Our Team

Jan Bruennler

Jan is a Managing Partner of Bregal Milestone and a member of the firm’s investment committee. Prior to founding Bregal Milestone, Jan was a Partner at Makuria Investment Management, where he led investments in the equity and debt of European companies with a focus on growth companies and complex situations.

Before his time at Makuria, Jan originated and invested in European special situations at Och-Ziff Capital Management. Jan began his career in Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Division in London, where he executed complex M&A and leveraged finance transactions across Europe. He holds an M.A. in Finance from the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland).

Philippe Lautenberg

Philippe is a Managing Partner of Bregal Milestone and a member of the firm’s investment committee. Prior to founding Bregal Milestone, Philippe was a co-founder and Head of the European middle market lending business at Credit Suisse, investing private capital in European growth companies using the firm’s proprietary capital.

Before setting up this business, Philippe was a senior member of Credit Suisse’s European Special Situations Group. Earlier in his career, Philippe co-founded and ran Circle Capital Partners, a renewable energy investment firm. Philippe began his career in investment banking at ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank. He holds a M.A. in Business Administration from HEC University of Lausanne (Switzerland) as well as an M.Sc. in Finance from the Universite Catholique de Louvain la Neuve (Belgium).

Cyrus Shey

Cyrus is a Managing Partner of Bregal Milestone and a member of the firm’s investment committee. Prior to founding Bregal Milestone, Cyrus was a co-founder and Head of the European middle market lending business at Credit Suisse, investing private capital in European growth companies using the firm’s proprietary capital.

Before setting up this business, Cyrus held various senior positions at Goldman Sachs where he originated, arranged and invested in leveraged buyouts and growth capital financings. Cyrus began his career as a strategy consultant at Accenture in London. Cyrus holds a B.Sc.in Business Administration from Georgetown University and is a former winner of the Stanford University Global Entrepreneur’s Challenge.

Rob Hetherington

Rob leads Milestone Performance Partners, the portfolio optimisation capability in Bregal Milestone. He is an investor in Bregal Milestone and has previously acted as a Senior Advisor to the firm and as a Board Advisor to Basware, one of the firm’s portfolio companies.

Rob has over 25 years’ experience in international leadership roles in some of the foremost software and services businesses in the world. He has significant experience of advising and working with C-level executives, of selling industry vertical and enterprise software, and of selling and delivering large scale, complex business and technology change programmes in a variety of industries.

Immediately before joining Bregal Milestone full time, he was a Senior Vice President at  Blue Prism, the market-leading and fast growing (80+ % yoy)  robotics/AI software business where he led its Financial Services business (c.60% of the firm’s revenues). Prior to this, Rob was a Global Vice President at SAP, the largest European software business, where he led the company’s  €2 billion pa global Financial Services business for several years and was responsible for the activities of 2000+ professionals across software sales, marketing, services and support. He refocused the business to take advantage of new disruptive technologies (e.g. AI, Blockchain, IoT etc.) and to position SAP as an innovation leader and a key digital transformation enabler in the global Financial Services industry. Results under his tenure were the strongest on record – double digit licence growth (including 50% + cloud growth) in his final year in role. Prior to joining SAP, Rob had a 20 year consulting career. He was a Senior Managing Director at Accenture and Cap Gemini, and led significant consulting businesses  (€ 300-500m pa) for these firms across Europe and internationally with business management, client relationship development and client delivery responsibilities.

Rob has a variety of external and charitable interests in the UK and in Africa. He has an MBA from London Business School and a B Comm undergraduate degree.

Emmanuel Logan-Moll

Emmanuel is a Director at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining the firm, Emmanuel was an Investment Director at Duke Street Private Equity where he executed a number of complex mid-market transactions across various sectors and acted as a Board Director for portfolio companies in the UK and France.

Emmanuel began his career as a strategy consultant, working for Oliver Wyman Financial Services in France and L.E.K. Consulting in the UK. He holds an MEng Electronic Engineering from the University of Warwick, PhD Optical Engineering from the University of Cambridge, and MBA from the College des Ingenieurs.

Matteo Bozzo

Matteo is a Director at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining the firm, Matteo was a Director at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., where he spent more than 8 years originating and executing transactions for the KKR European Private Equity, Special Situations and Private Debt teams. He acted as a Board Director for portfolio companies in Italy, France and the Netherlands, and played a leading role in the setup of Pillarstone, a platform to support Italian and Greek companies through a strategic partnership with local banks.

Matteo began his career at Morgan Stanley in London, where he was involved in a variety of mergers, acquisitions and capital markets transactions. He holds a M.Sc. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC Paris) in France and from HEC Lausanne in Switzerland.

