GMT boosts digital media team

European communications specialist GMT Communications Partners has recruited Natalie Tydeman as an industry advisor.

Natalie Tydeman

Tydeman’s appointment is part of a wider attempt by GMT to bolster its digital media expertise, according to Jeff Montgomery, managing partner at GMT.

Tydeman joins GMT from Fremantle Media where she was senior vice president of business diversification. GMT said in a statement that the start-ups, joint ventures and acquisitions that Tydeman worked on generated more than a six times return on their investments overall.

Before joining Fremantle Media in 2003, Tydeman was a managing director at the online and interactive department of entertainment company Fox Kids Europe, director of business development at non-fiction company Discovery Communications Europe and part of the start-up team for Excite Europe, an internet portal.

Tydeman has also worked at Hanna-Barbera International and Braxton Associates. Tydeman is a non-executive director and an angel investor at various traditional and digital media businesses.

Montgomery said: “Until two years ago digital media wasn’t really a viable area of investment for us, as we like areas with strong revenues and high barriers to entry. Yet now the digital media world in areas such as video games and business to business publishing has generated a plethora of opportunities.”

GMT has in the past mainly worked in traditional media and broadband infrastructure. All the firm’s traditional media investments such as magazine publishing and book publishing have active internet based or digital media features, he said.

As part of its attempts to acquire digital media portfolio companies, GMT has bought Docu Group Deutsche, a German business to business company previously owned by Candover portfolio company Springer Business Media.