Latest - Area of Interest: Entrepreneurs and investment

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Iann Barron

Iann Barron nurtured three generations of computer designers in the UK at Elliott Brothers, Computer Technology (CT) and InMos.

He designed a computer at Elliott’s for the RAF and left to form his own company, CT, in 1965, raising private capital to fund it, one of the first to do so in the world.

He was forced out of CT in 1975 and after a spell as a consultant joined the InMos venture of the National Enterprise Board designing the transputer microprocessor and advising Motorola, Texas Instruments and Fairchild and also telling Intel what was wrong with their microprocessors.

Victor Basta

Victor Basta is a maestro of mergers and acquisitions in the IT sector. He says he is somebody who helps other people through deals rather than doling deals himself.

In 1986 he came across the IT industry through his activities in mergers and acquisitions working in New York for the General Motors Treasurer’s Office. Between September 1989 and November 2001 he worked at Broadview International an then became Managing Director of Magister, a boutique investment bank based in London and San Francisco. His first deal was selling LoveFilm to Amazon for around $350 million, now Amazon Prime Video.

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Roger Graham OBE

Roger Graham OBE helped to develop 3,000 IT jobs and £500 million of shareholder value in his IT career. He helped develop and sell one of the most important software packages for modern banking: MIDAS. He started work in the IT industry in IBM rising to be account manager for Ford UK. He left IBM after four-and-a-half years to join BIS, then a small software start up. MIDAS handled currency transactions when they were deregulated and also gold transactions. He left BIS in the early 1990s and has acted as a non-executive advisor to over 24 companies in 22 years.