Happy Birthday Hal!

Many congratulations to Hal Philipp, our friend, colleague and one of the original founders of Meridian Growth Capital who recently celebrated his 70th birthday at a lavish party in Switzerland. 

Hal is an incredible force, with an inventive and professional background spanning several decades and industries and has been instrumental to MGC’s journey. 

Having had an extremely successful career 20 years prior, Hal is most famous for inventing and patenting the first charge-transfer (‘QT’) capacitive sensor and went on to establish Quantum Research Group in 1996. Quantum quickly became a dominant force in the capacitive touch sensing industry manufacturing the sensors for industrial and commercial applications.

In the ensuing years, Hal was granted c.80 patents, including capacitive touch sense and is wholly responsible for creating a zombie generation of smart phone users ! Customers and licensees included Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony, GE, Electrolux, Whirlpool, Bose, and hundreds of others.

Hal engaged with Meridian Corporate Finance in 2007 to sell QRG, and we successfully completed the sale in March 2008 to Nasdaq listed Atmel Corporate Inc. (“Atmel”) for a total consideration well in excess of £100m at a forward EBITDA multiple of 50x.

Having created such a successful relationship during this high profile sale, Hal, Darren and Michael joined forces to establish Meridian Growth Capital with a goal of helping start-ups and early stage companies make their mark in the world (like LoveHolidays, Blis, Biofidelity, StorMagic & NewsWhip) and as they say the rest is history! 

Happy 70 years young Hal!