Paul Traynor has 25 years experience working with private companies, as an investor, advisor and chairman & non executive director.

After graduating from Oxford in PPE, Paul spent 2 years with British Aerospace before joining 3i in 1985 as a trainee investment executive. Beginning in the Birmingham office his first deal involved investing £50k in a print-framing business started up by a first-generation Indian immigrant family. Within 6 weeks the business had failed - Paul still counts the experience as one of the most profound learning experiences of his life! Undeterred he went on to spend 15 years with 3i, working in Birmingham, Nottingham, London and Paris and becoming one of the company’s outstanding dealmakers. Whilst at 3i he worked with companies such as Prontaprint, Denby Potteries, Zotefoams, Actinic, Mettis Group, Nottingham Group and many more. He became a divisional MD within 3i in 1996, responsible for a business with assets of £700m under management and annual profits of £85m.

In 2000 Paul left 3i and began working directly with private companies, often appointed by the shareholders to support the business through significant change. His first appointment was as chairman of a Stockholm based online stockbroker which had received nearly €30m of VC funding during the dotcom boom. The company was deep into negotiations with a German bank over the sale of the business and Paul was asked to oversee the process. However, against a background of collapsing confidence in dotcom businesses, the German bank withdrew, leaving the company short of cash and short of options. Following a refinancing and some operational restructuring the Board succeeded in merging the business with its major domestic competitor. The company, Avanza, remains the Nordic market leader and is listed on the Stockholm stock exchange. Since then, Paul has worked with companies as diverse as a PLUS-listed manufacturer of disposable bioreactors, an operator of coffee vending machines, the incubator unit of a leading business school, and an entrepreneurially-led business supplying and distributing frozen food to high street restaurants.

Paul holds a licence from the British Psychological Society to undertake psychometric profiling and is a CEDR accredited mediator.

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