The Power Top 50

Meet the investors, serial entrepreneurs and advisers that every growing company should know in this influential annual ranking.

1.Jon Moulton, founder, Alchemy

Not so long ago, Jon Moulton was hissed and booed at a speech that he gave at a private equity conference in Munich on the super returns of the leveraged buy-out funds. For the past 18 months, he has railed against the ‘wall of cheap and indiscriminate money for deals’ and the bonuses that warped the judgements of investment bankers.

When the money was rolling in, no one cared to listen. Now Moulton, who heads up the private equity firm Alchemy, which manages around £2.5 billion of funds, finds himself regularly appearing on TV and radio to discuss “toxic debt”, government rescue plans and the global banking debacle.

Never one to mince his words, Moulton believes this recession will be ‘deep, long and horrible’. He says: ‘The survivors will be those who are looking after their cash. The companies which are trying to be innovative, bold, will mostly fail, sadly. New products don’t prosper in tough markets. It will be really dull [in 2009], so those [businesses] who don’t spend a lot and look after their working capital, and have proper financial controls, are the ones who are likely to come through this. This is the year for survival, not prosperity.’

As for the government attempts to kick-start the economy, he says that ‘all it has done is to unfortunately guarantee a very slow recovery from [the recession], given the amount of public debt we are going to have’. The future may be bleak, but Moulton chirpily observes that Alchemy, which has 24 firms in its portfolio, did well in 2008, posting a positive return – ‘albeit only just’. The highlight came from the exit of its compressed air company CompAir. ‘It made us four and a half times our money and well over a £100 million gain.’

2. Ashish Patel, MD, Intel Capital

Few private equity players can compete with the firepower of a serious corporate investor such as Intel Capital. The organisation has a $2.1 billion investment portfolio and invested $1.6 billion in technology companies across the world last year, 2.5 times as much as in 2007. Unlike a private equity firm, it has a dual purpose: to offer strategic support to its parent, chip maker Intel, and to generate financial returns, a portion of which are returned to Intel’s coffers.

‘The advantage we have is that we’re under no pressure to invest anything because it’s our own money,’ says approachable MD Ashish Patel. ‘We could do as little as zero or as much as we did last year.’

During 2008, some 62 per cent of invested cash went outside the US, including 31 per cent in Asia (Patel is particularly bullish about China and India). But the highlight of the year was Intel’s exit from open source database company MySQL.

‘Very few European companies achieve exits of $1 billion plus. We have participated in more than any other investor, and we’re very pleased with that,’ says Patel. Naturally, exit prospects are less rosy for 2009, but for an investor like Intel there is no need to rush things: ‘With no compelling event to make us want to sell, we will wait for the IPO market to recover,’ he states.

Though Patel strikes a more upbeat note than most investors at the moment, there is one cloud on the horizon. For all its firepower, ICAP needs deep-pocketed co-investors to build more billion dollar companies, and in Europe these are in short supply.

‘Within all of Europe I could count probably less than 12 firms with firepower of more than E200 million. There is a huge tapering off after that,’ says Patel. ‘I continue to be very concerned for venture capital in Europe and the effect [limited funding] will have on the innovation we need to fuel growth in the future.’

3.Anne Glover, co-founder, Amadeus Capital Partners

It’s not surprising that Amadeus takes an international view of investment: Anne Glover is both a UK and US citizen (after living in the States for 13 years) and co-founder Hermann Hauser is an Austrian native who speaks four languages. Last year, Glover led a government review into procurement, which put forward several measures to make it easier for SMEs to secure and service public sector contracts. The ‘core recommendation’, she says, was a single website through which government tenders can be advertised, creating a ‘level playing field’ for SMEs and their larger counterparts. Some were disappointed that there was no set share of government work that should go to SMEs. ‘For that to work it would have needed to be cascaded into hundreds of targets, creating a bureaucracy that would have been completely unhelpful,’ Glover argues.

Amadeus has £460 million under management and raised £162 million for its latest fund, of which about two-thirds remains uninvested. Glover says 27 of the firm’s 37 portfolio companies address a global market (‘and I mean truly global’) and are therefore little affected by the domestic UK or even US economy. The global economy, Glover reminds us, is likely to see ‘low single-digit growth’ rather than recession. ‘The biggest risk is the financing environment, not the companies’ operations,’ she states, adding that the emphasis in 2009 will be on ‘husbanding’ existing companies.

