
Click here for printer friendly page
Weekly People Roundup: 3 September 200803/09/2008. 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. Investment group Baird has expanded to include investment banking capabilities in Asia with the addition of Anthony Yan-Hong Siu as managing director. Siu, who was previously an investment banker at Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong, will focus on cross-border M&A working closely with Baird's investment bankers in the US and Europe. He will be based in Baird's Shanghai office, which also houses Baird Private Equity investment professionals.
UK mid-market private equity firm LDC, part of the Lloyds TSB Group, has hired Steven Gray, a former director of Integrated Finance with HBOS, to join the firm's Scotland office. Gray will be based in Aberdeen. He spent five years in HBOS's Global Energy team and has worked on a variety of transactions in North America and Europe. His appointment follows the recent opening of LDC's first Scottish office in Edinburgh, and LDC's £50m commitment to EPI-V, an emerging technologies oil & gas fund.
Stephen Campe has been appointed president of Investor Growth Capital, the wholly-owned venture capital arm of Investor AB. He will also be a member of Investor Growth Capital's management group. Henry E Gooss, current president of Investor Growth Capital, is retiring from that role but will remain as a senior advisor to the firm. Campe joined Investor Growth Capital US in 1998. Since then, he has been co-head of the US healthcare venture investing activities and has led a number of investments in medical device and diagnostics companies. Prior to joining Investor Growth Capital, Campe was with McKinsey & Company.
Specialty finance firm Stonehenge Growth Capital has appointed Travis Milks as vice president. Milks was a senior associate with Stonehenge until 2006. Milks recently completed his MBA and spent the summer of 2007 working as a business development manager in the online services division of Microsoft. Prior to joining Stonehenge, Milks was an associate at investment bank Morgan Keegan & Company. Stonehenge Growth Capital has approximately $677m in assets under management.
US firm Praesidian Capital Investors, a provider of mezzanine capital to mid-market companies has hired Jon E Mansfield as managing director. Mansfield will play a key role with transaction origination, structuring and execution, as well as portfolio management. Mansfield joins Praesidian with 14 years of investment banking and portfolio management experience. Most recently, he was a founding partner at WP Global Partners, a private equity firm. Previously, he held positions at The Wicks Group, where he was involved in the acquisition, financing, strategy and oversight of its investments, and at CMS Companies, where he was senior investment manager. Praesidian manages approximately $400m.
Professor Dr Udo Wupperfeld has resigned from his position as managing director of German venture capital firm Leonardo Venture Capital. The announcement by the firm follows last week's departure of Professor Dr Hans-Georg Köglmayr, stating health reasons. Professor Wupperfeld will concentrate on his teaching and research work as Professor at Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences in the future, according to a statement. Leonardo said Professor Wupperfeld had originally planned to resign from the firm in autumn.
Chicago-based healthcare sector-focused investment firm Cressey & Company has opened an office in Nashville, US. The new office is the firm's second. Cressey & Company partners Ralph Davis and Bill Frist will work from the new office. Davis was hired in January of this year, and is formerly chairman and a member of the board of directors of Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis. In November 2007, Cressey hired Frist, who previously was US Senate Majority Leader. Cressey & Company currently has three portfolio companies with headquarters in Nashville: CLP Healthcare Services, Essent Healthcare and Haven Behavioral Healthcare.
Government-owned investment business Finnish Industry Investments has hired Kati Ojaluoma, formerly a portfolio manager at PensionDanmark, as investment manager in the firm's fund investments team, with Jouni Hakala heading that team. Hakala has joined the firm as director and also a member of the firm's Management Group. Heli Kukko has been hired as investment manager in the direct growth investments team. In her new role, Ojaluoma will assess new investment prospects, prepare investment decisions and administer fund investments. Kukko will focus on assessing growth companies as potential investment prospects and preparing investment decisions. FII invests the proceeds accrued from the privatisation of state-owned companies in promoting the growth and internationalisation of Finnish businesses.
Summit Partners has appointed four new vice presidents, Amit Chaturvedy and Chris S Crawford in the Boston office and Matthias F Steinberg and Rytis Vitkauskas in the London office. Chaturvedy mostly recently worked as an investment professional with private equity firm Kildare Enterprises. Before joining Summit, Crawford worked in the investment banking and leveraged finance units at Goldman Sachs & Co. and served as a Captain in the US Army. Steinberg joins Summit from PlateTronic International. Vitkauskas previously founded and ran an IT business in Lithuania, and most recently served in the investment banking division at Merrill Lynch in London. Summit provides private equity and venture capital to companies across a range of industries. The firm has offices in Boston, Palo Alto and London.
UK mid-market private equity firm Rutland Partners has hired David Wardrop and Tristan Craddock to join the firm's investment team. Wardrop joins as an investment manager from Close Brothers Corporate Finance, where he gained experience in both the manufacturing and support services sectors. Craddock has been appointed as an investment executive. He was previously at Ernst & Young, where he worked in the firm's transaction advisory services team. The firm is currently investing its second fund, Rutland Fund II, which closed in summer 2007, on £322m.
Life science-dedicated venture capital firm New Leaf Venture Partners has appointed Dr Liam Ratcliffe as venture partner. Dr Ratcliffe will be based in the firm's New York office. He most recently served as senior vice president and development head for Pfizer Neuroscience, and also worldwide head of clinical research and development. NLV Partners invests primarily in companies focused on clinical stage biopharmaceutical products, early stage medical devices and molecular diagnostics. The firm manages over $1.3bn of assets, including NLV-I, NLV-II and the healthcare technology portfolio of Sprout Group.
Copyright © 2008 AltAssets

|