2020 Speakers

Dr Keith Arundale, MSc, PhD, FCA, FCIM, FIoD, FInstP, FRSA

Keith Arundale is a university lecturer, executive trainer and consultant in PE & VC. His PhD from the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow explores reasons for the historical difference in performance between European and US VC funds.

Previously Keith was with PwC leading the VC programme for PwC’s Global Technology Industry Group in Europe. He is the author of “Guide to Private Equity” (BVCA) and “Raising Venture Capital Finance in Europe” (Kogan Page).

Keith is a Non-Executive Director of Henley Business Angels and a member of the Advisory Board of TenX Health.

Stefano Bacci is a Partner and Ambienta’s ESG Manager, and is based in London. He joined Ambienta in 2012 and has been involved in a number of transactions including Tower Light, Calucem, Oskar Nolte and IP Cleaning.

Prior to joining Ambienta, he was a Partner at Palamon Capital Partners (London) for nine years and spent eight years at the Boston Consulting Group (Milan, Stockholm, Helsinki), focusing on European industrial companies. He started his career at BASF in Basle, first in the R&D division and eventually in the stabilisation of recycled plastics.

Partner and Head of Buyout of Golding Capital Partners, joined the company in 2011. He is responsible for the identification, analysis, due diligence and selection of buyout funds.

Before joining Golding Capital Partners, Mr Boege gained experience as an investment professional in private equity firms over 10 years. During this time he worked for Permira in Frankfurt and Vestar Capital Partners in Munich and was involved in various national and international transactions.

Mr Boege earned a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Management, with distinction, from the London School of Economics. He also holds an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau.

Marcus Brans is head of communications and member of the Digitalization Group of Triton Partners. He joined Triton in 2014 from Schaeffler where he was the Senior Vice President of Communications, Strategy and Marketing. He has also had similar roles at Allen&Overy, Shearman&Sterling and Linklaters&Alliance. Marcus holds a Political and Social Science Diploma from University of the Federal Armed Forces, Munich and an MBA from the University of Vienna and University of Minnesota, USA. Marcus advised 40+ portfolio companies on digital transformation and communication projects. He speaks frequently about his experiences on conferences re. digitalization, marketing, transformation, leadership and communication.

Martin Calderbank is Managing Partner at Agilitas Private Equity, the pan-European mid-market private equity firm which invests in defensible businesses with opportunities for significant step changes. Agilitas has a patient, sector-focused approach to investing and a strong track-record of dramatically transforming and growing companies. Martin has been working in private equity since 1995. Martin is passionate about how the private equity model can empower and support strong management teams in leading companies through transformational changes that create sustainable value. Martin started his career with McKinsey. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University.

Dominic has been a Partner at Sovereign since 2008 and has been involved in the raising and deployment of all of Sovereign’s funds since inception. He has led a number of Buy & Build investments in the healthcare sector including, Outcomes First Group, Xendo, Nurse Plus, City & County Healthcare Group, National Fostering Agency and SENAD. Outside of healthcare, Dominic also led Sovereign’s investments in health and safety compliance consultancy, Alcumus, and financial services compliance consultancy, Cordium. Dominic sits on Sovereign’s Investment Committee.

Prior to Sovereign, Dominic trained as a Chartered Accountant and spent several years at Deloitte Corporate Finance.

Matthieu participates in all aspects of Northleaf’s private equity investment activities, with a focus on the origination, evaluation, and monitoring of primary, secondary and co-investments.

Prior to joining Northleaf in 2013, Matthieu was a partner at PEFOX, a private equity secondaries and derivatives broker in Paris. Previously, Matthieu worked with Pantheon Ventures’ secondaries team in London.

Northleaf Capital Partners is an independent global private equity, infrastructure and private credit manager, with more than $14 billion in commitments under management. Northleaf was formed in 2009 by the successful spin-out of the private equity fund investment arm of TD Bank.

Founded in 2004 by Andy Ducker and David Manning, Elaghmore is an investment partnership specialising in transforming company performance, investing in and growing businesses. Elaghmore’s heritage is in management, focusing on small to mid-cap UK industrial companies. The team bring decades of executive management expertise having worked across multiple sectors. Andrew graduated with a degree in Business Commerce from Birmingham University and went on to qualify as an accountant with KPMG. He has run businesses in several sectors including office equipment, services, logistics and chemicals and held CEO and Finance Director role’s in a number of private and listed companies prior to his career in private equity.

