NZ Private Capital Announces New Elected Council Members

Anastasiya Gutorova from Simpson Grierson, David Denzer from ANZ Bank, Fiona Foster from Movac, Ryan Thompson from Oriens Capital and Vignesh Kumar of Global From Day One, have been elected to the Council of the New Zealand Private Capital Association.

David Bell from Oriens Capital, James Hawes from Simpson Grierson and Mark Stuart from Movac have stepped down after several years of service.

NZ Private Capital Executive Director, Colin McKinnon says that each of the retiring council members had provided significant contributions to the association in different roles. ‘Our Council members are advocates for private equity markets in New Zealand and share our understanding that private equity and venture capital firms accelerate the ambition of New Zealand business owners through operational improvement and investment performance.’

David Bell served as an active Treasurer for several years and led professional development initiatives for fund CFOs especially round AML compliance. James Hawes served on the Regulatory & Tax Working Group and contributed to the design of conference speaker programmes. Mark Stuart served on the Venture Capital Working Group and contributed to the speaker programme for the inaugural Venture Summit.

Anastasiya Gutorova is a senior associate in Simpson Grierson's corporate team. She is a specialist corporate and commercial lawyer, with extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, joint ventures, corporate governance, and overseas investment. Anastasiya has acted on a number of significant and complex transactions, advising a wide range of domestic and international clients, including major corporates, private equity, and investment banks. Accolades include NZ Lawyer 2020 - Rising Star and New Zealand Law Awards Young Private Practice Lawyer of the Year 2019 – Finalist.

David Denzer, CFA is Associate Director - Leveraged & Acquisition Finance at ANZ.

Fiona Foster joined Movac in 2021 as Investment and Operations Manager. Prior to Movac, she worked at Kiwi Group Holdings where she was part of a small team advising the KGH Board and delivering on the financial and strategic objectives of the Group’s shareholders (NZ Super, ACC and NZ Post). Before her time at KGH, Fiona had a career in corporate finance at PwC in both NZ and the USA, where she supported clients with business strategy, valuation and M&A advisory.

Ryan Thompson is a Senior Analyst with Oriens Capital. Ryan holds a Bachelor of Business Analysis Degree from the University of Waikato majoring in both finance and economics. Ryan’s transaction experience includes Bluelab, IVS, Retirement Income Group, About Health, and Rhino Manufacturing. Prior to joining Oriens Capital in 2017, Ryan interned at the NZ Superannuation fund and worked in multiple teams for BNZ Markets.

Vignesh Kumar is a Partner at venture capital firm GD1 and leads GD1’s Hardware, Deep Tech, and Health Tech investments. Prior to returning to New Zealand Vignesh worked for Apple Inc., across its US and East Asian offices, on hardware execution, and has spent the entirety of his career commercializing science anchored innovations across verticals such as medical devices and consumer electronics. Vignesh holds an MBA from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, and also holds a BE (Hons) and ME (Hons) from The University of Auckland.

New Zealand Private Capital aims to foster understanding that private equity and venture capital firms accelerate the ambition of New Zealand business owners through operational improvement and investment performance.

New Zealand is home to many examples of private capital partnering with companies to improve growth and performance, to share expertise and capital. This ultimately delivers improved productivity, creates jobs and contributes to the national economy.

Association members include venture capital and private equity investors, financial organisations, professional advisors, academic organisations and government or quasi-government agencies.

Its activities cover the spectrum of investment in New Zealand private capital including Angel investment, seed and early-stage venture capital through to expansion capital and private equity (including management buy-outs and buy-ins).

The association also helps businesses navigate and understand the Private Equity and Venture Capital world. Markets and growth require the free flow of capital and the association provides an important role in linking business owners with investors.

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