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 equity and debt investments at Sculptor Capital (formerly known as 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.

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.

Shafali Gupta

Shafali is a Principal at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining Bregal, Shafali spent several years as a software executive driving rapid growth in the fintech sector. She was Chief of Staff to the CEO at ClearScore, and member of their eight-person management team. She helped grow the company from 50 to 200 people, and led their first international launch in South Africa, which resulted in attractive exit opportunities in excess of €300 million. More recently, Shafali was part of the management team as VP Strategy & Operations at Fluidly, one of the fastest growing B2B SaaS fintech companies in London. She designed and implemented the go-to-market value proposition, and end-to-end customer journeys. In addition, she built a high-performing operations team from ground-up, and embedded reporting, sales, marketing, customer operations and HR systems and processes across the organisation.

Before that, she was a management consultant at Oliver Wyman in New York, working in the Financial Services segment with a range of financial institutions where she delivered strategic and operational transformations across multiple geographies.

Shafali graduated from New York University with a BA in Mathematics, and lived in New York for nine years before moving to London. Originally from Singapore, Shafali also speaks Hindi and is conversational in Mandarin.

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.

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.

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.

Saachi Oza

Saachi is a Senior 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.

Sofia Goicoechea

Sofia is an Investment Associate at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining Bregal Milestone, she was an Investment Banking analyst at Bank of America, executing M&A and capital markets transactions across sectors in Latin America and in Europe with a focus in financial institutions.

Sofia is a 2014 Argentine national golf champion, and she played at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China. She was also the flag bearer at the opening ceremony.

Sofia holds a BSM in Finance and a MA in Accounting from Tulane University where she was a student-athlete.

Maud Chiche

Maud is an Associate at Bregal Milestone. Prior to joining the company, she was an Investment Banking Associate at Morgan Stanley, where she advised companies and executed a variety of transactions in the Media and Communications and Spain Coverage teams. 

Maud holds a M.Sc. in Finance from London Business School and a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University.

Jing Xie

Jing is an Investment Associate at Bregal Milestone. Jing joined Bregal Milestone from European growth equity firm HPE Growth, where she was responsible for sourcing and executing investment opportunities in European growth stage technology companies. Prior to that, she worked as an investment banking analyst with Raymond James in the Technology & Business Services team, executing M&A transactions.

Jing received her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Princeton University, which included an exchange programme at ETH Zurich.

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.

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.

Eglė Sakalauskaitė

Egle joined Bregal in November 2019 as Vice President of ESG & Responsible Investing.

Prior to joining Bregal, Egle spent 9 years advising blue-chip companies, investors, and asset managers on sustainability strategy development and implementation.  Most recently, Egle was an Associate Director at Jones Lang LaSalle supporting companies with ESG integration and climate risk management.  Earlier in her career, Egle worked in several specialist sustainability consulting and professional advisory firms, including DNV GL and EY, focusing on stakeholder engagement, responsible investment, and green bonds.

Egle has a BSc (Hons) in Politics with Economics from the University of Bath and holds a CFA IMC certificate

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.

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.