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Gulf SWFs look to international investment banks for M&A teams
27 August 2009
Gulf sovereign wealth funds have been stretching their influence beyond the region this year and getting involved in a large number of global M&A deals. As a result, they're looking to recruit investment bankers with experience in international firms.
SWFs in the UAE have been involved in M&A deals worth over $9.3bn in the first half of 2009, according to data from mergermarket. This accounts for 53.4% of the total number of deals conducted by SWFs globally.
Chris Ward, global head of corporate finance at Deloitte in the Middle East, says that Gulf SWFs have fared comparatively well, even if their investment activity has slowed of late and "very few until recently made investments overseas."
In March, Invest AD (formerly the Abu Dhabi Investment Company) hired Alex Carré de Malberg from Rothschild as head of its new M&A advisory business, and headhunters tell us other Gulf SWFs also looking to build teams in this area.
Barney Mundell, director and head of Middle East at headhunters JBS Associates, says: "We recently helped build an M&A team for a SWF based in the DIFC, which involved recruiting two directors, three VPs and three associates. We are experiencing this strengthening of mainly IB execution staff within SWFs quite frequently at the moment. Primarily this is to satisfy existing pipeline of deals and is capitalising on fallout from the banks."
But Imran Saleem, head of financial services at Egon Zehnder International in Dubai, says the type of work required within an SWF differs from traditional M&A advisory.
"The investment strategy is generally to acquire businesses for the long-term, so SWF M&A teams will ideally be positioned to work as their long term strategic partners" he says. "Therefore, someone who worked within an investment bank, but also has private equity experience, can be extremely desirable."
Previously, salaries within SWFs were considered comparatively modest, which meant they struggled to attract international talent to some extent. But now, candidates are keener to join and the firms are being more generous.
"The sovereign wealth funds we're working with are willing to pay in line with top tier investment banks," says Mundell. "And they're also offering guaranteed bonuses, which is unheard of within the banks at the moment."
