LONDON | PARIS | January 8^th, 2010 - Lorentz, Deschamps & Associés (LD&A), a leading Corporate Finance boutique for high-tech SMEs, accelerates its growth and announces two key appointments: François Mazoudier becomes Partner in our UK London office (LD&A UK) and Daniel Michel is appointed Principal in our Paris office.

In London, François Mazoudier joins LD&A (UK) as Partner. François brings a 20-year executive career in TMT and Venture Capital. He previously held senior executive positions at Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC), PictureTel (now Polycom, NASDAQ: PLCM), Firefox, The Cloud Networks (WiFi), and RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK). He was the co-founder and UK CEO of Speed Ventures AB, then one of Europe’s most prominent early stage VC firms. François speaks French, English, and German fluently. He is a graduate in Marketing from the University of Paris, France.

In Paris, Daniel Michel joins LD&A as Principal. Daniel has over 10 years’ experience in conducting international mergers & acquisitions operations for HSBC in London and UBS Wealth Management in Paris. Prior to that, he was project manager in the space division of EADS and an Artificial Intelligence laboratory researcher at M.I.T. Daniel speaks French and English fluently. He holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from Supélec, Imperial College of London, and an MBA from INSEAD.

“Strong activity in 2009 and a positive outlook for 2010 lead us to accelerate our European development. Telecoms, Internet, IT, and clean tech sectors where we are active, are moving ahead thanks to rapid technology changes. Small and mid-size businesses in these sectors are very dynamic which translates into an increase of corporate finance operations (fund-raisings and M&A). The technological, industrial and financial skills of François and Daniel will allow LD&A to seize these opportunities throughout Europe and to meet its clients’ needs with more efficiency” comments Francis Lorentz, Chairman of LD&A.