The two founders of Ehrhardt Leus & Associates are Paul Ehrhardt and Erik Leus.
Paul was partner and co-founder of Ernst & Young corporate finance from 1986 to 1996. In 1996 he moved to the Far East, where he became the general manager for Ernst & Young Telecom Asia Pacific. After his return to the Netherlands in 1999, Paul set up Ernst & Young Telecom in the Netherlands. Ernst & Young Telecom (as part of Ernst & Young Consulting) was acquired by Cap Gemini, after which Paul became a vice president in the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young organization. Before joining Ernst & Young in 1986, Paul is a Registered Accountant and held several financial and accounting positions, both in the Netherlands (e.g. Stork) and abroad. He worked as a Registered Accountant for KPMG in Brazil for over 5 years.
Paul has extensive deal making experience and was involved in over 60 transactions, mostly in IT, telecom and media, such as the merger between BSO and Origin, the disentanglement of Veronica, the consolidation of the cable TV market through A2000 (now UPC).
Before co-founding Ehrhardt Leus & Associates, Erik was a Director with the NeSBIC CTe Fund. The NeSBIC CTe Fund was a technology focused venture capital firm, with a number of high profile investments, including Versatel, Scarlet, Energiebedrijf.com, Dedigate, ITmasters, etc. Erik was responsible for setting up and running a program dedicated to the support of the CTe Fund portfolio companies. Before joining NeSBIC in 2000, he was a Country Manager for SpeedPort NV, a successful Internet Communications start-up, which was acquired by Versatel. Prior to SpeedPort, Erik spent 5 years in the USA (of which 4 years in Silicon Valley), with the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency. In the US he gained extensive experience in supporting US technology companies expanding into Europe (including companies such as Cisco Systems, Peoplesoft, BMC Software, Hewlett Packard, etc.). Before moving to the US, he held different positions as a consultant and a researcher at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands and in Barcelona.
