0100 Conference Europe 2024

Markus Benzler heads the Multi-Managers Private Equity team (MMPE) of Real Estate & Private Markets (REPM) within UBS Asset Management (UBS-AM). In this role, he covers investment selection and portfolio management of several diversified global privateequity mandates as well as UBS-AM’s private equity (PE) fund-of-fund businesses. Investments typically cover venture, growth capital, buyouts and special situations done as primaries, secondaries and co-investments in North America, Europe and APAC. Markus is the Chairman of the Multi-Managers Private Equity Investment Committee and voting member of the Multi-Managers Infrastructure Investment Committee. He joined UBS in 2005 as an investment selection analyst for Private Equity. Prior to joining UBS, Markus worked at Bain & Company in Munich for six years, where he conducted a full range of projects mainly in PE, banking, and the industrial area. Project types included commercial due diligence projects for PE funds, corporate strategy design, company restructuring, and operational improvement.

Henrik joined Elevate, Verdane’s team of in-house operational experts, as Chief Technology Officer in June 2020. As CTO of Verdane Elevate, Henrik supports the technology and product organisations in our portfolio with architectural and organisational expertise to help them successfully deliver on high-priority projects. Through Henrik, Verdane connects relevant persons within our holdings to leverage the technology and methodology knowledge present in the Verdane portfolio and to help all its companies scale and succeed. Henrik is an experienced CTO and has been key in scaling several SaaS companies through his expertise in both Agile methods and System Architecture.

Matthieu Baret, Managing Partner in charge of Venture, joined the Group in 2005. He has overseen over 40 investments and is primarily active in the telecoms/media, software, B2B sectors. Before that Matthieu has worked 10 years in the telecom sector, mainly for carriers. He regularly speaks on entrepreneurship at Centrale-Supelec and Dauphine. Matthieu is a graduate of CENTRALE-SUPELEC, and holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech (Atlanta, USA) and an MBA from INSEAD.

Victoria, at the European Commission, is in charge of approving EU proposals for the European Innovation Council (EIC) Horizon Europe funding applications. Likewise, she represents the interests of the EIC €10,2bn fund as NED in the Belgian telecommunications company, Tessares. She is also investor in several start-ups innovative start-ups. Previously, she was Alliance’s Director British Telecom Europe, Executive Chairman Orange Spain, and Senior Vice-President International Proximus. She is a non-executive Director (NED) at CaixaBank Payments & Consumer.

Thomas has more than 25 years of international experience in the financial industry. He worked with banks in Prague and New York as well as investment firms in London, Vienna and Zürich in senior roles. During his 15 years at Erste Asset Management, Thomas held various management positions. In recent years, he built up the private equity investment department and founded Erste Private Capital. Thomas holds a degree in international business at the University of Vienna, completed the private equity programme at the University of Oxford and is a CFA Institute charter holder.

Pavel Dvorak is a Principal at the EBRD where he focuses primarily on investments in venture capital and private equity funds across the EBRD region. In his previous role of a an economist at the EBRD he developed country and sector strategies, assessed the development impact of investments in a number of sectors including TMT and healthcare and developed new approaches to supporting innovation in the region. Before joining the EBRD, he was a management consultant at Deloitte in Prague. Pavel holds a Ph.D. in Economics from CERGE-EI in Prague and is a CFA and CAIA charter holder.

Hendrik Brandis is a co-founder and Partner at Earlybird, and works out of the Munich office. Hendrik’s current domain focus is enterprise web-powered infrastructure and SaaS in addition to selected consumer services. Hendrik has served for many years as EVCA board member and the Chairman of the EVCA Venture Capital Platform Council. Hendrik brings together long-standing investment, operational and entrepreneurial experience. He was a board member of element5 AG, where he was a driving force behind the sale to Digital River (NASDAQ:DRIV), dooyoo.de (Berlin) which was sold to leguide.com and Dianoema, which listed on the Borsa Italiana (Milan: NOE.MI) as well as NFON AG which listed on the Frankfurter Boerse. Hendrik currently serves on the boards of Earlybird portfolio companies aiven (Helsinki, Finland), B2X Care Solutions (Munich); Instamotion (Munich), Isar Aerospace (Munich), Onefootball (Berlin); Simscale (Munich); Movinga (Berlin), MediDate (Berlin) and MyDataModels (Valbonne, France). Hendrik gained his entrepreneurial experience as a Co-Founder of GMM, a group of private investors focusing on buy-outs of mid-sized companies and ned his operational experience as Project Manager in the Technology Department of Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm (now Daimler-Chrysler Aerospace) focusing on the design and innovative manufacturing processes of composite aircraft structures.