Easy as TMT

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Ironically, EMCP's first deal is with a start-up company called Ginx and ranges between US$1m and US$10m with Einstein refusing to reveal the exact value. Based in London, where EMCP is registered, Ginx is a one-of-a-kind company, says the two men almost simultaneously.

"It's a smallish deal, but it has all the elements of what we're going to be doing including due diligence, advisory, raising capital, and principal investment. One of the key benefits of EMCP is that once the deal is done, most companies move onto the next deal, but we stay in there and get as involved as possible," says Einstein.

Pohl is confident Ginx has been a great first acquisition, filled with potential and not just on a local and regional level. "Ginx is a new TV channel but with a twist. Think back to the early days of MTV, all the content was created by a band wanting to create a music video and MTV provided that. Ginx is doing something similar but with games.

"Today, gaming shows have people sitting there talking about reviews and what hardware platform it can accessed on, and it's not very interesting. But game content today and the power of the graphics and computers is one step removed from what Disney did with the film ‘Cars'. Ginx takes that and creates content out of it. You film a complete game being played from end-to-end and then pull out the interesting bits, creating an entire show about a game."

The beauty of the idea, however, is that it has the potential to work online where viewers are directed to the Ginx website to play the games they have just watched being reviewed on television, as well as being franchised out all around the world.

"We're in the process of closing franchise deals with different companies," says Einstein. "The business model is excellent in the sense that it's a franchise scenario where the revenue will come from minimum guarantees and splits of gross revenue. For that Ginx provides all the programming customised or uncustomised and designs a website for that specific territory as well. We will immediately start rolling Ginx out as both a local and international brand.

"Conceptually, it's the first time I'm aware that a TV channel acts as a marketing tool for a website as opposed to a website acting as a reverse," he adds.

Ginx may sound like a unique proposition and a sound business concept, but as so many private equity players know to their cost, you just never know. And Pohl knows exactly what that means. His own worst deal was with a company that he and his investors put US$1.23m into, partnering with one of the big UK banks.

What he wasn't to know was that a year later the bank phoned him to break the bad news that the company in which he had invested had gone bust and the board director had immediately resigned on the spot.

"We said ‘what about all these questions?' and the bank didn't have good answers. It turned out that the company directors had defrauded the company by taking money out to friendly companies they owned and overpaid for services," says Pohl looking back.

"The asset, the software, we thought we owned we didn't. The company was eventually liquidated but even worse, as soon as I was approaching the building, the guy whose company it was pulled away in a brand new Ferrari. I'll never forget watching that Ferrari drive down the street."

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