Amadeus Capital Partners today announced that Roy Merritt had joined the firm as a Director.

Roy, a graduate of Cambridge University and INSEAD, is an experienced venture capital investor and company executive. In 1995, after working with Apax, he joined Esprit Telecom Group as CFO. From then until 1999, Esprit built its revenues from $5 million to $250 million, and its workforce from 50 to 950. Roy led the company’s fund raising efforts, including bringing on three top tier venture capital investors, taking the company to dual public listings on EASDAQ and NASDAQ, and two high yield debt rounds. As a Director of the company, he was closely involved in strategy development and in the execution and integration of four acquisitions in three countries. In 1999, Esprit was acquired by Global TeleSystems for some $1 billion.

Roy then returned to venture capital, joining communications and media investor Providence Equity Partners, as a Director, to help establish their new London office. The following year he was recruited by Deutsche Bank to set up, as Managing Partner and co-head, DB Capital Ventures. The business was built from scratch into one of Europe’s largest groups focusing specifically on technology and communications. Successful investments included PowerDSine, End2End and Highwave Optical. 

In 2003, Deutsche Bank decided to withdraw from private equity and Roy left to establish his own investment vehicle, Orcapital, investing in and advising venture funds, LPs and individual businesses. He is a non-executive Director of Axon Group plc, the LSE-listed business transformation consultancy

Commenting on his new role, Roy Merritt said: “I have known Anne Glover and Richard Anton since we worked at Apax together, and kept in close touch with Amadeus since its inception. Amadeus is a great firm with a well-defined strategy and a number of market-leading portfolio companies. I am passionate about investing in and helping to build successful technology businesses, and am delighted to be joining one of Europe’s top firms in this sphere.”

Anne Glover, Amadeus’ CEO, added: “Roy’s experience in investment, fund raising, company development and exits will be a valuable enhancement to our team. We have known and worked with Roy over many years, so his joining our team full time seems like a logical development of a long standing relationship – and one with which we are all delighted.”