How to pick the right EIS investment for your clients?

Paul is a co-founder of Par Equity, a boutique investment firm based in Edinburgh. He has extensive experience of corporate management, turnarounds, business development and active shareowner engagement. Within Par Equity Paul is focused on portfolio management with the emphasis on value enhancement and realization. In addition, he leads the firm’s property investment activities.

Par Equity’s investment appetite is broader than many other early stage investors. In addition to software and digital opportunities, Par has backed companies in the fields of technical textiles, hardware, food and medtech. Paul works closely with portfolio companies on the wide range of operational and growth challenges they face. He brings to this role over 20 years’ corporate experience, gained in several industry sectors, principally consumer goods, manufacturing and healthcare, with companies such as Mars Confectionery, BUPA and Price Waterhouse.  He has worked in and has extensive experience of the US and the Far East as well as Europe.  In addition to his management experience, Paul has acted as both principal and advisor in a number of corporate finance transactions, many involving strategic re-positioning and fundamental restructuring.

Harvey is an industry leader whose 20 year career spans EA, Acclaim Entertainment and Marmalade, where he led two successful capital raises. Having finished his 4 year tenure as Chair of the BAFTA games committee, Harvey’s extensive experience leading, financing, developing, publishing great games has led him to found a new games publisher and become Director of PlayFund, investing for growth across the games industry.

Raimund Berens is CEO and founder of Iron Box Capital and specialises in budgeting and production management, script development, international finance raising and legal structuring of feature films, as well as all aspects of production management.

He has been involved in the production, industry financing and sales of filmed media content since 2001, following his initial career as an audio-visual technician and sales person. Working across every aspect of a project and progressing in the industry from the ground up, he initially produced corporate videos for international and blue chip companies, such as Unilever, PEC and Bird’s Eye.

Since 2005, Raimund has been structuring, executing and managing investments in the filmed entertainment business through a variety of industry transactions, deploying equity and gap finance, pre-sales, tax incentives and other financing mechanisms. He managed and executed cross-continent productions, short films, TV commercials and theatrical feature films before launching Iron Box Films in 2013.

Raimund understands how to steer filmed entertainment projects from concept through to completion, navigating past any issues that may be encountered along the way. With a deep understanding of financial structures, production contracts and market analysis, he successfully secured £1.5m in development finance into the Iron Box Films Limited group of companies, where he oversees the development and packaging of theatrical feature films and broadcast TV. Iron Box Capital was conceived by Raimund to combine his comprehensive production and financing expertise with industry veteran and British Film ambassador Colin Brown, supported by a best of breed production, compliance and investment advisory team.