History

In August 2000, Cyrte Investments was founded by Frank Botman under the name Talpa Capital, to manage the private wealth of Dutch Media entrepreneur John de Mol. From inception, our investment focus has been on publicly traded securities in the Telecom, Media and Technology sector. 

In 2006 Talpa was renamed Cyrte Investments. We also launched our Global TMT Fund in that year. With our Global TMT Fund, we continued the proven success of our Talpa Capital investment strategy and managed to secure funding from two of the largest pension funds in the Netherlands.

2007 was a pivotal year for Cyrte. First of all the group was strengthened by the long term commitment of a dedicated institutional investor when Delta Lloyd acquired a majority share in the company. In the same year we made our first private equity investment. Furthermore, we started our Brazil Telecom Fund.  

In 2009 we made a number of private equity investments. We acquired, among others, Dutch online retailer Bol.com and TV production company RDF Media. We also launched new funds and investment vehicles for listed equity, for example our Africa Online Fund. 

2010 brought the successful conclusion of our Brazil Telecom Fund and we merged RDF Media with Zodiak Entertainment.

Over the years Cyrte Investments has progressed from focusing purely on capital management into a diversified investment firm, managing multiple funds and special purpose vehicles on behalf of a group of carefully selected leading institutional investors. During this transition, Cyrte has diversified from purely listed investor into an investor in both publicly traded securities and private equity.