Ronald Cohen

Ronald Cohen is Founder and Chairman of Apax Partners & Company, an international private equity company which manages $7 billion of investment. He pledged £100,000 to the Labour Party on 16/4/99, and gave £100,000 in 1997. He received a knighthood in the 2000 New Years Honours List and gave another £100,000 to the Labour Party in June 2001. He was President of the Oxford University Union and went to Harvard Business School in America. He was one of the Bioscience bosses who wrote a letter to the Financial Times in May 2001 in support of the Labour Party.

Apax Partners invested in Autonomy, Britain's most successful internet company, making $600 million from a $3 million investment. They are also backers of Jazztel, a Spanish business phone services company and an Israeli company Commtouch, an e-mail provider.

He is Founder and ex-Chairman of the British Venture Capital Association and a Founder and Director of both the European Venture Capital Association and CISCO (City Group for Smaller Companies) alongside Katie Morris. He is Founder and Vice-Chairman of EASQDAQ, the European Stock Market (which deals in stocks worth more than $36 billion). He has also provided funding for Tradepoint Financial Networks, an electronic rival to the London Stock Exchange.

Before founding Apax Partners, he was a consultant with McKinsey. He is Chairman of the Government's Tech Stars Steering Committee Taskforce and a member of the DTI's UK Competitiveness Committee. He sits on the CBI's City Advisory Group and Wider Share Ownership Committee.

Fundraising for Labour

Blair is reported to have turned to Cohen for help with fundraising for Labour before the 2005 election