Paul CheeverAn investment industry veteran and venture capital specialist with Access Capital Advisers has left the consultancy to again run his own business.

Since leaving Access on July 1, Paul Cheever has continued in the commercial manager or observer roles at venture collaborations taken on during his nine-year tenure at the consultancy, but under a new business name: Paul Cheever Consulting.

At Access, Cheever cut his teeth in the venture and commercialisation markets, and his work included building the $75 million venture capital portfolio run by Westscheme, a $2.1 billion super fund client of Access. This venture portfolio is understood to be one of the largest in

Australia.

Cheever’s new business will specialise in commercialising innovative research in an array of industries, from bioscience and health care to sustainability. Cheever is also working with the Federal Government as it builds the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute, an entity aiming to leverage private sector capital and draw on business mentors to successfully position leading innovations in the marketplace.

“I’m aiming to spend time largely in the innovation and commercialisation area,” Cheever said. “I’ve worked for the last eight years in venture and commercialisation markets, and have a very high confidence in what

Australia can do – in creating jobs and expertise, and in health care and environmental improvement.”

During his tenure at Access, Cheever took commercialisation manager and observer roles at a range of venture collaborations, such as the partnership between Stone Ridge Ventures, a venture capital manager, Westscheme and WA’s Murdoch University, which assists researchers to commercialise promising ideas. The other ventures are Uniseed, Medical Research and Trans-Tasman Collaborations.

He will continue to liaise with the managers and Access clients involved in these ventures for the foreseeable future, said David Chessell, chairman of Access.

“There is no need to hire anyone to take over these responsibilities,” Chessell said.

But Cheever’s new consulting work may not be restricted to venture and innovation: as a former executive officer of the predecessor funds to the Australian Reward Investment Alliance, the PSS and CSS, and one-time managing director of Russell in Australia, he would not be averse to running projects concentrating on business planning and governance within super funds.

Cheever pursued such work after founding PlanPerform, a business planning and project management company in the mid-to-late 1990s, after his time at Russell.

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