Jose Romano heads the Istanbul Venture Capital Initiative and is responsible for EIF’s Turkish operations. Prior to EIF, Mr. Romano was a Manager at the Emerging Markets Group of Deloitte & Touche where his principal responsibility was co-managing a EUR 25m fund. He also led several investment advisory projects, principally in Nigeria, the Middle East and Latin America. Before he worked briefly at private equity adviser Actis, and as a management consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mr. Romano started his career as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow working as an economist in the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Namibia.

Mr .Romano is a graduate (First Class Honours) in Economics from Queen Mary College, University of London and holds an MPhil in Economics from Cambridge University. He obtained his MBA (“la Caixa Scholar”) from London Business School.

Istanbul Venture Capital Initiative (iVCi), founded in 2007, is Turkey’s first ever dedicated fund of funds and co-investment programme. The investors in iVCi are the Small and Medium Industry Development Organisation of Turkey (KOSGEB), the Technology Development Foundation of Turkey (TTGV), the Development Bank of Turkey (TKB), Garanti Bank, National Bank of Greece Group (NBG) and the European Investment Fund (EIF). EIF is the adviser to iVCi.

iVCi leverages on the experience of EIF, the European Union’s specialised financial body for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and the risk capital arm of the European Investment Bank Group (EIB Group).

EIF

Established in 1994, EIF is part of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group. Based in Luxembourg it has over EUR 4.5 billion under management spread across over 290 venture capital funds. EIF has a tripartite shareholding, which includes the EIB, the European Union represented by the European Commission, and a number of public and private European banks and financial institutions. EIF has complementary goals, being committed to the development of a knowledge-based society, with a focus on innovation, growth and employment, the promotion of entrepreneurial spirit and regional development and the cohesion of the European Union and Accession countries.

For further information please visit www.eif.org