Accel Loses Pair of London Partners

Things must be getting lonely in the London office of venture capital firm Accel Partners, as peHUB has learned that partners Kaj-Erik Relander and Simon Levene both resigned within the past several weeks. No word yet on why they left, or if their departures were related.

Relander was the more notable of the two, having joined Accel in 2001 after serving as president and CEO of telecom giant Sonera. He later was convicted by a Finnish court of having violated privacy laws while running Sonera — the court found that Relander had ordered an illegal review of employee phone logs in order to determine who leaked information to the media about an internal company dispute — but Accel never waivered in its support.

He would go on to represent Accel on the boards of such portfolio companies as Artimi, Carrier IQ, Cambridge Broadband, Discretix, Medio, MyThings, Outsmart, Pontis, Surfkitchen, The Cloud, Ubiquisys, United Mobile, Volantis, XConnect and Zlango.

Levene joined Accel in October 2006, after having worked in corporate development for Yahoo, AOL and Excite @Home. His portfolio companies included Knewton and MyHeritage.

Accel’s London office is affiliated with the namesake firm’s Silicon Valley headquarters, but is responsible for managing a $525 million European fund that closed just 15 months ago. The four remaining partners on that fund are: Bruce Golden, Kevin Comolli, Harry Nellis and Sonali De Rycker. Accel also has a pair of junior investment pros working in London.

Both Relander and Levene have been removed from the Accel website. I reached out to Accel’s Jim Breyer yesterday, but did not hear back.