Thomas Teichman is a venture capitalist who is Co -Founder of The Garage Soho, London and is chairman of SPARK Ventures. He was the first backer of lastminute.com, Made.com, Mergermarket, notonthehightreet.com, MAID, ARC and Argonaut Games, Kobalt Music, System C Healthcare and Moshi Monsters.
Early Life
Born in Budapest Hungary of Hungarian parents. His family left Hungary in 1949 to live in Salzburg to escape the Communist regime and then moved to the UK in 1951. His first senior school was Finchley County Grammar followed by Quintin School, London, from 1960 to 1966. He then attended University College London where he gained a B.Sc. in Economics with Economic History - with Honours. He also attended the London School of Economics.
Career
He then joined Willis Faber and Dumas, a leading insurance broker in London where he worked on aviation insurance and aviation reinsurance in Lloyds including the first insurance of Concorde and the Boeing 747. In 1970 he joined Bankers Trust Company, London as a junior economist and then became Assistant Treasurer. As an economist he worked on the first syndicated loan to the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, and the first loan to Gabon. He then moved into the banking division managing lending in central and Eastern Europe and he was particularly involved in Yugoslavia – Serbia and Croatia – and loans to Hungary, Bulgaria, the DDR and Russia. In 1972 he moved to William Brandt's Sons and Co Ltd an English merchant bank, and a member of the Accepting Houses Committee of the Bank of England. At the age of 25 he became Manager Europe and completed several large transactions in central and Eastern Europe, Austria, South Korea, and Ecuador. These included the railways of Croatia and Serbia and Steel plants and ship construction in Croatia. He became the author of the Yugoslavia section of the Economist Intelligence Unit. In 1975 he joined the Credit Suisse group as chief executive of Finanz AG London. This was the trade finance arm of Credit Suisse which specialised in Forfaiting, the discount of bills of exchange and promissory notes from international trade. He wrote and published the first book on Forfaiting. He then in 1979 became head of syndicated landing at Credit Suisse with additional responsibility for covering multinational companies like Unilever, MMM, and Gernaral Motors in the UK. He became vice-director of Credit Suisse, the youngest ever person to be in Credit Suisse's Management. In 1980 he moved to Credit Suisse First Boston, London where he worked in corporate finance mainly on the Far East and Australia. In 1983 he joined the Mitsubishi Bank group to run corporate finance at Mitsubishi Finance International in London. in 1985, he joined The Bank of Montréal group in London as Managing Director to run its corporate finance business. When Nesbitt Thomson was acquired by the Bank of Montréal, he ran their combined corporate finance operations in London and Europe. There he focused on privatisations in the UK and Hungary and mergers and acquisitions for Canadian companies.
Venture Capital
In 1985, Tom was the first backer of MAID Londo which went on to be listed on the London stock exchange. MAID went public in 1993 via Hoare Govett and also raised funds on NASDAQ via Hambrecht and Quist. Tom was responsible for these transactions on the board and joined MAID full-time from Bank of Montreal Nesbitt Thomson as vice chairman. His responsibility was corporate strategy and alliances with stock brokers and financial research institutions and financial information providers. In 1995 he sold out of MAID and founded NewMedia Investors in Berkeley Square, London. NMI invested in and raised funds for several successful new businesses such as Lastminute.com, ARC Risc Cores, Argonaut Games, System C Healthcare, Worth Global Style Network and others. All of which IPO’d or were acquired for cash subsequently. The IPO's were led by Goldman Sachs International, Morgan Stanley International, Beeson Gregory, Collins Stewart and Hoare Govett among others. NMI was backed by family interests of the Rothschilds, by Henry Kravis of KKR and by Gilbert de Botton, founder of GAM, now part of UBS. NMI was financial advisor to Wellington Investments a pub group of 1000 units where Tom was on the Board for 7 years. It raised several bond issues via. Morgan Stanley and was sold privately. In October 1999, Tom IPO’d NewMedia SPARK plc on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange and acted as its Executive Chairman until 2010 when he moved to focus on his private investments. NMI was merged into NMS NMS acquired the internet business of GE Capital in Scandinavia and backed several well-known companies often from start up. Including IMI Mobile and Kobalt Music Group where Tom was Chairman from 2002 to 2013. Tom was chairman of the investment committee of NMS. NMS was renamed Gresham House Strategic in 2014. This now successfully focuses more on quoted companies rather than start-ups and early-stage investments. In 2014 Tom founded The Garage Soho London with Sir John Hegarty, a founder of BBH. The leading ad agency. The Garage Soho focuses on early stage businesses particularly in relation to new brands. It has a portfolio of 20 companies and is based in central Soho in its own unique freehold premises. Tom is Chairman of Edison Investment Research, Hardlyeverwornit, Doctify, The Boathouse, and Elevate Direct. Previously, he was chairman of Simbasleep from foundation to 2018. He was chairman of Kobalt Music Group. For 10 years. He was on the board of Market-tech at the time when it was a FTSE 250 company, from IPO to take private in 2017.
