Crédit Agricole Private Equity’s Venture Capital division expands its Information and Communications Technology team

Crédit Agricole Private Equity’s Venture Capital division has been strengthened by the appointment of two Senior Investment Directors, Renaud Poulard and Bernard Nabet, both experienced businessmen and venture capital investors.

Since its creation five years ago, the Venture Capital division of Crédit Agricole Private Equity has built up a portfolio of 54 private companies in five sectors, based mostly in France, representing over €230m in assets under management.

Under the leadership of Antoine Colboc, the Information and Communications Technology unit is in full expansion as part of Crédit Agricole Private Equity’s Venture Capital division.

Renaud Poulard joined Crédit Agricole Private Equity in September 2005 as an Associate Director of the Venture Capital division. He will devote most of his time to the telecommunications and semiconductor sectors.

Mr. Poulard is a graduate of the Ecole Supérieure d’Optique (1990) and has a MBA from INSEAD.

He began his career at CEA, the French atomic energy authority, as a research engineer specialising in lasers. In 1991, he began working at SAT as an engineer and then project manager for imaging and data transmission technologies. In 1996, he joined Sagem as the Program Manager for optoelectronics equipment and then as Business Development Manager in the security field (PKI).

In 2001, he was named Investment Director and then General Partner of the SPEF eFund (Natexis group).

Bernard Nabet joined Crédit Agricole Private Equity’s Venture Capital division in September 2005 as Investment Director. He will work primarily in information technology.

Mr. Nabet graduated from ENSEIRB, the prestigious information and communications technology engineering school of Bordeaux, and has a post-graduate diploma in applied physics and microelectronics, and a masters in business administration (DESS) from IAE in Paris.

After starting his career as a research engineer in the optoelectronics labs of France Telecom’s R&D division, he spent several years as a consultant at Arthur Andersen and then at A.T. Kearney Interactive. He directed numerous consulting projects on the design, architecture and deployment of company information systems.

In 2000, he co-founded Negopartner, a company specialising in e-sourcing solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises. As CEO, he was responsible notably for strategic planning, development and financial auditing.

He began working in private equity in 2001 as Associate Director of the SPEF eFund, part of the venture capital division of the Natexis group.