Ian Kwok

Ian is a Principal at Bregal Milestone. He  brings significant operating and technology sector experience to management teams. Prior to joining Bregal Milestone, Ian was a Vice President at Insight Partners, where he focused on partnering with Insight’s portfolio companies to scale effective go-to-market teams through the application of proven and repeatable best practices. Prior to Insight, Ian led Sales Strategy and Operations at ZocDoc (a healthcare startup in New York) and was also an entrepreneur, having owned and operated an automotive dealership group and successfully sold the business to Lithia Motors (NYSE: LAD) in 2014. Ian started his career at Centerview Partners executing large-cap and complex M&A transactions.

Ian received his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his BA with honors from Pomona College. Originally from Hong Kong, Ian also speaks Cantonese and Mandarin.

Francesco Canessa

Francesco is a Principal at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining Bregal Milestone, he was an investment professional at Kildare Partners, a European private equity firm. Before Kildare Partners, Francesco was a member of the European Special Situations Group at Goldman Sachs, investing the proprietary capital of the firm into the debt and equity of European mid-market companies.

Francesco started his career in the private equity team at Partners Group. He holds a M.Sc. in Finance from Bocconi University.

John Hales

John is a Principal at Bregal Milestone. Before joining the firm, he was an investment professional with Macquarie’s Principal Finance team, the proprietary investing arm of the bank, investing debt and equity in special situations across Europe. Prior to this, he was an investment consultant to Generation Investment and Denham Capital, two growth private equity firms.

John holds two masters degrees from Oxford University, where he attended as a Rhodes Scholar, including an MBA from the Saïd Business School. He graduated summa cum laude from his B.Sc in Finance at the University of Cape Town.

Emmanuel de Croÿ

Emmanuel is a Senior Associate at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining the firm, he was an Investment Banking Analyst at Evercore, where he advised companies and executed a variety of transactions in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Healthcare teams.

Emmanuel holds a double M.Sc. in Management and CEMS degree from the London School of Economics and a B.Sc. in Business Engineering from the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels.

Lucía Ruiz Álvarez

Lucia is an Investment Associate at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining the company, she was an Investment Banking analyst at Barclays, advising and executing M&A and capital markets transactions for clients in the Healthcare, Natural Resources and Power industries.

Lucia holds a BBA double degree in International Business Management from Universidad Pontificia de Comillas (ICADE) in Spain and Lancaster University in the UK.

Saachi Oza

Saachi is an Associate at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining the company, she was an Investment Banking Analyst at J.P. Morgan, executing a wide variety of M&A and capital markets transactions across sectors in Europe, with a particular focus on the U.K. 

Saachi holds a B.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics

Sebastian Charpentier

Sebastian is an Associate at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining the firm, he was an Investment Banking Analyst at Houlihan Lokey, where he advised companies and executed a variety of transactions in the Data & Analytics M&A team.  Sebastian was a U-18 Swedish National Champion in Ice Hockey

Sebastian holds a BSc in Politics from University of Bristol and an MA in International Political Economy from King’s College London.

Marion Depré

Marion is an Executive Assistant at Bregal Milestone.

Prior to joining Bregal, she worked at Carmignac Gestion (London) as an Office Manager and EA to the Managing Director.

Marion holds a Bachelor Degree in English Literature & Cultural Studies, as well as a Master in translation from the London University of Roehampton

Elisa Orlando

Elisa is an Executive Assistant at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining Bregal she worked at wealth management firm TFW (London) and spent 5 years in Dubai where she covered various admin positions.

Elisa holds a Bachelor degree in Foreign Languages from Genoa University.

Stephanie Harding

 Stephanie is an Executive Assistant at Bregal Milestone.

Prior to joining Bregal Milestone, she worked at Bregal Freshstream  and also has extensive experience working as a Personal Assistant to Ultra High Net Worth Individuals.

Stephanie holds a Bachelor degree in Graphic Design from the University for the Creative Arts in the UK.

Ari Wegter

Ari is Senior Advisor at Bregal Milestone. A serial entrepreneur with two decades of digital media, e-commerce, software-as-a-service, and venture scaling experience, today he advises a select group of privately held media- & technology companies in EMEA on commercial and strategic matters.

As co-founder and Managing Director of LOVEFiLM.com, a Netflix-inspired online movie delivery platform, Ari was part of the leadership team that grew the company from start-up to a $100m turnover business. In this function, he drove sales, managed operations, and spearheaded international expansion by successfully establishing various new growth markets. LOVEFiLM was acquired by Amazon in 2011.

