As chief executive, Ralf Schnell has overseen a transformation of Siemens Venture Capital (SVC), the corporate venturing unit of the Germany-based industrial corporation, repositioning its focus entirely after he took it over in February 2005. It has now grown to more than €1bn ($1.3bn) under management.
In his more than seven years in charge of SVC, the group has been repositioned via the secondary sale of assets, shifting the focus on the communications business to a generalised group reflecting Siemens’ four business units as well as being a fund-of-funds manager for both Siemens’ pension fund and investors outside Siemens.
Schnell said in an interview for last year’s Powerlist™: “It is quite a unique set-up in the industry now. We had the idea in 2007 that we should merge into what I would call today the private equity competence centre for Siemens, where we are the prime contact partner for private equity, venture capital and growth equity. We have 30 people covering all of this in four locations [Munich, Palo Alto, Boston, Beijing].”
He added: “Before joining Siemens, I built Infineon’s corporate venturing activity from the ground up since 1998. I worked with two colleagues, Rudolf Ohnesorge, who is now a partner at Ambienta, and Joerg Sperling, who is now a partner at venture capital firm WHEB.”
Prior to joining Infineon Technologies in 1998, Schnell worked with Siemens for 11 years after obtaining his diploma degree in physics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and his PhD in physics with research work in semiconductor surface physics at the synchrotron radiation laboratories in Hamburg and Berlin.
Schnell added: “I did the secondary sale of Infineon Ventures almost the same day I signed the contract for SVC. We sold the Infineon portfolio on December 24, 2004. On December 23 I signed the contract with SVC and joined in February 2005.”
