Vianet Group appoints Stella Panu to its Board as Non-Executive Director and Chair of Audit Committee

– UK, Stockton-on-Tees –  Vianet Group plc (LON: VNET), the international provider of actionable data and business insight through devices connected to IoT platform the appointment of Stella Panu to its Board as a Non-Executive Director effective from 14 July 2022.

“I am delighted that we have appointed Stella as a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit Committee. Her financial background, City experience, combined with expertise across finance, strategy, and M&A activity will be invaluable to the Board and the Executive team as we continue to focus on delivering our growth strategy,” said Board Chairman James Dickson.

Stella Panu will also join the Audit Committee as Chair.

The company also announced that Chris Williams step down from the Board today.

About Stella Panu

Stella Panu was a founding Partner of Maven Capital Partner UK LLP, an investment management company, created after a management buyout of the private equity business of Aberdeen Asset Management plc in 2009, and led the business through to its sale in July 2021. Maven has a focus on venture growth and innovation and during her time at Maven, Stella led the AIM Investment team and was the lead investor in private equity across Maven. Having previously been at AAM and Seymour Pierce Ltd and had seats on numerous company boards, Stella brings with her a wealth of private equity M&A and AIM experience.

Stella has also previously worked for Pricewaterhouse Coopers, The World Bank, and Raifessen Investment Fund and holds a degree in Economics and an MA in Applied Economics and Statistics.

About Vianet

Vianet Group is a leading provider of actionable management information and business insight created by combining data from our smart Internet of Things solutions and external information sources.

Since its Admission to AIM in 2006, the Group has grown from its core beer monitoring business both organically and through strategic acquisitions to widen its offering and develop new businesses, especially in vending telemetry and contactless payment solutions, particularly for the premium coffee sector.

Servicing over 300 customers across the world and rendering live data to our IoT platform from over 250,000 connected machines daily, Vianet is one of the largest B2B connected solutions providers in Europe with established long-term relationships with blue chip customers and growing recurring revenues which are over 85% of our total revenues.

In our Smart Machines division, we connect a single data gathering device with its onboard communication capability to a customer’s asset or system. The device then sends data back via our IoT platform to cloud-based servers. The technology was originally developed for automated retailing machines; however, the flexibility and functionality of the device means the technology can be applied to any machine which has the capability to output data. The device is also used to connect our contactless payment solution and communicate payment terms to our cloud-based payment services providers where that application is also required.

The Smart Zones division is where we connect multiple data gathering devices into one or more systems or assets with the data from those devices being communicated back to our IoT platform and cloud-based servers via a single 3G communications hub. The technology was originally developed for flow monitoring devices, temperature sensors, and asset management in drinks retailing but any data gathering device with a digital output could be connected to the communications hub where required such as gaming machines, utility management, and EPOS.

For more information: https://vianetplc.com/