Ralf Schnell (pictured), former head of Germany-based industrial conglomerate Siemens’ corporate venturing unit for a dozen years, has moved to become head of private equity at Siemens Financial Services.
He said: “We design, build and manage best-in-class private equity portfolios for our clients.”
As CEO of Siemens Venture Capital until the creation of its Next47 corporate venturing unit last March, Schnell had included advisory services to its in-house pension fund.
The development of Next47 as effectively an €1bn ($1.2bn) evergreen investment unit more independent from its business units has allowed Siemens to set up an advisory service for third-parties.
Schnell had spent the intervening year as a partner at Next47 under new recruit Lak Ananth helping integrating its Siemens Venture Capital portfolio.
Separately, Ananth has been building up his team. Ching-Yu Hu has joined Next47 as a principal based in its Palo Alto, California, office. Hu co-founded Skybox Imaging (now Terra Bella), which designed, built, and launched the world’s largest constellation of high resolution imaging satellites and was acquired by Google in 2014 for $500m.
After the sale, she became an entrepreneur-in-residence in Google’s internal startup incubator, Area 120.
Previously, Next47 had hired Matthew Cowan, former co-founder of VC firm Bridgescale Partners, and TJ Rylander, who spent a decade as managing partner at in-Q-Tel, as partners. Summing up the recent US hires, Ananth said: “Matthew, TJ and Ching-Yu all bring unique perspectives, expertise and relationships that will enable us to partner with the best entrepreneurs across a variety of industry sectors.”