A key investment last year was UK-based EnQii, which installs and manages web-enabled digital advertising, including video. Amadeus and Wellington Partners (see Eric Archambeau, right) invested $18 million in the company in September and Glover says it is seeing ‘huge growth in China’.

4.Eric Archambeau, general partner, Wellington Partners

Trained as an engineer at Stanford University, Eric Archambeau gained an MBA from Santa Clara University and a PhD in computer science from Grenoble – all described as the ‘usual thing that European immigrants did in the 1980s’. He went to work as an engineer in Silicon Valley before deciding it was time to strike out on his own as an entrepreneur.

Archambeau’s experience as an owner-manager has proved invaluable now that he’s on the other side as a backer of fast-growing companies. Leading Wellington Partners, which manages $1.2 billion and has 40 companies in its portfolio, the laid-back and fiercely intelligent Archambeau sees the big opportunities as predominantly coming from online innovation, such as casual gaming, the music industry and retail.

5. Simon Cook, CEO, DFJ Esprit

A graduate of UMIST, Simon Cook set up professional services firm KPMG’s internet consulting practice in 1994 before moving to investment giant 3i. It was here that he led the first £6 million round of investment into Cambridge Silicon Radio, maker of the Bluetooth chip. Seven years later, the company was worth $4 billion. The past couple of years have seen Cook lead the merger of Cazenove Private Equity with Prelude Ventures and negotiate Esprit’s partnership with DFJ to form DFJ Esprit. He believes the firm is well positioned. ‘We make our returns through growth. At the macroeconomic level, the world is slowing down, but within the entire economy, there are always pockets of growth.’

6. Patrick Reeve, MD, Albion

Recently Close Ventures announced a management buy-out from former parent Close Brothers (which retains a minority stake). The business, which is now called Albion, manages seven VCTs with assets of more than £250 million and is still headed by archaeology buff Patrick Reeve.

Reeve says the investment outlook is ‘getting interesting’, with a detachment he can afford as he has always insisted his portfolio companies should have no outside borrowing. ‘I got a bit cheesed off with banks about seven years ago,’ he recalls. ‘I just felt small companies didn’t need to compound their risk by giving undue power to banks which had an entirely different agenda.’

Last year, Reeve and his team concentrated on ‘bedding down’ the portfolio. ‘We’ve seen this recession coming for quite a while and we’ve been making sure companies have the necessary funding and are cash positive,’ he says, adding that costs have been cut as ‘there’s an awful lot of fat that can be cut out quite sensibly’.

The results of such prudence are reflected in the firm’s record: ‘In 13 years, only two companies have gone into receivership out of 70, and we bought one of those back. That reflects the attention we’ve put into cash [flow] and profitability.’

7. Wol Kolade, managing partner, ISIS Private Equity

It’s barely a year since Wol Kolade was chairman of the British Venture Capital Association (BVCA), but we’re living in a different world. Far from having to defend its rich returns from the noisy attacks of newspapers and trade unions, the private equity industry is fighting off the twin challenges of the credit crunch and a deepening recession.

One bright spot, for those not under pressure to exit, is sharply falling valuations. ‘Pricing is coming back to reality and the ten times EBITDA we saw recently is now not going to happen,’ says Kolade. All the more impressive that ISIS pulled off two lucrative exits last year, environmental consultancy SLR in March for six times its money, and day care company Kids Unlimited in April for 4.75 times.

Unsurprisingly, the second half was quieter on the exit front, and Kolade sees the main opportunity at the moment in growing portfolio companies rather than selling them. ‘We don’t have a lot of gearing in our companies, so if we’re strong in the sector or the subsector, and others have more debt than us, we can offer a home to come to,’ he states, adding that many are keen to sell. For all that, he remains realistic. Though ISIS invested £75 million in seven deals last year, he does not expect 2009 to be equally active. ‘People are focusing on trading rather than raising capital,’ he says.

8. Martin McNair, general partner, Advent Venture Partners

‘Tech exits are undoubtedly going to be difficult as there is considerable uncertainty among major buyers,’ comments Advent’s Martin McNair. ‘Everyone is saying that consumer spending is down and enterprises are being cautious about capital spend. How that permeates the industry and suppliers and, in turn, the buyers of these high-growth businesses, remains to be seen.’ MacNair says that bright spots in 2008 for Advent, which manages around $1 billion via three funds, include off-shore wave electricity generation company Orecon, local search and recommendation website Qype, and Audium, a Bristol-based company that specialises in reducing the energy output of audio electronics. While exits may be thin on the ground, he sees exciting opportunities around the corner in venture buy-outs.

