PRINT THIS PAGE Weekly People Roundup: 19 December 200719/12/2007. Source: AltAssets. 
All the week's most important people stories from across the globe. Essential reading for those who need to keep up-to-date with the private equity industry's key staff moves. Switzerland-based alternative asset manager Partners Group has made a number of changes within its management team. Erik Kaas, co-head, markets, will join the business development committee. Stefan Näf will replace Kaas on the executive board as of 1 January 2008 and will oversee the day-to-day operations as co-head of markets. Philipp Gysler, currently head of private alternative investment strategies, will focus on further strengthening the firm's position in Asia together with Christoph Rubeli, head of markets for Asia and the Middle East. Gysler will remain on the executive board and will be stationed in Singapore as of mid-2008. Dr Stephan Schäli will represent the private alternative investment strategies department on the executive board as of 1 January 2008. In addition, Pam Alsterlind, co-head of private real estate investment management, and Dr Henning Eckermann, chief economist, were promoted to partner. Nan Leake, senior investment professional in the private real estate team, Reto Schwager, responsible for distribution partners in the markets team, Marc Weiss, senior investment professional in the real estate team, and Dr Cyrill Wipfli, business strategy and corporate development, have all been promoted to principal.
Ynon Kreiz has resigned as partner from European venture firm Balderton Capital. Kreiz said, 'I am very proud of what we have achieved at Balderton. It is a great franchise and I hope the investments we have made will continue to bear fruit for all of us. I remain an enthusiastic supporter of the firm and its partners.' As a consequence of resigning from Balderton, Kreiz also resigns as a director of a number of the firm's investee companies.
Michael Jackson, David Lowe, and Vin Murria have completed an MBO of UK early stage venture firm Elderstreet Investments. As a result of the deal, Lowe, who has worked as a consultant to Elderstreet for over ten years, will take on responsibility for Elderstreet's retail funds. Murria, who has worked with Elderstreet on a number of projects over the past five years, will return as a director and, alongside Jackson, will invest in quoted and unquoted companies. Exiting shareholders, Paul Frew and Barnaby Terry will cease to be involved with Elderstreet Investments and will focus on the management of Elderstreet Capital Partners. Frew will continue to act as managing partner and Terry and Jackson will continue to work with Frew as partners of ECP.
Early stage mobile software platform developer Peermeta has appointed Jim Ricotta as president and CEO. In this role, Ricotta will be responsible for overall leadership of the recently launched company including implementation of its strategy and business plan. Most recently, Ricotta was vice president and general manager of IBM's appliance business unit. He joined IBM through the company's $100m acquisition of DataPower Technology, where he was president and CEO. Prior to DataPower, he was vice president and general manager at Cisco Systems, who he joined following Cisco's $800m acquisition of SightPath, where he served as president, CEO and co-founder from its inception in January 1998.
CITIC Capital Holdings has made several new appointments to its China and Japan private equity teams. Bo Liu has joined the China team as a director, based in Shanghai. Prior to joining CITIC Capital, Liu was one of the senior members responsible for running the China investment operations of US private equity firm Ewing Management Group. Terry Cui has also joined the China team in Shanghai, as a senior associate. Cui previously worked in management consulting and spent a year advising a state-owned enterprise on its privatisation and MBO. Hanxi Zhao has joined the Japan team, based in Shanghai. Zhao joins the firm as a director and has a background in corporate strategy and consumer goods. Yueping Chen and Eriko Yamamoto have also joined the firm and are to be based in Shanghai and Tokyo, respectively.
Mid-market private equity firm Palamon Capital Partners has appointed Anthony Gardner as director of structured finance and Alexis de Dietrich as a vice president. Gardner joins Palamon from Bank of America, where he held the position of executive director, European Leveraged Finance. Previously he spent five years with GE, initially in business development managing M&A transactions involving GE companies across Europe and subsequently in its leveraged finance group. De Dietrich joins Palamon having most recently run a family investment office in Switzerland. He was previously with Merrill Lynch International in London, working in the Global Markets and Investment Banking divisions and prior to that with Société Générale Corporate and Investment Banking in Milan. Palamon's most recent investments were in German retailer, Dress-for-Less and Dutch audiovisual producer D&D Media Group.
Venture firm Highland Capital Partners has hired John St Amand as a venture partner. In his new role, St Amand will help identify new entrepreneurial investment opportunities and also assist Highland portfolio companies. St Amand is the founder and former CEO of Telica, a Highland-backed company that specialised in advanced switching and transmission telecommunication equipment. After the 2004 acquisition of Telica by Lucent, he served as the president of Lucent's Converged Core Networks. Following the merger of Alcatel and Lucent, he became president of Multi-Core Networks. Prior to founding Telica, St Amand was the founder and general manager of the Embedded Telephony Solutions division of Dynamics Research Corporation, responsible for development of carrier class switching systems.
Private equity firm Advent International has recruited two new principals to its Central & Eastern Europe team based across London, Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest and Kiev. Dan Morgan and Albena Vassileva join the firm, increasing the size of the team dedicated to the region to 16 people. Morgan joins Advent from Kaupthing, where he has been director of the bank's specialist private equity division since 2005. Before that, he spent nine years as an investment director with 3i in London and Stockholm. Vassileva joins Advent's new Prague office. She has spent seven years with ABN AMRO Capital, latterly as vice president and senior investment manager working on TMT investments. She was previously with ING Baring in Sofia and Amsterdam.
Boston-based early stage life sciences venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures has appointed Dr Cary G Pfeffer as partner and Neil A Exter and Craig D Muir as venture partners. Dr Pfeffer is the founder of The Pfeffer Group, a business development and strategy advisory firm serving biotechnology companies. He also spent more than ten years at Biogen in a variety of senior roles. Exter most recently served as chief business officer of Alantos Pharmaceuticals. Prior to his tenure at Alantos, Exter served as vice president for Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Muir previously served as senior vice president of technical operations for synthetic biology company Codon Devices. Prior to that, he spent 12 years as vice president of Platform Technology at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Third Rock has also announced the appointment of Jake B Bauer as senior associate. Previously, he served in business roles at Royalty Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals and Putnam Associates.
Life science venture firm RiverVest Venture Partners are to open an office at the Cleveland, Ohio-based facility of BioEnterprise, a bioscience technology initiative. The office will be managed by Karen Spilizewski, who is joining RiverVest on a part-time basis as a vice president on 1 January 2008. Spilizewski brings nearly 20 years of experience in new product development and business development in medical and non-medical technologies. She joined BioEnterprise in 2005. Prior to joining the company, she worked at Avery Dennison, focusing on research and business development. BioEnterprise is a business formation, recruitment and acceleration effort designed to support the growth of bioscience companies.
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