Benoit de Biolley founded Birch Capital in 2005 to focus on special situations, either on a standalone basis or in partnership with boutique merchant banks. Until 2005, he was a Senior Managing Director with Deutsche Bank, with responsibilities for originating and executing investment banking mandates for Belgian, French and UK clients. Whilst at Deutsche Bank, he originated and structured the successful acquisition of Northumbrian Water from Suez. Prior to joining Deutsche Bank in 2002, Benoit was with Morgan Stanley where lastly he was acting Chief Operating Officer of the Benelux/Switzerland Corporate Finance team and had origination and execution responsibilities across industry sectors. During his eight years with Morgan Stanley, Benoit acquired considerable experience in mergers and acquisitions, financing and structured derivatives. From 1987 to 1992, and after one year of work experience in the garment industry in Morocco, Benoit worked 3 years in Korea and over a year in Singapore in a corporate finance function for Solvay, the Belgian chemical concern. Benoit holds a Commercial Engineer degree “Magna Cum Laude” from the Ecole de Commerce Solvay (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and has obtained his MBA with Honors (“Palmer Scholar”) from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania).

Ms Seonaid Mackenzie, ACSI, CF – As Managing Partner of Sturgeon Ventures LLP, Seonaid leads the firm’s overall business strategy. Prior to founding Sturgeon Ventures LLP, Seonaid Mackenzie’s career comprised over 15 years spent in global stock broking firms such as Prudential Securities (Prudential-Bache), Natwest Markets and Bear Stearns as an American focused stockbroker with a few years focused on emerging markets of Latin America at James Capel. As a stockbroker in the American stock markets, Seonaid took an active interest in the food sector, and each year attended the Consumer Analyst of New York meetings. Seonaid then created Sturgeon Ventures LLP as an American family office wherein Seonaid and her team invested in public and private companies, with Seonaid taking a pro-active role in some of the private companies as a management consultant and raising further funding. Seonaid left the investment world for a short time to be involved with a start up company on the development and implementation of marketing strategies, before spending 6 months in a corporate finance boutique focusing of equity growth financings. Seonaid returned to the financial services industry by setting up her own firm as an incubator for financial services companies for whom she and her team also offered regulatory compliance advice. Over the last two years she has also served as an investment manager to a pre-IPO fund based in London, investing in expansion phase companies, with no sector bias. Seonaid is in the process of developing a number of new potential growth equity funds, focusing on UK and Europe, both in public and private companies. Seonaid Mackenzie and her team, also have a private equity mandate for the original family office. www.sturgeonventures.com