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People: October 2001

Davis to head private equity at Merrill Lynch, new chairman for Royal Bank Private Equity and two new hires for Amadeus….

• Another round of senior management change at Merrill Lynch saw Thomas Davis, former head of investment banking, moved to head up a newly formed global private equity group. The firm said that Davis would lead the initiative to beef up its private equity interests and pursue what it saw as significant opportunities in the sector.
  
  
• Iain Robertson has been appointed chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland's Private Equity Group, adding to his recently enhanced responsibilities as chairman of corporate banking and financial markets. Robertson succeeds Johnny Cameron, who will remain a non-executive director.
  
  
• Amadeus Capital Partners, the European technology investor, has hired two new associates in preparation for an improvement in investment opportunities it foresees in the year ahead. Brett Allsop joins from online sports retailer Fogdog, while Shantanu Bhagwat joins from management consultancy Monitor Company.
  
  
• Renate Kruemmer has left Apax Partners. Kruemmer joined Apax in 1998 and was head of the firm's German office. The reason for her departure has been given as a conflict in investment strategy.
  
  
• Alloy Ventures, a private equity firm that focuses on IT and life sciences, has hired J Leighton Read as a general partner. Read, previously chairman and CEO of biopharmaceutical company Aviron, will evaluate investment opportunities in both of these sectors.
  
  
• Charles River Ventures has appointed Dave Newman and Warren Weiss as venture partners. Both new partners will be based in the firms Menlo Park offices in California. Newman previously founded San Jose-based Alidian Networks while Weiss was president and CEO of Silicon Valley firm Asera.
  
  
• Technology investment manager Earlybird has hired Stefan Tirtey to join its Munich office as an associate. Tirtey was previously at Lucent technologies in Paris where he served as a senior sales executive. Earlybird also has offices in Hamburg and Palo Alto. Robert Y. Kim joins the Palo Alto office from Zeiss Optic.
  
  
• Herve Defforey, the former CFO and managing director of French retail giant Carrefour, has joined US venture capital firm GRP Partners to strengthen its nascent European team and spearhead its activities in the region.
  
  
• New York private equity firm Chartwell Investments has appointed William Reid as a partner. Reid leaves London-based Landsdowne Capital, which he joined last year after seven years at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
  
  
• J Duncan Grierson is to join the London office of Lake Capital as vice president. Grierson, a former director at Paris-based Galileo Partners, will focus on the firm's European investments.
  
  
• Jerusalem Venture Partners announced that Tal Lev and Lynda Radosevich will join the firm as senior associate and vice president of international marketing and public relations respectively. The two new executives will be based in the firm's New York office.
  
  
• HgCapital, the European private equity firm, has appointed Alexander Shivananda as the head of its newly formed strategy team. He will manage a team of six analysts that was formed last year to support the investment teams. Shivananda joins HgCapital from Paper Exchange. He has also worked at OC&C Strategy Consultants and as an engineer at Amoco.
  
  
• Jonathan Wilson, senior international corporate and M&A expert has joined UK firm Landwell as a partner. Before starting in this new position, he was a partner in Baker & McKenzie's Chicago office.
  
  
• DB Capital Partners, the private equity arm of Deutsche Bank, has appointed Charles Flynn as head of fund investing. He will be responsible for all the bank's private equity fund investing. Flynn joins from AXA Investment Managers in New York.
  
  
• Doughty Hanson, one of Europe's biggest buy-out firms, has appointed Mark Florman as senior principal to run its Nordic activities. Florman has recently served as chief operating officer of ArosMaizels Corporate Finance, the pan-Nordic investment bank owned by Nordea.
  
  
• BRM Capital has named Menashe Ezra as the firm's sixth managing director. He will focus on investments in the communications and wireless infrastructure sectors. BRM is a New Jersey-based firm that invests mainly in Israeli-related infrastructure companies at the seed and expansion stages.
  
  
• Jeremy Stone has been appointed to head Corven's ventures team. Corven, a UK-based consulting and corporate venturing company, has made the appointment as part of its expansion into private equity.
  
  
• US Firm, Atlas Venture, has appointed a new analyst in its Seattle office. Christian Metcalfe joins Atlas from IZ Inc, where he was vice president of operations.
  
  
• Alasdair Warren, co-founder of specialist private equity fund nCoTec is leaving to return to Schroder Salomon Smith Barney. His departure is seen as a reflection of the current difficult fund-raising environment.
  
  
• Lovells has expanded its private equity practice with the hiring of Derek Baird as a partner in the corporate practice of its London office. Baird joins from UK corporate law firm Dickson Minto.
  
  
• Chris Davison has joined Almeida Capital, the private equity research and advisory firm, as head of research. His appointment forms part of the overall expansion of the company's research services.