9. David Hall, managing director of private equity, YFM

A real highlight for David Hall in 2008 was the $30 million sale of wireless router manufacturer Sarian Systems to a US company. ‘It made eight times our money and keeps a good employment base in Yorkshire. For me, that was a sterling effort really.’

YFM, which has 280 companies in its portfolio, manages £300 million of assets and has £85 million in cash to invest in early stage companies. For Hall, in the latter half of 2008 especially, ‘the ingenuity of entrepreneurs in keeping going and working round the money drying up was very impressive to see’.

Going forward, he questions the effectiveness of the latest £20 billion government bail-out as ‘it still requires state aid, which means they can’t do it yet until the European commission signs it off. It might not be around for a few months’.

Hall maintains his mantra from last year’s Power Top 50 that now is a great time for entrepreneurs to break up market monopolies and dated business models. It is, however, easier said than done. ‘The only certainty is change,’ he comments.

10. Bernard Fairman, managing partner, Foresight Group

Foresight is in a period of transition as Bernard Fairman steers the firm’s interests toward managing alternative assets, notably in the renewable energy space. ‘We raised £70 million in new money last year, which I believe is more than we have raised in any other year. For the first three quarters, money raising was good. In the final quarter, it was slow but that was when the world was falling apart. Now it’s picking up slightly.’ Some £20 million of that new money came from taking over the Noble Venture Capital Trust. ‘We also opened a new business in the area of owning, operating and building solar plants,’ Fairman adds.

11. Alex Snow, CEO, Evolution Group

Evolution’s rapid growth over the past five years, its diversification into the now-fashionable fixed-income markets and its £125 million cash pile mean it is one City institution that is facing the future with relative confidence. In addition to its £4 billion fund management business, boosted by the November acquisition of Singer & Friedlander out of administration, Evolution advises more than 50 AIM companies. The group’s aggressive expansion showed no sign of slowing last year as it picked up refugees from Lehman Brothers, Royal Bank of Scotland, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. ‘This is a 100-year storm – we see it as a real opportunity to grow,’ Snow declares

12. Bob Holt, CEO and chairman, Mears Group

Social housing maintenance and care provider Mears Group moved from AIM to the Main Market last year, the culmination of a decade’s rapid but largely debt-free growth. Tireless chairman and CEO Bob Holt also makes time for charity work and to help smaller companies: for instance, he’s chairman of mobile gaming concern Mfuse. ‘I was impressed with their position in the UK market and I enjoy helping young management teams get to the next stage,’ he states.

13. Peter Cullum, executive chairman, Towergate

Insurance luminary Peter Cullum has rewritten the rule book on acquisitions, overseeing more than 130 of them during his time at Towergate. While there is constant speculation at Cullum’s personal wealth – often estimated at around £1 billion – he talks with genuine enthusiasm about his own and Towergate’s philanthropic activities. ‘Whatever I’m worth, which is probably far more than I ever deserve, I believe there is an obligation to give something back,’ he says.

14. Richard Feigen, MD, Seymour Pierce

While it remains the top broker and the leading nomad on AIM by number of clients represented, Seymour Pierce is reaping the benefits of the emphasis the firm placed on non-quoted activities under the stewardship of MD Richard Feigen. Feigen, who foresaw ‘blood on the trading floor’ during 2008, was proved correct in that prediction, though his hunch that the market would turn by the end of the year proved over-optimistic. Nevertheless, the firm is one of the few that continues to raise money for its AIM clients in an almost impossible market. It was the most active nomad during 2008, helping to bring in £118 million for six companies including ethanol venture Bioenergy Africa, whose September IPO raised £8.6 million.

15. Danny Rimer, general partner, Index Ventures

Index bagged the Venture Capital Fund of the Year and Exit of the Year at the Business XL Investor AllStars Awards at the tail end of 2008. The firm actively invests in start-ups, as shown by the recent $17 million series B investment in social network games company Playfish (jointly with Accel Partners) and the focus is still very much on finding great, disruptive early-stage concerns and investing for mega exits. General partner Danny Rimer joined the London office in 2002 and is associated with some of the greatest tech exits in recent memory, such as KVS, Skype and open source database company MySQL.

16. Alex Macpherson, chief executive, Octopus Ventures

Former investment banker Alex Macpherson was among the partners at early-stage investor Katalyst Ventures, which was acquired by Octopus in 2007. He’s clearly delighted with the results (‘18 months later and I’m still looking around trying to work out who the loser was’) and relishes the extra firepower provided by the Octopus VCTs. Meanwhile, Octopus has gained from Katalyst’s investor network, a group of around 100 individuals who are looking to offer expertise as well as money to portfolio companies. ‘It works well because as a generalist investor you would never be able to build a team big enough to encompass all sectors,’ Macpherson states. Despite growing risk aversion among investors, Octopus raised £32 million for Titan VCTs 1 and 2, which closed last year, and has netted £6 million so far for Titan VCT 3. Over the next 12 months, the ventures team expects to invest £15 million to £20 million in early-stage business, keeping an eye on ‘larger organisations spinning out non-core areas’ as well as acquisition opportunities for portfolio companies. Exit-wise, ‘it’s become much harder’, but Macpherson takes comfort from the fact that many potential acquirers are cash rich and the prices needed to generate good returns are ‘not quite pocket change, but amounts that would not require stock exchange announcements’. Cherished portfolio companies include web search engine True Knowledge and “USB key” developer The Key Revolution.

17. Ross Marshall, chief executive, Dunedin Capital Partners

A generalist investor focusing on mid-market deals of less than £100 million, Dunedin’s priority for 2009 is to ‘protect value in the existing portfolio’, according to Edinburgh-based chief executive Ross Marshall. ‘At the moment, the market is very, very quiet,’ says Marshall. ‘The only companies that are getting sold are those with distressed sellers.’ Like all private equity investors, Dunedin is finding the debt that flowed freely 18 months ago much harder to come by. ‘They say “four is the new two and two is the new four”,’ says Marshall, ‘meaning that the [lender’s] margin is now four per cent when it used to be two per cent, and the debt multiple is now two per cent when it used to be four.’ Funding worries aside, Dunedin pulled off some market-defining deals in the final quarter of 2008 including the sale of aerospace components manufacturer Gardner and, in a dispiriting credit climate, the buy-out of trust management business Hawksford from parent company Rathbone.

18. Nick Robertson, CEO, ASOS

There seems to be no stopping online clothes retailer ASOS, which has provided a consistent silver lining in the prevailing gloom. With revenues up 118 per cent year-on-year in the nine weeks to 16 January, it’s a cheerleader for the e-commerce sector and a champion of AIM too, with shares up nearly 3,900 per cent over the past five years. Nevertheless, chief executive Nick Robertson strikes a note of caution, explaining that margins will continue to reduce as the company faces competition from widespread discounting on the high street and, in response to this, ASOS has added an increasing proportion of branded items (as opposed to its own imitations) to its mix. Growing the top line is crucial, he explains: ‘It’s becoming apparent that there’s a big landgrab as far as online fashion is concerned. You’ve got to be in it to win it and we are doing whatever is necessary.'

19. Steven Nicholls, partner, 3i

3i may have left early-stage venture capital behind, but it’s a major player when it comes to making minority investments in established companies. Steven Nicholls, who leads 3i’s growth capital business, says it made ten investments and exited ten in Europe last year. Debt across the portfolio is less than double earnings, so ‘the debt markets are not fundamentally impacting our business model,’ adds Nicholls.

The growth capital business of 3i, which invested nearly £1 billion globally last year and whose portfolio is valued at £2 billion, is unusual in that it concentrates on businesses which are ‘not for sale’. In other words, the companies’ current owners wish to keep a majority stake while benefiting from the leverage and global contacts of an experienced investor. The approach is nothing new – 3i has been doing it since 1945 – but its push to grow the business globally has paid off, with ‘consistent private-equity style returns of 25 per cent across the past five years’, according to Nicholls.

20. Charles Ind, managing partner, Bowmark Capital

Harvard MBA graduate Charles Ind says 2008 was ‘one of the best years in our history, despite being an incredibly challenging period for the industry as a whole’. Both contentions are hard to argue with, with 12 out of 13 of Bowmark’s portfolio companies growing sales and profits over the year: Ind cites an average turnover increase of 26 per cent and profit growth of 30 per cent.