Previously, Ari worked as a consultant at Oxford Research in Copenhagen. He is a cum laude graduate of Georgetown University

Paul Schapira

Paul is a Senior Advisor at Bregal Milestone. Paul advises a select number of corporations and families on a broad range of financial and strategic matters in addition to sitting on Boards of private and publicly traded companies, including Saipem.

Prior to this Paul was Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, where he ran the Italian Investment Banking business before moving to senior coverage of Financial Sponsors. Before his time at Morgan Stanley, Paul held senior roles in Goldman Sachs leading different groups  in London, Hong Kong and New York including Head of the European Natural Resources Group and the Consumer and Retail Group. Paul started his career at Euromobiliare in Milan as an Equity Trader and Portfolio Manager. He is an Italian national and holds a BA in Economics from Columbia University and an MBA from INSEAD.

Steffen David

Steffen is an Operating Partner of Bregal Milestone.  Steffen works with our portfolio companies on high performance initiatives to create value.  These include growth strategy, digitalization, performance improvement, salesforce effectiveness, pricing optimization, and merger integration.  Prior to joining Bregal Milestone, Steffen was a successful entrepreneur founding and exiting several businesses in various industries ranging from renewable energy to e-commerce.

Steffen began his career as a Management Consulting with McKinsey & Company working in the Munich and Tokyo offices.  He led projects for multinational clients with a focus on strategy development,  development of business “turn around” and growth programs as well as operational improvement.  Steffen holds a PhD (Dr. rer. oec.) from University Duisburg-Essen, and a Masters in Industrial Engineering and Management from University of Karlsruhe (TH).  He is an alumnus of Fulbright and Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes.

Suveer Kothari

As Vice President, Google Hardware team, Suveer manages business operations & launches for Google’s home products (Chromecast, Google Home, Google Wifi) and strategic partnerships with content providers and app developers across Google’s hardware products.

Suveer previously drove commercial efforts and internationalization for products like Google TV and Display & Video ads. Suveer also worked on the early YouTube monetization plan for Europe and led the YouTube and Display ads sales team across various markets in EMEA.

Prior to Google, Suveer worked as a strategy consultant with Booz and Co. He holds a first class degree in Economics and Management from Oxford, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

Caroline Schimmelbusch

Caroline joined Bregal in October 2019 as Director, Capital Development.

Prior to joining Bregal, Caroline spent seven years with GI Partners, a middle market buyout and real estate investment firm in San Francisco, most recently as Principal of Investor Relations. Earlier in her career, Caroline worked in investment banking and equity capital markets at Jefferies & Company.

Caroline holds an M.B.A from the NYU Stern School of Business and an A.B. from Brown University.

Alvar de Wolff

Alvar joined Bregal in December 2016 as Director – Corporate and Social Responsibility.

Prior to joining Bregal, Alvar spent 10 years in private equity working for AAC Capital, a mid-market buyout fund focused on the Benelux region. He was an Investment Director responsible for managing several investments as well as leading the corporate social responsibility and ESG activities. Prior he gained M&A and private equity experience at M&A boutique Sequoia in London.

Alvar was a member of the Responsible Investment committee of the Dutch Venture Capital Association (NVP). He holds a Master in Economics from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

Jonathan Pugh-Smith

Jonathan has worked as legal counsel for Bregal – Europe since November 2013.

Prior to joining Bregal, Jonathan trained and qualified as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England & Wales at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP, during this period of his career he also spent time on secondment as in-house counsel at Schroders plc. Jonathan has also spent time as a legal consultant in the Philippines for an anti-trafficking NGO and continues to act as an advocate in this field as well as a director for a multi-national anti-trafficking charity outside of his role at Bregal.

Jonathan graduated from Durham University with a degree in Geography.

Kate Watson

Kate joined Bregal in July 2014 and was appointed General Counsel – Europe in December 2015.

Prior to joining Bregal, Kate worked as a corporate lawyer in the private equity teams at Clifford Chance LLP and Taylor Wessing LLP.

Kate is a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England & Wales. She has an LLB law degree from University of Nottingham, and an LLM in corporate and commercial law from University of London, King’s College London.

Rhianna Dowdeswell

Rhianna has worked as legal counsel for Bregal – Europe since March 2019.

Prior to joining Bregal, Rhianna trained and qualified as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England & Wales at Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, the last 6 months of which she spent on secondment in Singapore in the firm’s international M&A team.  Following qualification, Rhianna became an associate in Goodwin’s Private Equity team, and spent 10 months on secondment at Bregal prior to becoming a permanent employee.

Rhianna graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Jurisprudence and completed the LPC at BPP University Law School in Holborn.