March 4, 2002: Mara Venture Fund Adds Partner

Nicolas Vryghem Joins as Partner

With the appointment of Nicolas Vryghem, Mara Ventures has four partners and one none-voting member with extensive experience in biotechnology patent law. Mara Ventures has established itself in Washington D.C., the hotbed of the genomics and post-genomics era, with two staff members and in the Benelux with three staff members to cover Western Europe.
Mr. Vryghem will be based in Brussels to strengthen the European team which now has reached the critical mass that is necessary to cope with the increasing deal flow.

Nicolas Vryghem was most recently a founding partner of Value for Growth, a biotech and ICT venture coaching services company. Between 1996 -2000 he acquired extensive investment experience at BNP-Paribas, first as merger and acquisition manager and later on as investment manager in private equity. He was responsible for investments in ICT and in the biotechnology sector and served on the Board of Directors of several companies, actively coaching management in business development and strategic planning. He consolidated businesses through acquisitions, raised € 35 million capital on the public stock exchange, assisted in taking companies public and lead a trans-national merger of € 120 million. Previously, he served 4 years as business consultant at Arthur Andersen responsible for organizational re-engineering and business planning.

Nicolas Vryghem is a graduate in commercial engineering from the Solvay Business School, Brussels and holds an M.B.A. from the prestigious INSEAD business school, Fontainebleau, France.