Bowmark positions itself at the smaller end of the mid-market, investing between £15 million and £35 million in deals which usually involve an element of debt, though they are not highly leveraged. Its latest fund raised £265 million and has made just one investment so far, the £75 million buy-out of East Anglia residential care home operator Healthcare Homes (in which the equity component of £35 million represented Bowmark’s biggest deal to date). On the exit front, the highlight of last year was the £100 million sale of Education and Adventure Travel, which was formed from a merger of two Bowmark portfolio companies. This achieved a multiple of 4.4 times cost for one company and 3.7 times for the other, ‘a really good return in a tough old market’, according to the upbeat Ind.

21. John Dodd, co-founder, Artemis

In common with most small-cap investments, the UK Smaller Companies Fund managed by John Dodd has taken a sledgehammer hit in the past 12 months. The fund more than halved in value during 2008 and now accounts for around £260 million of investors’ money as opposed to £700 million a year ago. All the more creditable, then, that it’s managed annualised returns of more than 14 per cent over the past ten years. With investee companies valued at an average of £135 million, Dodd has stayed firmly within the small-cap arena: key AIM-listed investments include antibody producer Abcam and online wholesaler Booker.

22. James Dyson, founder of vacuum company Dyson

In addition to his other business activities, billionaire sir James Dyson was on the brink of investing £12.5 million into a foundation school in Bath this year. But the Yorkshire entrepreneur, most famous for blasting the dust off the vacuum cleaner market, abandoned the project after a planning inquiry was called for and his funding proposal rejected by the government. Last year it was also reported that the ever-active inventor had been working on a design for a solar-powered car. Meanwhile, the core business is weathering the downturn well: Dyson’s interim report in November announced that the company, whose products are among the highest-priced on the market, managed to sustain sales at last year’s levels despite grim trading conditions

23. Richard Plackett, fund manager, BlackRock UK Smaller Companies

Following the collapse of Merrill Lynch, Richard Plackett’s £265 million UK Smaller Companies fund has changed its name but retained strong results, turning in a typical top-quartile performance during the choppy waters of last year. Former 3i venture capitalist Plackett also manages the £620 million BlackRock UK Special Situations fund, which invests in medium-sized as well as small companies and sees real potential in the software sector.

24. John Hayward, CEO, Pressure Technologies

Pressure Technologies was formed in 2004 following a management buy-out from its German parent company. The manufacturer of high-pressure cylinders floated on AIM in June 2007 and its share price has risen more than a third since then, a sign that investors have recognised its eye-catching financials and strong potential. CEO John Hayward, who led the 2004 buy-out, says recent growth has been driven by the oil and gas sector, which continues to invest for the long term despite volatile oil prices over the past year. Further down the pipeline, he’s eyeing developments in biogas, which he says offer turnover-enhancing opportunities from 2010

25. Rod Richards, managing partner, Graphite Capital

For Graphite Capital’s managing partner Rod Richards a recession is ‘the most interesting time to be making investments’. The mid-market buy-out firm manages private funds and a listed investment trust totalling some £1.2 billion. Its current fund still has around £500 million to invest. ‘I would hope to have invested most of it by the end of the downturn,’ says Richards, who adds that, at the moment, falling valuations mean ‘it is possible to do pretty interesting deals without needing large amounts of debt’

26. Sam Smith, MD, FinnCap

Broker and AIM adviser FinnCap was formed when enterprising MD Sam Smith led the split from parent company JM Finn last August. Smith holds a nine per cent stake in the firm, which is dedicated to the small-cap sector and, since the split, has grown its number of AIM clients from 28 to close to 50. Among the clients it gained last year is mobile email company Synchronica, on whose behalf FinnCap raised £5.1 million in an institutional placing to fund the acquisition of competitor AxisMobile.

27. Dr Mike Lynch, CEO, Autonomy

The UK’s most successful software company, Autonomy, exists ‘in a market of one,’ according to CEO Dr Mike Lynch. Occasionally accused of being aloof, Lynch has every right to be proud of his company’s uniqueness: in a climate where many are struggling, Autonomy posted 47 per cent revenue growth and promptly acquired web content firm Interwoven for $775 million a day later. Lynch started Autonomy in 1996, drawing on research he had conducted at Cambridge into probability and particularly a statistical inference theorem developed by the Rev Thomas Bayes in the 18th century. Autonomy’s search technology uses both learning and inference to actually ‘understand’ what’s being looked for.

