International Search Fund Conference 2015

Speakers & Participants

		Coley Andrews Founding Partner, Pacific Lake Partners (United States) Coley is a founding partner of Pacific Lake Partners, a $90 million private equity fund focused on small cap buyouts exclusively through the search fund model. Search fund investing consists of providing search and acquisition capital to promising entrepreneurs who are recent graduates of top MBA programs. The entrepreneurs' intent is to acquire a small, established company with revenues of $10 million to $30 million and a history of profits and growth.  Since co-founding Pacific Lake, Coley has invested in over 25 search funds. Coley holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a BA from Dartmouth College.
		Marc Bartomeus Managing Director, Ariol Capital (Spain) Marc is the founder and managing director of Ariol Capital, a Barcelona-based search fund. Prior to founding Ariol Capital, Marc worked for a lower-middle market private equity firm in Boston. Previously, he held several business development and sales management positions at Promax Electronics in Barcelona, Agilent Technologies in Stuttgart and Hewlett-Packard in Madrid. Marc holds an industrial engineering degree from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.
		Till Bossert Managing Partner, Kronos Kapital (Switzerland) Till is managing partner of Kronos Kapital, a Zurich-based search fund. Prior to founding Kronos in 2013, Till worked at multinational companies, such as Daimler and Robert Bosch, specializing in marketing, customer service, production engineering and supply chain. Till aslo worked at Oliver Wyman, a management consulting group. He holds a Diploma in Industrial Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe and from the Hongkong University of Science and Technology.
		Bill Egan General Partner, Alta Communications (United States)  Bill is founder and General Partner of Alta Communications and Marion Equity Partners LLC, Massachusetts-based venture capital firms. He founded Alta's predecessor firm, Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. in 1979, and has identified and backed several of America's leading growth companies. Prior to founding Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co., Bill was a Partner at TA Associates. Bill received a degree in Economics from Fairfield University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance.
		Alexander Kirn Managing Partner, Atrion Partners/Invers (Germany) Alexander is managing director of Atrion Partners, a search fund. In 2012, he completed an acquisition of Invers, a car sharing software company. Alexander holds an MBA from Harvard Business School (2009). Prior to his MBA, he worked with the private equity and venture capital firm Summit Partners where he was an investment professional in London. Prior to Summit Partners, Alexander founded a webhosting company in Germany of which he was CEO until its sale in 2006. He holds a BA in Economics from University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
		Jane Kaggwa Managing Partner, Impala Holdings/AquaVita (Kenya) Jane is the Founder and Managing Partner of Impala Investment Holdings, a Kenya-based search fund. In 2014, she became CEO of AquaVita, a water purification systems company. Jane executed private equity investments in Africa at Emerging Capital Partners and has advised clients on mergers and acquisitions in the leveraged finance division of Citi Global Markets in New York. She also worked for Bank of America’s middle market corporate banking division. She holds an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and a Bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University.
		Sandro Mina Co-Managing Director, Relay Investments (United States & Canada) Sandro Mina is co-founding Managing Director of Relay Investments in Boston, an investment firm specializing in backing search fund entrepreneurs. Prior to that he was co-founder of private equity firm Sverica International, where he spent twenty years as co-founding Partner. He served as CEO of Cameraworld.com, one of Sverica’s portfolio companies, and has served on numerous company boards as well as the board of the Swedish school in Boston. Sandro holds a BSc from Imperial College at the University of London, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
