor relations. With an operational and commercial background in the pharmaceutical industry, she leads SEP’s healthcare investment activities, with a particular interest in digital health and represents SEP on the boards of Aridhia and Abcodia.

Jan was heavily involved in SEP’s investment in BioVex, a cancer therapeutics company, and supported management through its sale to Amgen in a $1bn deal. She also led SEP’s investment in Exco InTouch, a leading provider of mobile patient communication and management solutions for clinical research and healthcare providers which was acquired by ERT in December 2016.

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Henry joined the team in September 2007 and became co-head of the team in April 2008. He has a long experience both of the direct private equity industry and significant operational experience within growth companies.

Prior to joining the team he was a Director of Quester, one of the largest growth capital investors in the UK. This followed eight years at AFA Systems plc, a financial services software company which he co-founded as a private equity investor and joined full-time immediately prior to its IPO in 1996. From its foundation, Henry was part of a small team that drove the development of the group, both organically and by acquisition. AFA was sold to Microgen plc in September 2004.

Prior to AFA Systems, Henry spent six years investing in technology companies with Top Technology Limited, managers of the Hambros Advanced Technology Trust family of funds. He qualified as a chartered accountant with Price Waterhouse.

Henry sits on the boards of Ikon Science, Small World Financial Services, David Phillips, Kallidus and Questionmark.

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Deep Shah is a Co-President with Francisco Partners, and operates from the firm’s London office where he leads the EMEA investing activities.

Deep serves on the board of directors of Kewill, MetaSwitch Networks, SintecMedia and SmartFocus. He previously served on the board of Attenti, Click Software, C-MAC MicroTechnology, eFront, Ex Libris, Lumata, Masternaut and NexTraq.

Prior to joining Francisco Partners in 2003, Deep worked at Morgan Stanley in London in both their Mergers and Acquisitions group and their Princes Gate Investors private equity fund, where he was responsible for the identification, evaluation and execution of transactions in a variety of industries, including information technology.

Deep holds an M.A. in Economics from the University of Cambridge, graduating with First Class Honours.

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Philip Shapiro is an experienced investor in growing UK companies. Prior to co-founding Synova Capital in 2007, Philip worked at Phoenix Equity Partners. Prior to this, Philip advised private equity houses and mid-market companies on UK acquisitions whilst working at UBS Warburg and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. Philip is a Non-Executive Director of Clearwater Care Group, Defaqto and Merit Software and heads the Technology sector team at Synova. Philip holds a Masters in Law from Oxford University.

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Tom Smith is the sole founder and CEO of GlobalWebIndex. Having spent several years working agency-side, he recognised a growing demand for global data to better understand the complex online market.

Tom launched GlobalWebIndex in 2009, directly addressing the need for a much deeper understanding of digital audiences, their behaviours and perceptions on a global scale. Starting out as a survey gathering extensive data on the online consumer, the business has doubled in size year on year, growing from a market research business into the SaaS company it is today.

Coupling the world's largest ongoing study on the digital consumer with powerful analytics, GlobalWebIndex is now the leading provider of audience profiling data to the global marketing industry. With a panel of over 18 million connected consumers spanning across 40 countries and covering over 8,500 data points, it is helping to re-engineer audience-centric marketing for the digital age. It is now sold in more than 50 countries, giving its growing client base of leading brands, agencies and publishers the tools to truly understand today’s consumers.

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Helen Steers leads Pantheon’s European primary investment activity and chairs the European Investment Committee. She is also a member of the International Investment Committee and the Co-investment Committee. Helen joined Pantheon in 2004 from Russell Investments in Paris where she was Managing Director with overall responsibility for private equity in Europe.

Prior to joining Russell in 1999, Helen spent five years as Director, European Private Equity with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. From 1989 to 1994, Helen was a senior investment manager at the Business Development Bank of Canada in Montréal.

Helen received a BA and an MA in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. In addition to her responsibilities at Pantheon, Helen is Chair of the British Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (BVCA) and is involved with Invest Europe, where she sits on the Board, and is the Chair of the Limited Partners Platform Council. Helen is also a co-founder of Level 20, a non-profit making organisation that has been set up to encourage women to succeed in the private equity industry. Helen is bilingual in English and French. Helen is based in London.

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Matt Taylor leads the value creation and operating activities for Generation’s Growth Equity fund.

This includes advising companies across all aspects of strategy, including sales and marketing, operations and manufacturing, international expansions, partnerships and M&A.

Prior to Generation, Matt was a Partner with Bain & Co., predominantly focused on strategy development and organisational effectiveness for industrial companies. Matt led engagements across Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.

Matt has a first class honours degree in Human Sciences from Magdalen College, Oxford.

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Roy is a cybersecurity entrepreneur, and the Co-Founder and President of Wandera. Wandera is a leading global provider of cloud mobile security for enterprises, protecting employee mobile devices against targeted attacks. Wandera analyses over two billion mobile data requests daily through its cloud machine learning engine. Roy's previous venture ScanSafe pioneered the cloud web security market, protecting 3,000 enterprises and spawning a new industry category, before being acquired by Cisco in 2010. He started his career in corporate finance and has a BSc economics from Bristol University.

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Tom is a Principal & Head of Research at Atomico, focusing on research to support the sourcing and evaluation of investment opportunities. Tom also oversees Atomico’s learning programme, providing regular all-hands on key technology trends. He has published several research reports including the ‘State of European Tech’ at the Slush conference in November 2015.

Prior to joining Atomico in May 2013, Tom was a Principal Analyst and member of the management team at Informa Telecoms & Media, a specialist technology research firm. At Informa, Tom led a global team of analysts and oversaw research and consulting activities for Europe, Latin America and the US. During his time there, Tom advised leading technology companies from across the world. Tom holds a First Class B.Sc. (Econ) from Cardiff University.

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