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A Manchester-based venture capital investor has hired four industry heavyweights including a former Apple executive and co-founder of Social Chain.

Praetura Ventures has appointed Colin Greene, Dominic McGregor, Catherine Barber-Brown and Mark Slade as operational partners, a new role that will see the firm bring "significant intellect, energy and commercial experience on board" to support the founders and entrepreneurs it backs.

Mr Greene, who has recently returned to the North West from Silicon Valley, has spent the last 30 years working for some of the world’s largest technology companies including NCR, Intel and Apple, where he most recently led its consumer retail business in the US.

During his time at Apple he also held COO and Country CEO roles for Apple in Tokyo and Seoul, and since returning to the º£½ÇÊÓƵ has taken on a number of advisory roles within tech and fintech start-ups.

He is joined by Mr McGregor, the co-founder and ex-COO of Social Chain. Alongside his co-founder Steven Bartlett, he helped grow Social Chain from a standing start to a $200m-turnover business with more than 750 staff in offices around the world, including New York, Berlin and London.

He built a client portfolio that saw Social Chain work with some of the world’s biggest brands, such as Amazon, McDonald’s and the BBC, before listing Social Chain on the German stock exchange in 2019.

Mrs Barber-Brown spent her early career as an investment banker for Credit Suisse and Barclays, and has held senior strategy and change roles at The Co-operative Bank.

She now specialises in helping businesses drive performance, growth and transformation, and is a non-executive director of Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and a mentor for Tech Manchester.