		Jonathan Moules Business Education Correspondent, Financial Times (United Kingdom) Jonathan Moules has been writing for the Financial Times since 1999. His first five years were spent in the newspaper’s New York bureau, where, as technology, media and telecoms news editor, he oversaw coverage of the 1990s dotcom bubble and the aftermath. Since September 2005, he has focused on entrepreneurship, charting the challenges of running fast growing companies and profiling founders. Jonathan is an economics graduate from the University of Liverpool.
		Anish Patel Managing Director, A.R.P. Capital Partners (United Kingdom) Prior to founding the search fund A.R.P. Capital, Anish worked at Barclays Bank and L.E.K. Consulting where he advised senior management teams and entrepreneurs across numerous industries operating in the UK, mainland Europe, Asia and Africa. He is especially experienced in creating long-term strategic objectives, financial modeling and business forecasting, organizational design and ‘100 day’ planning activities related to acquisitions. Anish holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an MA from Cambridge University in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.
		Mario Sicilia Managing Partner, Vestige Capital/Bomi de Mexico (Mexico) Prior to co-funding his search fund, Vestige Capital, Mario worked at Nexxus Capital, one of Mexico’s leading private equity firms. Prior to joining Nexxus, Mario worked at Grupo Desc, an industrial conglomerate. During the summer of 2008, Mario worked with GP Investments, the largest PE firm in Latin America. In 2011, Mario became CEO of Bomi de Mexico, a healthcare logistics company. He received his MBA from Stanford University and his bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana, where he graduated with honors.
		Jose Stella Co-CEO & Co-Founder, QMC Telecom (Brazil) Managing Partner, Ashford Venture Partners (Puerto Rico) Jose is currently Co-CEO and Co-Founder of QMC Telecom, a wireless infrastructure provider. He is also Managing Partner at Ashford Venture Partners, a private equity group focused on micro-cap private investing; predominantly through search fund vehicles. Prior to that he was the Co-Founder and President of VIU Media, an outdoor advertising company, until the sale of the company to Lamar Advertising. Previously, Jose worked at KPMG Peat Marwick in the middle-market Mergers & Acquisitions Group. Jose graduated with a BA from Babson College and an MBA from The University of Michigan.
		Ritz Steytler Managing Director, Abacus Capital/PXP (United Kingdom) Formerly a management consultant with IBM and Accenture, Ritz has over 20 year’s business and technology experience including the leadership of technology implementation projects for some of the biggest names in retail, telecommunications and financial services. In May 2011, Ritz led a major growth capital investment in Servebase (later PXP) by Abacus Partners, a search fund that he founded in 2008. Ritz successfully sold PXP in 2014. Ritz holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Computer Science from Stellenbosch University and an Executive MBA with Distinction from London Business School.
		William Thorndike Managing Director, Housatonic Partners (United States) William founded Housatonic Partners, an investment firm, in Boston in 1994 and has been Managing Director since that time.  Prior to that, William worked with T. Rowe Price Associates and Walker & Company where he was named to the Board of Directors. William is a graduate of Harvard College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a director on several company boards in the US and Europe, a Trustee of The Stanford Business School Trust, WGBH, the College of the Atlantic (Chair), and a founding partner at FARM, a social impact investing collaborative. He is the author of The Outsiders.

 

Participating International Search Funds*

Abacus Partners	Ritz Steytler	UK
Arcadia Partners	Ashwin Grover & Varun Chanrai	UK
Ariol Capital	Marc Bartomeus	Spain
ARP Capital	Anish Patel & Raj Patel	UK
Atrion Partners	Alexander Kirn	Germany
Elcano Partners	Jose Maria Vara	Spain
Hemera Partners	Alberto Pons	UK
Impala Holdings	Jane Kaggwa	Kenya
Innova-Mex Capital	Eduardo Clave & Gustavo Fernandez	Mexico
Kronos Kapital	Tobias Raeber & Till Bossert	Switzerland
KvS Beteiligung	Dennis Kogan & Björn von Siemens	Germany
Nusantara Partners	Ray Pulungan & Brendan Dowdle	Indonesia
Pepper Oaks Capital	Matthias Knaur	Austria
Vento Capital	Felix Cardenas & Gustavo Trevino	Mexico
Vestige Capital	Mario Sicilia & Jose Antonio Fernandez	Mexico

* International Search Funds that have confirmed their participation as of September 2014.