IMPRIMATUR CAPITAL - Key Persons
Christopher founded Fair-Lead Partners which was a FCA regulated boutique advisory firm, in 2009 after a seventeen year career with blue chip Investment banks, predominantly in Asia. As a Managing Director and Head of Asian Equities, at Cazenove Asia, Christopher was responsible for the regulatory operation of the platform, with ninety research, sales and trading staff in five global locations. He had operational oversight of the business and was an integral part of the sale of Cazenove Asia to Standard Chartered Bank. Previously, he was an Executive Director of Equity Capital Markets (ECM) and Global Head of Asian Equity
Syndicate at Morgan Stanley Asia. He has extensive experience in ECM transactions, Initial Public Offerings and allocations and operational risk.
Christopher currently holds three Non-Executive Directorships at his Investee Companies and a BSc Hons Chemistry from the University of London.
Ben has previously been involved in a wide range of technology and knowledge transfer programs in the UK higher education sector including leading the technology transfer team at the University of Surrey. In particular, he has developed extensive networks of both private and public sector partners to deliver major transactions, projects and high-quality deal flow. With Imprimatur Capital he has been responsible for international commercial partnerships with universities and research institutes across 14 territories including Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe, and South America. Ben has established incubation space, accelerator programmes and seed funds to support high-tech spin-outs from universities and has had direct involvement in more than 50 investments in university-sourced technology.
He has worked extensively on innovation programmes with international organisations such as the UN and multi-national companies with a certain focus on development of major low-carbon technology campaigns in China, India and the Gulf Region. He has undertaken consultancy and other advisory roles for government organisations in Russia, Sweden and New Zealand among others (including working with the UK and Brazil patent offices to harmonise IP provisions in technology transfer agreements) and has represented the UK as an expert at both the European Commission and the European Council. He is currently a member of the BIS UK-China Experts Working Group.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Africa Strategy Coordinator
- Strategy Consultant
Hans has been an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant working in Europe, USA, Middle East and India since 1988 after attending the University of Nyenrode, a renowned business school in The Netherlands. His vast fields of experience span from mobile technology disciplines and cloud computing to on- and offline consumer marketing.
As an entrepreneur, Hans has (co-)founded over twenty-five companies. Some of these were acquired, some merged with other companies and some failed utterly with the latter bringing most valuable lessons learned.
As strategy consultant, Hans has consulted with over 250 companies, including publicly listed companies (mainly in The Netherlands) and SME's working mainly with Entrepreneurs and Shareholders, Directors and Management Teams. His consultancy work has also included active support of numerous startups and Informal Investors, and he played interim C-level roles for several ventures. Hans has a proven track record in turnarounds, both small private companies and divisions of larger companies.
Ian has a corporate finance legal background with SJ Berwin & Co and Sheridans (where he was an equity partner) both being well known City of London law firms. He left law in 1995 to become a founding director and shareholder of one of the UK's first significant e-commerce retailer which was sold to a major UK publicly listed company for c.$30m in 1999. He then founded a digital distribution and corporate communications group (Tornado Group plc.), which floated on AIM in March 2000 raising c.$22m. Ian was the group CEO and then, following a successful merger, the Executive Chairman before stepping down in 2002 to form Imprimatur with Andy Bottomley. Ian was also a founder of the radio marketing group Inmedia plc, which floated on AIM in Dec 2003. Ian has substantial private and public company board-level operational and advisory experience including fundraising, listings and M&A transactions.
Katarina has more than 15 years of professional experience across most of the sub-sectors of energy, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, power, water and natural gas. She currently works with private sector clients, enabling their innovation and market entry into clean energy markets in South East Asia, Middle East and Central Asia.
Katarina has worked with leading government institutions globally: European Commission and Dubai. She has experience leading and contributing to market intelligence, policy and regulatory affairs and go to market strategy work in more than 30 countries. Her strength is in delivering in coordination with multiple stakeholders, building partnerships that fit into future energy trends and policy developments. She has Global Executive MBA from Insead and Master from Sciences Po in Paris.
Kirsten has delivered urban infrastructure and local economic development consultancies for multilateral development banks such as EBRD and AfDB, and led major initiatives for governments in Syria, Russia, China and Nigeria. She has designed and delivered cities and economic development programmes for a wide range of foundations, multi-laterals and corporates such as Sida, UN Foundation, Zennstrom Foundation and Intel. Programmes include global policy and standards initiatives, urban innovation programmes and multi-stakeholder engagement platforms. Kirsten has also delivered extensive architecture, urban planning, sustainable development and communications consultancies for corporate, NGO and local government clients in the UK, Europe and USA.
Peter Jaco is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor specialising in cyber security, internet of things and block chain technologies. After his 10-year career at Reuters where he was commercial director for their US$1bn interbank transactions products trading business, he has co-founded or invested in several cyber security and encryption start-ups including BeCrypt and Digital Shadows.
He is a long-term member of the Institute of Directors and experienced Board member having served as Chair, Deputy Chair, NED and advisor to several start-ups and Government backed quangos. He has served as a mentor and judge on a number of start-up accelerator programs and has recently served as advisor to Innovate UK's Transport System Catapult. He holds an MBA in international business from London's CASS Business school.
As a banker with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), for the past 12 years Toby Moore has been originating, structuring and implementing equity and debt transactions in a variety of sectors in Central and Eastern Europe, primarily in the Baltic States and Russia. In addition to a number of direct equity investments and board positions, Toby's main focus has been on private equity funds where he represented EBRD as a core investor and was active on a number of fund boards or investment committees. Based in Riga for six years he headed EBRD's operations in Latvia for more than three years. He was one of the founders of the Latvian Venture Capital Association and has assisted the Latvian