The Ventura team has more than 50 years of global institutional investment experience across several sectors including financial services, retail and technology.
Rick Haythornthwaite is the global chairman of Mastercard Inc and an Advisory Partner to Moelis & Co. He was previously the CEO of Invensys from 2001-2005 and Blue Circle Industries. He has served on the boards of Network Rail as chairman and Cookson, Lafarge, ICI and Land Securities as non-executive director. In the UK non-for-profit sector he is the current chair of the Creative Industries Federation.
Rick
Haythornthwaite
Lord Mandelson is Co-founder and Chairman of Global Counsel. He is a former European Trade Commissioner and British First Secretary of State. As Trade Commissioner between 2004 and 2008, he negotiated trade agreements with many countries and led European negotiations in the WTO Doha World Trade Round.
Prior to this, he held a number of Cabinet posts under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown including Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Northern Ireland Secretary andSecretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. He was Member of Parliament for Hartlepool in the UK from 1992 until 2004 and Director of Campaigns and Communications for the Labour Party between 1985 and 1990.
As well as Chairman of Global Counsel, Lord Mandelson is a member of the International Advisory Committee of BlueVoyant, a cyber security company and member of the Group Holding Board of the Bank of London. He is a Governor and Member of the Council of Management at the Ditchley Foundation. Lord Mandelson is Chairman of the Design Museum in London and Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University.
Lord Peter Mandelson
Elizabeth A. LaPuma brings over two decades of financial advisory and board expertise across diverse industries. With a strong background in originating and structuring complex financial transactions, she is a trusted advisor to numerous business leaders. Ms. LaPuma is a board member for businesses within the fintech, artificial intelligence, healthcare, consumer, and real estate sectors. Prior to these roles, Ms. LaPuma was a Managing Director and Head of Balance Sheet Advisory at UBS. Prior to UBS, she was a Managing Director and head of Asset Management Services at Alvarez & Marsal, advising governments and financial institutions on diverse assets. Ms. LaPuma’s earlier career includes roles at BlackRock and Lazard Frères & Co. LLC, Credit Suisse.
Elizabeth LaPuma
Sir William took office as the 692nd Lord Mayor of the City of London in November 2019. He has over thirty years’ experience in the financial and business City including holding senior positions in the national and international Banking sector. In 1987 he went to work for First Boston Corporation before joining Merrill Lynch in 1992 as an Investment Banker in Institutional Equity Sales, working in Asia, New York and London. Sir William is currently Chair of CDAM, a London based Asset Management business; co-Chair of the UK-China Green Finance Taskforce with Dr Ma Jun, a non-executive Director to Augmentum Fintech Investment Trust, and he is on the CityUK Board.
Sir William Russell
Since 2020 – after having been Advisor to the Family Harald Quandt from 2017 in parallel to his business roles - Stefan Keitel was Chief Executive Officer of Harald Quandt (HQ) Holding. From January 2023 he moved into the Supervisory Board of HQ Holding to focus on building up a diversified Mandate Portfolio and stepping out of operational business after having been 25 years in leading roles in the Financial Industry. Formerly Stefan Keitel was CEO Asset Management & Chief Investment Officer of Deka Bank and CEO of Deka Investment for roughly 5 years. He also spent 3 years at Berenberg as Managing Director & Chief Investment Officer and - since 2001 - served ~13 years for Credit Suisse, thereof from 2008 to 2013 as Global Chief Investment Officer & Global Co-Head Portfolio Management.
Stefan Keitel holds a Diploma of the University Mainz in Finance, is a honorary Curator of the Economic Institute Ifo in Munich and Ambassador of the Franz Beckenbauer Foundation. Additionally he is Member of several Supervisory and Advisory Boards. Besides his longstanding role as Investment Advisor of the Krombacher Brewery he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SG Value Partners and Member of the Supervisory Board of Genesis Investment Partners (both in Zürich), Member of the Supervisory Board of FineVest Fund AG in Liechtenstein, Senior Advisor of Andera Partners in Paris and Member of the Advisory Board of Ventura Capital in London.
Stefan Keitel is married, father of 2 daughters (26, 21) and lives in Bingen am Rhein/Germany and in Santanyi/Mallorca.
Stefan Keitel
Founder & Managing Director, Maysaffron. Ellie advises firms and funds globally to connect with the Middle Eastern and Asia Pacific institutions. Maysaffron, which she founded in 2015 is the solution for institutions wanting to connect intelligently and effectively with the Middle East region. Formerly Ellie worked for ADIA.
Ellecia Saffron
Alexandra Daly is founder and CEO of AA Advisors Europe Limited (AA), an independent advisory and capital placement business with a 16 year track record and distribution capabilities across UK, Europe, Northern America, Middle East, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Alexandra has over 25 years’ experience working in finance, 20 of which she has spent in the alternatives sector, managing teams raising capital in multiple jurisdictions and across capital structures. She founded AA Advisors in 2007 and focuses on Private Equity, Private Credit, Real Estate, Infrastructure and Venture Capital funds.
Alexandra also navigated her firm into becoming one of the leading placement agents in responsible investing and steering the business to executing 10 raises in the impact space in the last 4 years across Venture, Private Equity and Venture Debt.
Alexandra was awarded the Investment Consultant of the Year award at the 2020 Women in Finance Awards. Alexandra is also a regular speaker and panellist at various European Alternative conferences where she debates on subjects surrounding raising private capital, multi asset platform opportunities, diversity and inclusion, the transfer of inter-generational wealth and value creation.
In addition to her work with AA Advisors, Alexandra leads an initiative spun out of the Alison Rose (CEO of NatWest Group) Review of Female Entrepreneurship, commissioned by the UK Government, which aims to promote entrepreneurialism across the UK and reduce the entrepreneurial gender gap. Alexandra is the co-chair of the Council for Investing in Female Entrepreneurs (CIFE), a steering committee backed by BEIS (Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy) comprised of leading financial institutions, which is looking at implementing the recommendations of the Rose Review that urge LPs and investment funds to help their clients invest in female-run businesses. As part of her role she is helping to address the funding challenges for female-run businesses and entrepreneurs seeking to access capital from the alternatives community. Alexandra recently appeared before a Treasury Select Committee's enquiry into the VC industry, providing oral evidence concerning diversity and inclusion. Alexandra is also launching a $250m Venture fund, $650m Growth Equity fund and $100m Venture Debt fund all investing capital in UK businesses where a woman is in a position of influence or a founder.
Prior to launching AA Advisors, Alexandra worked at the Man Group, where she ran Middle Eastern and then European distribution. Before this Alexandra worked at J.P. Morgan in their London office in the derivatives products group. She started her career in finance at Morgan Stanley, as a member of the Fixed Income and Money Markets division.
Alexandra Daly
Dr. Alexander Landia is the Chairman of The Mobility House. Dr. Landia was Chairman of the Board of Directors of Eurochem, the world’s largest fertiliser company. He was also Chairman of SUEK and SGK - each being a top-producer worldwide respectively of coal and combined heat and power generation, co-founder of Bernotat & Cie.,and Director of Lambert Energy Advisory. Dr. Landia was Partner at Accenture and Head of Oil and Gas Debt at Dresdner Bank.
Dr. Alexander Landia
Brian is the founder of Rain, a pioneer of voice and conversational AI. Rain helps Fortune 100 clients win in the emerging conversational economy. Brian serves on the Advisory Board of the Newhouse School @ Syracuse University (his alma mater).