28. Mary Monfries, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Champion of growing businesses, Mary Monfries saw her role at PricewaterhouseCooper broaden last year to head of tax practice for entrepreneurs, private companies and private clients (EPC). ‘I passionately believe that it is privately owned businesses that will see us through the downturn, as they have the flexibility to move quicker than public companies,’ she says. Monfries argues that it is crucial that medium-sized companies are not overlooked in policy attempts to free up capital for business. She has 19 years’ experience with the firm, working in a number of different roles within the SME and private capital market.

29. David Jackson, CEO, Redhall Group

Redhall, the nuclear sector support services concern led by no-nonsense entrepreneur David Jackson, is shrugging off the economic downturn and delivering forecast-beating figures. The company is a specialist engineer focused on growing, resilient sectors such as nuclear, oil and food and has just emerged from an outstanding past year during which it generated some £5.8 million of cash and grew its forward order book significantly. Meanwhile, the recent acquisition of rival Chieftain boosts prospects within Redhall’s nuclear operations as well as opening up new markets.

30. Jeremy Hand, co-founder of Lyceum Capital

Jeremy Hand took over as Chairman of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) in March. At an after-dinner speech, the straight-talking chair credited the much-maligned private equity industry with helping tackle some of the problems of the economic slowdown. ‘As the banks have stopped lending, private equity has become one of the few sources of capital that is helping to oil our creaking economy,’ he stated.

31. Jamie Constable, CEO, RCapital

Turnaround firm RCapital made headlines when it took over struggling Little Chef. It may be making some more as CEO Jamie Constable says he’s looking at ‘a ridiculous quantity of opportunities on a daily basis’. But it isn’t simply a matter of buying up bust businesses at a knock-down price and injecting cash. ‘Choosing an opportunity is difficult because nobody knows how bad [the recession’s] going to be,’ he states, adding that he’s focusing on defensive subsectors such as ‘project management to government-funded infrastructure projects’ and ‘recruitment for the not-for-profit sector’.

32. Simon Brickles, chairman, PLUS Markets Group

The PR war that PLUS chief Simon Brickles had been waging against AIM went one step further last year as the former barrister began a legal challenge to force the market to allow its companies to be traded on PLUS without authorisation. The conflict has an added irony because Brickles used to run AIM himself before creating PLUS from the ashes of Ofex. The trading of LSE-quoted shares is just part of PLUS’s business: it also offers its own exchange.

33. Kate Sharp, CEO, ABFA

The head of the asset-based finance industry’s trade association, ABFA, is self-confessed DIY freak Kate Sharp. She mounts a spirited defence of the industry, arguing that by advancing money against assets (frequently invoices) it has followed a more sustainable and prudent model than some other lenders. Both the total amount of money advanced by ABFA’s members, and the volume of invoices processed by those firms, have shown double-digit percentage increases over the past five years, Sharp adds, ‘showing [companies’] growing need for liquidity’.

34. Richard Ford, CEO, WH Ireland

Manchester-based WH Ireland is one of the true champions of AIM’s minnows: as a broker, its AIM-listed clients have an average market capitalisation of £7 million, compared to £28 million for the rest of the leading ten brokers on the market (see AIM Adviser Index, page 63). Richard Ford became CEO in November after long-time contact and ex-Tory treasurer Lord Marland (together with other backers) took a big stake in the firm, giving Ford the wherewithal to go on a hiring spree as most of the City looks to fire and make cuts.

35. Carl Jackson, director, Tenon Group

During the credit boom, Tenon (whose name comes from a type of joint in woodwork) was quietly growing its business recovery arm by acquisition. Now 22 per cent of its income comes from its insolvency services, which are delivered from 30 of its 41 national offices. ‘We can empathise with the problems that businesses are facing at the moment because we’ve been there ourselves – it’s not just classroom theory,’ says Carl Jackson, the head of Tenon’s recovery division, who explains that many of Tenon’s partners have run businesses themselves rather than working their way up a corporate ladder within ‘a cosseted environment’

36. George Coelho, managing director and head of venture capital, Good Energies

Keen guitarist George Coelho opted to play a different tune in May last year when he left Balderton Capital to become a managing director and head of venture capital at Good Energies, where he is primarily responsible for the European solar investment team.

37. Christina Domecq, CEO and co-founder, SpinVox
Over the past decade, Christina Domecq has founded and run three businesses in technology-based and management services. In 2006, she won the Ernst and Young UK Entrepreneur of the Year and the Ernst and Young Science and Technology Entrepreneur of the Year awards and serves on the boards of several businesses. Still in her early thirties, Domecq intends to create a ‘worldwide leader in voice messaging’ and given that SpinVox has received over £100 million of VC investment, there are quite a few people who believe she and the company’s co-founder – Daniel Doulton – can deliver.

