Powerlist2014: Ralf Schnell, Siemens Venture Capital

Rank last year: 5

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.

This year Siemens Venture Capital established a $100m venture capital fund to support start ups in very early stages of development. The Industry of the Future Fund, launched by Siemens’ industry sector division together with the venture capital unit of Siemens Financial Services, aims to invest up to $1m individually in very young start ups with promising industrial technologies.

In his more than nine years in charge of SVC, the group has become 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 the 2012 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.”

What technological investing trends are you most excited by?

Schnell said: “With no order of importance: next generation healthcare IT, internet of things, energy management IT, cloud-based enterprise IT, cloud-based industrial IT.”