Board

  • Jim Allen - Chairman

    Jim has more than 39 years of experience in the creation and management of start-up services businesses in the communications industry, having had key roles in building 5 enterprises valued at $1.0 billion or more. He is a Founder of Meritage and is actively involved on the Boards of Meritage portfolio companies Masergy Communications, where he previously served as Executive Chairman, and Miniweb. He was Executive Chairman of Meritage portfolio company Xspedius from 2000 to 2004, which was subsequently sold for $567 million.

    He served as Vice Chairman/CEO of Brooks Fiber Properties, which merged with MCI WorldCom in a $3.4 billion transaction, and was a co-founder/CFO of Cencom Cable Associates, which became the 15th largest cable TV company in the USA and was sold for $1.0 billion. Mr. Allen was also a founding investor in Verio, serving as a company director until its $6.4 billion acquisition by NTT.

    For more information on Meritage Funds, please visit www.meritagefunds.com

  • Lawrence F. De George

    Larry is Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, LPL Investment Group Inc., Florida, a private venture capital firm with investments in Telecommunications, Biotechnology, Internet Infrastructure, Information Display Screens and Financial Services. Investments are located in Europe, South America and the United States.  Previously, Larry was President of Amphenol Corporation Inc a Fortune 500 company and a leading multinational manufacturer of telecommunications interconnect products for commercial and military applications and the cable television industry. Larry is also a director of Advance Display Technologies, iPlan Networks, Chairman of Cervalis LLC and was previously chairman of Completel N.V a European facilities-based competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) located in Amsterdam and Paris. Earlier, Larry was also Director of United Global Communications, Inc. , a multinational provider of broadband communications services.

  • David Wheeler

    David P. Wheeler is Chairman of Credit Suisse’s European Telecom Group, Deputy Chairman of the European Investment Banking Committee and a Senior Advisor to Credit Suisse. He is a former Vice Chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston. Mr. Wheeler has 30 years of investment banking experience and has worked in London for 24 years. He joined Credit Suisse First Boston in 1996 from Lehman Brothers, where he was Co-head of the Global Media & Telecommunications Group. Previously, he spent 15 years with JP Morgan in New York and London.
     

  • Ryan Pollock, Meritage Funds

    Prior to joining Meritage Funds, Ryan was Business Development Manager of Investec, a $60 billion global asset management company based in London. Ryan holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Cape Town, a graduate degree in International Economics, Politics and Philosophy from Oxford University and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. He currently also serves as an observer to the Boards of portfolio companies Mobile Content Networks and Perlego Systems.

  • Ian Valentine - Founder and Chief Architect

    Ian has 19 years of technical systems design, engineering and deployment experience, and has spent the last 11 years in the Digital Media and Television industries, with the last 7 years at Sky. He is a well known industry visionary, has advised the UK and European governments on Interactive TV standards.

    Ian led the MBO creating Miniweb from his department at Sky. Prior to founding Miniweb, he served 4 years as Technical Alliances Director of Sky New Media, and a member of BSkyB's R&D steering committee.

    Prior to working full time for Sky, Ian was co-founder (with Patrick Sansom) and Operations Director of waptv, the company which Sky acquired to obtain the original wTVML micro-browser technology.