Bio

Mr. Sidders is a Managing Director of Blue Beacon. He has spent more than 16 years as an investment banker, advising leading technology companies on strategic and financial issues in more than 100 completed transactions totaling more than $12 billion in value. He was most recently with the Credit Suisse Technology Group, where he was Head of the U.S. Software industry team. Before joining Credit Suisse in 2004, Mr. Sidders was Head of the Software Group at Thomas Weisel Partners, which he initiated shortly after the firm's inception in 1999 and grew into the firm's most productive industry practice. Prior to that time, Mr. Sidders held investment banking positions of increasing responsibility with Dain Rauscher Wessels, AG Edwards & Sons and PaineWebber. Having focused exclusively on the software sector for the last dozen years, Mr. Sidders had an unparalleled knowledge of and an extensive network of relationships across the broad range of the industry and its many segments. Past companies he has advised include such industry leaders as Microsoft, Oracle, Siebel, Check Point, Verisign, Red Hat, Autodesk and Cadence, as well as a wide variety of smaller public and privately-held companies. Mr. Sidders received a Master of Management degree with distinction from the JL Kellogg School at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Science degree magna cum laude in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame.