Ariadne Capital Announces the EU's first 'Plug and Play' Investment Platform, the Acquisition of Portcullis Asset Management, and New Capital to Back Europe's Entrepreneurs

LONDON, January 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Expanding its Reach Across the EU, Ariadne Capital Launches EntrepreneurCountry Malta, and the Ecosystem Economics Investment Platform, and Announces new Senior Advisors

20 January 2017...From London, UK and Malta, EU

Ariadne Capital has acquired Portcullis Asset Management (PAML) in Malta in December 2016, run by David Barry, who becomes Ariadne Capital's Managing Director there reporting to Julie Meyer, CEO of Ariadne Capital Group Limited, renaming PAML to Ariadne Capital Malta.  

Ariadne Malta manages the Ecosystem Economics® Investment Platform (ECO2 Investment Platform), the EU's first 'plug and play' investment platform enabling large asset allocators who wish to participate in the upside of the high growth and positive returns of European technology venture capital to do so.David Barry said, "In a low oil price and low interest rate world, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and family offices are seeking the returns of tech VC in Europe, and need the ability to write a big ticket, want the diversification and service level guarantee that we can provide to them."

The ECO2 Investment Platform will do an imminent first close in Q1 of its €1 bn target AUM with several sub-funds or partner funds plugged into its platform, based out of Malta, but investing across the EU.

Ariadne Capital Group Limited, also based in Malta which manages the Ariadne Group including the ECO2 Investment Platform, has secured capital from leading technology and financial services entrepreneurs and executives including David Rowe (founder of EasyNet, Managing Partner at Black Green Capital), Stuart Roden (Lansdowne Capital), Eric Salama (Kantar CEO), Gerhard Huber (leading fintech entrepreneur and investor), Mark Schneider (Liberty Global), Karl Strobl (ex Deutsche Bank Asset Management), Mike Alfant (Fusion Systems), Michael Moszynski (CEO of London Advertising), Julie Meyer (Founder/ CEO of Ariadne Capital, EntrepreneurCountry Global and First Tuesday), and several others.

Julie Meyer said, "Platforms have come to every industry.  It was inevitable that they would come to European venture capital. We provide accelerators, new funds, family offices which seek third party capital, corporate venturing spin-outs as well as angel funds an efficient means to get into the fund management business quickly, but more importantly to take advantage of the Ariadne Capital Fund Stack™."

Amit Pau, Ariadne Capital London MD and Partner, ECO2 Investment Platform, said, "Over the course of the past 16 years, Ariadne Capital has backed explosive growth companies, completed more than £600 million of transactions and investments, and led the innovation agenda in the EU with EntrepreneurCountry Global since 2008." 

EntrepreneurCountry Global (EC Global), with more than 300,000 early adopter 'citizens', test pilots new applications brought by the Digital Enabler community to Goliaths who are seeking to become platforms and Ecosystem Economics® firms. EC Global is now launching in Malta where it will test pilot with Malta's 450,000 population which represents approximately 0.1% of the EU population of 508 million EU citizens.

"Malta has a terrific blend of AngloSaxon practices, Mediterannean joie de vivre, and obsessive social media engagement," said Julie Meyer. "We are leveraging the ability of Malta to give Goliaths and Davids quantitative and qualitative feedback on the product/ market fit of their new ventures.  The EntrepreneurCountry Global team and platform will bring new engagement methods and formats for helping David and Goliath to dance."

In addition to the 20 strong team in Ariadne Capital London, Ariadne Capital Malta will be resourcing for the ECO2 Investment Platform and EntrepreneurCountry Global for its Malta-based team. Ariadne Malta will be launching a campus in Malta 1H 2017.

Two new Senior Advisors join Ariadne Capital in Malta:

-  Mikko Pukhalla, who first worked with Julie Meyer as First Tuesday Helsinki in 1999 and 2000. Mikko spent 5+ years in China and brings a wealth of relationships from Asia Pacific.

-  Malcolm Ross, a veteran of the mobile telecoms world, whose trackrecord is immense from small and large company growth and transformation

Ariadne Capital Group Limited will be making two additional acquisitions imminently.

Ariadne Capital, http://www.ariadnecapital.com , was founded in December 2000 by Julie Meyer, the Founder of First Tuesday, which ignited the Internet Generation across the EU with its 45 city network, and 500,000 community of Internet 1.0 entrepreneurs.    Ariadne pioneered the 'Entrepreneurs Backing Entrepreneurs' model for the financing of entrepreneurship across the EU in 2000 before any other institutional venture capital fund had placed founders / entrepreneurs as their founding shareholders. Its founding shareholders include the founders of BetFair, Easynet, Element14, Fusion Systems, Good Data, Hotmail, SES Astra, WILINK, WorldPay and others.

Ariadne Capital through its Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund (ACE) and Ariadne Capital Corporate Finance over the past 16 have helped to build the following European technology success stories:  BeatThatQuote (sold to Google for 122x EBITDA), Espotting, Monitise, Quill, Skype, Zopa. Notable portfolio companies in the ACE fund include: Autograph, Beat.tv, MADE TV, Matternet, Moneydashboard, Norwood, Orson, Quill, Shopitise.

Ariadne Capital is the owner of Ecosystem Economics® which is the Digital Playbook that it has developed since 2008 and which is being serialised in an Executive Education course with Warwick University in 1H 2017.   Julie Meyer was given an honorary doctorate by the Economics Department of Warwick University in 2012 for Ecosystem Economics.

Ariadne Capital invests in 10 Ecosystems (Smart Home, Transportation & Mobility, Content & Commerce, Health, Manufacturing & Supply Chain, Personal Development, Insurance, Fund Management, Travel/Media/Leisure/Entertainment, Satellites/ Networks / Data Communications). EntrepreneurCountry Global manages these Ecosystems, providing engagement points for Davids, Goliaths and citizens to play into the digital opportunity. 

The Ariadne Capital Fund Stack consists of the Ecosystem Economics® Investment Strategy, the EntrepreneurCountry Global Operating Platform, and the Ariadne Capital Malta Regulatory Platform.    

SOURCE Ariadne Capital