EMBL Venture Capital has defied the trend of staff reductions in Germany's private equity industry with the hire of Christof Antz, a businessman with a background in the medical applications of atomic physics, as a partner.

Germany's private industry contracted by about a third last year, falling from 1,600 executives to 1,100, according to statistics published by the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. EMBL Venture Capital, an offshoot of the European Laboratory for Molecular Biology (EMBL), has been more successful than many firms, closing a €26m ($30m) fund in February.