Congratulations to all the EBAN Gala Awards Recipients!
Congratulations to all the EBAN Award recipients! Our President Janne Jormalainen handed out the awards during our Gala Dinner to the following people and organisations:
1. Best Performing New Member: Hellenic Development Bank
This award was received on stage by Athina Chatzipetrou, CEO at HDB, on behalf of the Hellenic Development Bank. HDB granted more than 37.5K new loans during 2020-2021, contributing to the creation of more than 18.6K new jobs. What’s more, our best performing new member has designed and is about to launch a ground-breaking financial instrument for innovative Greek SMEs and start-ups.
2. Best Performing Member: LitBAN
LitBAN was awarded as the best performing EBAN member for having multiplied their investments by 5 in the past year: the network managed to grow investments made by its members from 2.2M EUR up to an incredible 10.4M EUR in 2020 – 2021. As LitBAN is doing crucial work supporting Ukraine, the award was received by Lev Dolgatsjov, President of EstBAN.
3. Successful Business Financed by Early Stage Investors: James & James
Our next award of the night went to Cambridge Angels and GBAN Board Member Peter Cowley: “James & James” received a mere 7.5K GBP investment that led to an impressive 107X return on exit. This was not a conventional angel deal, in that capital was not required, however, the founders realised they needed business advice and experience thus showing us that there is more than one way to be a great angel!
4. Best Early Stage Investor: DanBAN
This award was received by DanBAN for their amazing past year with 49 exits in 2021 but also for the consistency over a period of consecutive years with 212 exits since 2015 and a 3x average return on exit. On top of the above, DanBAN members set another all-time high record in 2021 with direct investments of 54.2M EUR, an 11% increase from 2020. Big bravo to Jesper Jarlbæk, Chairman of DanBAN, and Michael Hansen, CEO of DanBAN, and to the rest of the team!
Because of the very special circumstances that members from our network are experiencing we decided to give two special recognition awards this year:
One to IM Fndng for their relentless commitment to growing the business angel community in Lebanon despite the current economic situation, devaluation of currency, and conflicts in the region, and for being the only entity investing in startups in the country! The award was received by Nicolas Rouhana, Chairman & CEO at IM Fndng!
Our final award of the night was given to Inna Ushakova, cybersecurity entrepreneur and CEO of Scalarr, who is using her network and skills to coordinate volunteers in her home city Kharkiv, Ukraine, through helpkharkiv.org in order to provide food and medication to those in need.