38. Ernie Richardson, MD and managing partner, MTI

When it comes to fostering innovation, Ernie Richardson and his team at venture capital firm MTI continue to be right there for ambitious companies, as demonstrated by its partnership with the University of Manchester to develop world class spin-outs.

39. Matthew Riley, CEO, Daisy Communications
Relentlessly upbeat Lancashire lad Matt Riley founded his fourth company, Daisy, in 2001. He was 25. After going three years without a salary, he’s seen his hard work pay off and is now buying up rival business-to-business telecoms companies wherever he can while remaining a 100 per cent shareholder in Daisy. Despite winning Bank of Scotland’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award (and a £5 million interest-free loan), Riley retains a typical Northener’s dislike of pomposity. ‘I don’t class myself as an entrepreneur as such,’ he says. ‘I’ve always been a deal doer – I was the kid in the playground selling sweets, doing newspaper rounds, milk rounds, you name it.’

40. Marion Bernard, CEO, NorthStar Private Equity

NorthStar Private Equity is helping fledgling businesses in a part of the country where venture capital often fears to tread. It recently invested £210,000 in technology concern Quick TV and has £33 million of funds under management. Marion Bernard earned her stripes at 3i, where she worked for six years, and is one of the handful of women who head up a venture capitalist firm.

41. Rob Carroll, MD, Catapult Venture Managers

Few investors were more active than Catapult last year: the firm, which manages £80 million across three funds, did 26 deals in 12 months. MD Rob Carroll says the plan for 2009 is to ‘invest sensibly’, making five to six investments of between £1 million and £1.5 million.

42. Don McLaverty, director of Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION)

‘The key thing is this was an innovative deal,’ enthuses Don McLaverty, who was responsible for brokering a co-investment programme with Bank of Scotland last year, an agreement that saw the bank match OION’s £2 million fund for small companies. The network consists of individuals who typically invest between £10,000 and £200,000 in investment rounds of between £200,000 and £2 million for ten to 15 companies each year.

43. Rob Donaldson, head of M&A and private equity, Baker Tilly

Deals in 2009 will come from distressed situations, refinancings and buy-outs, says Rob Donaldson, a dealmaker at advisory firm Baker Tilly. ‘There are a lot of parent companies that need to sell.'

44. Philip Secrett, corporate finance partner – Capital Markets Division, Grant Thornton

One of the perennial figures on the growth company scene, Philip Secrett has been instrumental in making professional services firm Grant Thornton AIM’s leading accountant by number of clients (209).

45. Mark Wignall, chief executive, Matrix Private Equity Partners

Down-to-earth chief executive Mark Wignall of private equity concern Matrix expects deals to pick up later this year as entrepreneurs and investors come to terms with lower valuations.

46. Jonathan Kestenbaum, chief executive, NESTA

LSE and Cambridge graduate Jonathan Kestenbaum is charged with encouraging innovation among UK businesses. One of his key concerns is that private capital is abandoning young tech ventures.

47. Tim Campbell, founder of the Bright Ideas Trust

Not only did former star of The Apprentice Tim Campbell give up his £100,000 job up with Sir Alan Sugar to start a male grooming business, but last year he founded the Bright Ideas Trust to get disadvantaged young people into business. ‘Because of my background, helping young people from socially excluded groups learn about enterprise is something I really care about,’ says the personable Londoner.

48. Stephen Bourne, corporate finance, BDO Stoy Hayward

Oversees the deal-making division of the mid-tier firm

49. Clive Garston, corporate finance partner, Halliwells

Seasoned deal broker at solicitor Halliwells

50. Alki David, CEO, FilmOn

Slightly bonkers perhaps, but any man who can make a film about Kelly Brook as a mermaid, along with a pseudo-documentary about the Cheeky Girls, has to be given his due. Billionaire Alki David is, however, deadly serious about making his video on-demand website FilmOn a success, as big-hitting marketing campaigns last year and multimillion pound profits have demonstrated.

Casualties of 2008	Previous position
Jonathan Brown, corporate finance chief, Landsbanki	17
Derek Mapp, non-exec chairman, Staffline	46
Andrew Monk, founder, Blue Oar Securities	34
Roger Parry, exec chairman, Media Square	19
Doug Richard, Library House	45