As the Chief Operating Partner Mike is responsible for ensuring AnaCap executes its strategic agenda effectively maximising the use of the platforms resources. Working with the CEO and Heads of the investment strategies Mike’s day to day engagement with the investment professionals is to ensure as a team we are focussing on the areas of most strategic importance. In addition to ensuring the smooth running of the investment team and Chairing the Investment Recommendation Committee Mike is responsible for the direct management and oversight of Finance, Systems, Legal & Compliance and HR functions.

In his prior roles in financial services and from an early stage in his career, Mike has engaged directly with senior stakeholders and board members and has been responsible for recruiting, building and managing teams in addition to implementing systems and processes to meet the demands of a growing business.

Mike is a qualified accountant with over 20 years of experience in the financial services sector including retail banking, insurance, asset management, venture capital and private equity businesses.

James is Head of Origination at NorthEdge having spent seven years in Corporate Finance at Clearwater International where he was a Director responsible for generating mid-market opportunities and managing the Deal Origination team.

James has experience across a number of sectors meeting with management teams to understand their plans and joined NorthEdge to identify new investment opportunities via growth and development capital, management buy-outs, equity release and buy-and-build opportunities.

Mike is a member of Graphite’s Board and Investment Committee. He joined Graphite Capital in 2005 and has since led and structured a variety of investments, with a particular focus on the industrials, energy and leisure sectors.

After starting his career as a solicitor with Clifford Chance, he founded an internet-based legal recruitment consultancy before joining the Bank of Scotland’s Integrated Finance team. He has a first class degree in Medieval History from St. Andrews University and an MBA from London Business School.

Mark Ligertwood joined Dunedin in 1999. He played a key role in raising the £300m Dunedin Buyout Fund III in 2013. He was also involved in the buyouts of FRA, Alpha, Kee Safety, Weldex and Steeper; and the exits of Alpha and Capula. He currently represents Dunedin on the Board of FRA.

Mark is an honours graduate in business management from Newcastle University and qualified as a chartered accountant at Ernst & Young. He sits on the Newcastle University Business School International Advisory Board.

Peter has 30 year career in private equity and venture capital as a GP in UK and Asia and latterly as an LP heading up the The Royal London Group’s private equity operation investing in funds globally. From 2006 to 2008 he was Chief Executive of the BVCA, the UK’s representative body for the private equity industry. He is also Chairman of Maven Income and Growth VCT 4 plc

Elin Ljung is the Director of Sustainability and Communication at Nordic Capital. She joined in 2017 and is responsible for driving the agenda of investing with sustainable impact.

Prior to joining Nordic Capital was Head of Corporate Communication and Investor Relations at the publicly listed investment company Ratos and before that she held various leading positions within industries including IT, Financial Services and Media.

Elin holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Electronics and Media Technology from Umeå university and additional studies in Business Administration.

Maggie looks after client relationships for Bridges platform of funds and has been involved with or led the raising of the firm’s eight most recent funds. These have included successive funds in existing strategies as well as the development of new strategies to the Bridges platform.

Prior to joining Bridges, Maggie worked at London-based Climate Change Capital, a specialist merchant bank in the environmental markets. She started her career as a strategy management consultant with McKinsey & Co in New York City. Maggie studied environmental science and public policy at Harvard University and has an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Alan has been a private equity investor since 1987. He was appointed to the board of 3i plc in 1993 and served in numerous leadership roles, including as CEO of 3i Nordic plc and as Global Head of Healthcare. In 2014 he co-founded GHO Capital a specialist healthcare investment firm active in European and trans-Atlantic mid markets. He currently sits on the board at Sterling Pharma Solutions in the UK as well as companies in Spain and Germany.

At EIF since January 2009, Marco is heading the Lower Mid-Market team investing in equity, hybrid debt / equity and private debt funds across Europe, with a particular focus on the Northern, Eastern and Southern regions. He coordinates the Lower Mid-Market investment activity for several fund-of-funds initiatives, each one with specific geographical scope, (i.e. Turkey, Poland, Baltics, Central Europe, Italy, Portugal). He represents EIF on the Advisory Boards of over 20 funds.

Prior to joining EIF in January 2009, he worked as a senior Investment Manager at Innogest Capital, an Italian VC fund focused on early stage investments and, previously, at Ernst & Young Consultants.

