Deals

General Atlantic continues worldwide recruitment drive

John Bernstein, who previously led Advent International’s London branch of its European technology and telecoms team, is the latest hire by global investment firm General Atlantic.

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General Atlantic has recruited John Bernstein as a managing director from European mid-market buyout firm Advent International, where he worked for 12 years.

John Bernstein

Bernstein headed Advent’s London branch of its European telecoms and technology team. He led investments in fourteen companies at Advent. These included the buyout of UK wireless network provider Aircom International for an undisclosed sum in 2005 and the firm’s $72 million (€49 million) joint venture growth capital investment in Jazztel in 1999 in the run up to the Spanish telecoms company’s $172 million initial public offering in the same year.

He previously worked in the capital markets and mergers and acquisitions teams of European bank Hambros from 1984 and as a partner at management consultancy InterMatrix from 1989.

General Atlantic has been strengthening its team in recent months. In October it promoted ten members of its worldwide management team, creating five managing directors – Raul Rai and Sunish Sharma in Mumbai, Oliver Thum in Dusseldorf and Sean Tong in Hong Kong. The firm also recruited two managing directors in September, Ranjit Pandit from McKinsey and Jeff Leng from Warburg Pincus to the firm’s Mumbai and Hong Kong offices respectively.

Last month, General Atlantic sold 68,780,000 shares in UK-listed provider of specialist software, outsourcing and information technology services Northgate to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts as part of the US buyout firm’s £593 million ($1.17 billion; €797 million) take-private bid.