Giovanna is a Partner at Altor Equity Partners in Zurich where she helped building the DACH presence. She focuses on investments in Mittelstand companies. For Altor she has lead the investments into Berlin-based D2C athleisure business oceansapart, partnered with the family-owners and SMS Group to invest in the globally active Mittelstand-gem Kaefer Isoliertechnik with more than 100 years of family heritage and partnered with management and founders in the investment in VTU, an Austrian head-quarted life-science engineering firm.

Prior to joining Altor in 2018, she spent nearly 10 years at 3i in Germany. Giovanna started her career in M&A at Morgan Stanley and strategy consulting at McKinsey & Company in Frankfurt and London.

Inna Gehrt is a Managing partner at Mindful Capital Partners, European Private equity investor that was founded in 2007 and focuses on niche leading, export-oriented European small and mid-cap companies, that can benefit from expansion to Asia and from buy and build strategies.

Inna has been active in the Private Equity and Corporate Finance environment for more than 15 years. She has a successful track record of deal-making, value creation, and experience in mid-market deals. Inna has a CFO/corporate finance background holding an MBA in Economics from the University of Mannheim.

Based in its Edinburgh and London offices, Merrick heads the private equity business (formerly abrdn Private Equity) within Patria Global Private Markets Solutions (“Patria GPMS”). With AuM of over $10bn and a team of 60, including 25 investment professionals, Patria GPMS constructs tailored private equity portfolios principally through European and North American primary commitments, secondary fund investments and co-investments. Patria GPMS represents a broad range of private equity investors via pooled funds and separately managed accounts, including the Patria Private Equity Trust plc (a FTSE-250 £1.2bn investment trust). Merrick is a member of the Patria GPMS Investment Committee, an Advisory Board member of numerous funds, a regular speaker at private equity conferences, and a member of the Invest Europe Limited Partners Council.

An Australian with British dual-nationality, Merrick has over 30 years’ experience in the European private equity industry. Previous roles include: Head of European Investments in Macquarie’s Private Markets division (now Roc Partners); 13 years as a Partner and Investment Committee member of Primary Capital (the London-based, lower mid-market private equity firm) where he was responsible for leading, originating and managing numerous private equity investments in the UK; and 5 years in lead MBO and M&A advisory services. Merrick holds Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws degrees from the University of Queensland.

Mark joined EQT Partners in 2023 as Partner, Private Capital Healthcare Team. Mark is a medical doctor by training with degrees in Physiology and Medicine from Cambridge University, UK, and has worked in private equity healthcare investing for the past 13 years, first at TPG Capital, then at GHO Capital and most recently at SunEuropean. At TPG,Mark was part of the core healthcare team, based both in San Francisco and London, investing across deal types including in early-stage, LBOs and structured finance

Michael is a partner of Pollen Street and part of the founding team. He leads the private equity investment team and serves on the firm’s investment committee. Michael has been operating in the financial services sector for 20 years, with investments spanning each of Pollen Street’s core subsectors of insurance, lending, technology, payments and wealth. Michael sits on a number of portfolio company boards including Markerstudy, Aryza, Pair Finance and Lumon.

Prior to founding Pollen Street, Michael held roles at RBS and OC&C strategy consultants.

He has First-Class undergraduate and a masters’ degree in Chemistry from Oxford University.