Paul Newsome is a Partner in the Private Equity team and a member of the Private Equity Investment Committee at Unigestion. He joined Unigestion in 2002. Paul began his career in 1995 as a Financial Analyst at Procter & Gamble. He then advised on public and private capital raising for technology companies at Quartz Capital and later was an investment manager at BancBoston Capital, making and managing venture capital investments in Europe. Paul has a first class Master’s degree in Engineering, Economics and Management from Oxford University and is a Chartered Management Accountant.

Vince O’Brien is Chairman of Quest Fund Placement, a leading European private equity placement agent. He has worked in the private equity industry for over 30 years, over 20 of these as a director of Montagu Private Equity. A Past Chairman of the BVCA, he currently undertakes a number of non executive and advisory roles, including Non Executive Director of Impax Asset Management, a listed asset management group which specialises in the transition to a more sustainable economy, Strategic Advisory Board Member of Montana Capital Partners, Board Advisor ESO Capital and 1819 panel member of the London office of Mirabaud, a leading Swiss private bank.

Mark O’Hare is Founder and Chief Executive of Preqin. Preqin provides market-leading global data, insights and solutions for the alternative assets industry, covering private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure, private debt and natural resources. Preqin is an independent business with over 400 staff based in London, New York, Singapore, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Manila, serving more than 60,000 customers in over 90 countries.

Mark studied Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge University, where he graduated with First Class Honours and was awarded the Stokes Prize. Subsequent to this he studied Finance at London Business School.

Imogen Richards is a Partner and Global Head of Investment Structuring and Strategy in Pantheon’s Global Investment team with 18 years of private equity experience. She is also closely involved in key strategic and corporate development projects. Imogen joined Pantheon from Anglo Irish Bank in Dublin and holds a MA in natural sciences from Cambridge University.

Samuel Robberts is the director of drxDATA, Drax’s proprietary data and insights capability. Focussing on providing private equity investors with actionable insight into leadership and value creation within their portfolio, he has helped develop the only Human Capital focussed digital platform dedicated to private equity.

Over half a decade, he has developed innovative methods for the assessment of leaders and pioneered the application of predictive analytics in relation to leadership teams and being able to anticipate the success of an individual or team in any given business.

Samuel is a graduate from Oxford University and UCL, and holds an MBA from Imperial College London.

Paolo Simonato, Managing Director, is head of the London office for BlackRock Private Equity Partners.

He joined Blackrock in 2018 with 20+ years in private equity, leverage finance and M&A.

Prior to Blackrock, he was Chief Strategy Officer at the leverage finance unit of GE Capital in Europe. From 2000 to 2012, Managing Director Private Equity at GE Asset Management, where he managed Europe and Latin America, from 1997 to 2000 he was with GE’s M&A team in Europe, and from 1994 with GE Corporate Audit Staff in US.

Mr. Simonato graduated from Bocconi University (cum laude) and holds an independent director certification from INSEAD.

Elena is a Vice President at Glendower Capital, responsible for the origination, valuation, execution and monitoring of secondary investments.

Prior to joining Glendower Capital, Elena spent 2 years at Deutsche Asset Management valuing, executing and monitoring secondary investments. From 2012 to 2015 Elena worked in HSBC’s Financial Institutions unit, where she focused on origination and execution of strategic events. Elena first joined HSBC in 2010 in their Global Banking business.

Elena graduated from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy with a 1st class degree in BA and Management and holds an MSc in Global Banking and Finance from the European Business School, London.

Gareth joined Silverfleet Capital in 1997 and became Managing Partner in 2019. Gareth heads a team of partners and staff who are located in London, Munich, Paris, Amsterdam and Stockholm.

He is currently a Non-Executive Director of Riviera Travel, having previously been a director of a number of former portfolio companies including Phase One, Masai, Cimbria, OFFICE, Phadia and Oasis.

Gareth qualified as a solicitor with Linklaters before moving into corporate finance, initially with the investment bank SG Warburg and later within Guinness plc.

Gareth studied Mathematics and Law at Girton College, Cambridge University.

Shani is a founding partner of mid-market private equity firm Livingbridge. Shani joined Livingbridge in 1997 and, as Chief Investment Officer, is responsible for driving deployment and leading the new investment teams. Livingbridge has invested in over 150 growing businesses and manages over £2.1bn. Shani is a board trustee of youth charity Impetus which finds, funds and builds the most promising charities focused on transforming the lives of disadvantaged young people.