Providence poaches Hahn for Europe

Providence Equity Partners, the US venture capitalist which made $1bn from last week's $56bn (£37bn) takeover by Deutsche Telekom of Voice-Stream, has poached John Hahn, Morgan Stanley's chief telecoms deal maker in Europe, to boost its European expansion drive.

Providence Equity Partners, the US venture capitalist which made $1bn from last week's $56bn (£37bn) takeover by Deutsche Telekom of Voice-Stream, has poached John Hahn, Morgan Stanley's chief telecoms deal maker in Europe, to boost its European expansion drive.

The group, which has carved a niche in telecoms start-ups and restructurings in the US, has set aside $300m for telecoms investments in Europe.

As co-head of the European telecoms group at the investment bank, Mr Hahn advised on some of Europe's biggest telecoms deals, including the $33bn takeover of Orange by Mannesmann. He later helped mastermind the German company's defence against the the $160bn hostile bid by Vodafone.

Mr Hahn was involved in a series of financings raising over $2bn for COLT Telecom, the $1bn IPO of Holland's KPN Qwest, and BT's restructuring.

Since opening its London bridgehead a year ago, Providence has seen a number of European investments bear fruit. Recent European successes include the IPOs of Carrier 1 and Tele 1 and the merger of First Telecom with Atlantic Telecom, which have seen the collective value of these investments soar from $123m to $2bn. Other European investments include Centric Telecom, Digiplex, Star One, and ThinkVentures.

Providence will this week announce it has recruited Anne Farlow from Electra Partners, and Biswajit Subramanian, also from Morgan Stanley. Paul Salem, who set up the London office, said they would be "pivotal to developing our private equity operations" in Europe.

Mr Hahn said he was attracted by the fact that Providence was one of the first US-based private equity firms to invest aggressively in Europe. Providence manages funds worth $2bn.