Former Dragon Julie Meyer’s Swiss investment firm enters liquidation

A Swiss venture capital firm founded by former Dragons’ Den investor Julie Meyer has gone into liquidation with around 435,000 Swiss francs (£400,000) of open claims against it, according to reports.

VIVA Investment Partners AG (VIP) began liquidation proceedings on 18 August, with an official notice published by the Meilen district court, the Daily Mail reported. The newspaper cited Swiss business magazine Beobachter as reporting that the claims were owed to tax offices, IT firms and small business suppliers.

Meyer, 60, founded the Zollikon-based firm in 2018 after moving her business operations from Malta to Zurich, the Daily Mail said.

She previously ran a UK arm, VIVA Investment Partners (UK) Limited, from an address in Surrey. The Daily Mail said the company applied for a voluntary strike-off and was dissolved in April 2023.

The liquidation follows the loss of Meyer’s MBE. The Cabinet Office’s list of individuals who have forfeited their honour records that she forfeited the MBE she received in 2012 in August 2025, for bringing the honours system into disrepute.

Warwick University, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2014, revoked it in 2022, the Daily Mail reported.

Both decisions followed a dispute with Farrer & Co, the law firm that represented Meyer in a court case in Malta. The High Court heard she had failed to pay Farrer partner Julian Pike £197,000, with Meyer claiming the firm had provided a poor standard of service worth about £50,000.

In 2022, a warrant was issued for her arrest after she failed to attend a High Court hearing on 14 February. Meyer said she had been unable to travel from her home in Switzerland because of conjunctivitis and because she had not received a Covid vaccine. The court ruled that her medical evidence was not grounds to avoid attending the hearings in person.

Mr Justice Kerr handed her a six-month suspended sentence for contempt of court and said she had shown herself “to be a selfish and untrustworthy person”. He added: “I am satisfied there is every prospect that the defendant will continue to flout orders of the court unless coerced into obeying them.”

The judge also said some of the evidence filed on Meyer’s behalf sought to portray her as “too important for the courts of England and Wales to take precedent over her other interests”.

In her defence, Meyer said the firm had “abused their privileged position as the Queen’s lawyers” and claimed it had harassed her and her company. She lost an appeal against the suspended sentence.

When Meyer was stripped of her MBE, her name appeared alongside 11 others added to the Cabinet Office list that month. Meyer is one of two women on the list in recent years, the other being former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells, who forfeited a CBE over her handling of the Horizon IT scandal.

Meyer’s LinkedIn profile and website still list her as chairman and chief executive of VIP and style her as “Dr Julie Meyer MBE”. It said the same styling appeared on a website for Follow The Entrepreneur (FTE), which describes her as a member of its capital markets team.

Asked previously about the post-nominal, Meyer said: “I have not received any official letter from the UK government about my MBE being removed.”

She added: “The MBE which you appear to be referring to does not refer to the Member of the British Empire award. It refers to another organisation which was set up many years ago. This has nothing to do with the UK at all.”

Her LinkedIn profile lists her as a member of the board of the EcosystemEconomics Association (MBE). The Daily Mail has said it had found no evidence of the association or its board.

Cabinet Office guidance on forfeiture states that a person whose honour is forfeited can no longer refer to it, including through post-nominals on websites, publications or business cards. The Cabinet Office told the Daily Mail that recipients are informed of a forfeiture before it is made public.

Warwick University told the newspaper it had written to Meyer when the doctorate was revoked in 2022. It has since contacted her to request removal of any reference to the award.

Sources close to Meyer thave said that she now spends much of her time in Greece, where she owns a villa on the island of Kea and hosts networking events.

On LinkedIn she lists herself as founder and chief executive of Kea Valley Enterprises, a Cyprus-registered investment vehicle for luxury property on the island. She is also managing director of Keanaissance Longevity Partners, which brings together wealthy investors, scientists and technology founders looking to invest in anti-ageing technology and healthcare.

Places at a seven-day summit in November are being advertised at €5,000 (£4,278), the newspaper reported.

The US-born investor moved to London in 1998 and made millions from the $50m sale of First Tuesday, her networking group for entrepreneurs and investors, in July 2000.

She was named one of two new Dragons for an online version of the BBC Two programme in 2009 and previously advised David Cameron’s government.

Read the full article →