E Walters (SE 1962)
Eric Walters was born on 3 August 1944 and educated at Bablake Grammar School in Coventry. At Selwyn, supported by a BP scholarship, he read Natural Sciences. Eric subsequently had an extremely successful, if characteristically low-profile, career in industry and private equity. He is acknowledged by his peers as a key player in establishing the private equity industry in the UK.
Eric’s early career involved roles at BP, Lex and as a management consultant. He subsequently joined Grand Metropolitan (now Diageo) in 1980, holding a number of senior positions and rising to CEO of the retailing division. He moved to Schroder Ventures in 1987, shortly after it was founded. Together with managing director Jon Moulton, he was instrumental in making Schroder Ventures, now Permira, one of Europe’s leading venture capital partnerships.
In 1997, Eric joined Jon Moulton and Martin Bolland in founding Alchemy Partners. Martin Bolland acknowledges that without him the significant early success that made Alchemy a serious investment house would not have been possible. In 2001, he cofounded Englefield Capital with Dominic Shorthouse, another serious and dynamic player in the private equity arena. Alongside his work at Englefield, Eric was on the board of Capita Group, a FTSE 100 company from 2001. He was appointed chairman in 2006 and chaired the group during a successful period of continued growth.
Alongside his career, Eric and his Swiss wife Katharina founded the Walters Kundert Charitable Trust, which continues to play a significant role supporting chemists at Cambridge and also supporting Selwyn. Professor Jeremy Sanders (Fellow SE 1976) writes:
PART FOUR
‘I vividly remember the first day that Eric came to see me in 2001: he briefly summarised his career and how Cambridge had made it possible, told me that it was time for him to give something back, and asked me what help the Chemistry Department needed. I offered him a menu of possibilities, including support of Carol Robinson’s research: she had just moved to Cambridge from Oxford, and I was looking for some help in setting up her research group. Fortunately, Carol and Eric instantly bonded, and the Walters Kundert Charitable Trust generously offered to support her. We conceived the idea of the Next Generation Fellowship (NGF) scheme, and Carol was the first beneficiary. ‘A couple of years later I asked Eric to support a Professorship for Carol and again the response was warm and generous. Soon afterwards, Carol was awarded a prestigious Royal Society Professorship, and Eric graciously allowed us to transform the donation into NGFs for two new lecturers, Oren Scherman and then Jonathan Nitschke. These unrestricted grants to Carol, Oren and Jonathan gave them precious freedom and transformed their research capabilities. Thanks to this tremendous boost, all are now outstandingly successful, with major grants, big research groups and exciting research programmes. The investment in their NGFs has been rewarded many times over; it
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Selwyn Calendar 2010-2011