Word: investcorp
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Before launching Investcorp, Kirdar worked for Chase Manhattan Bank, where he was in charge of operations in the Persian Gulf. (Many of his senior executives are Chase alumni.) He was there at the height of the oil shocks of the 1970s and forged close ties with some of the richest men in the region. Abdul-Rahman Al-Ateeqi, a former Oil Minister and Finance Minister of Kuwait, has been Investcorp's chairman since the beginning. The vice chairman, Ahmed Ali Kanoo, heads a family with a net worth estimated at $1.5 billion...
...just a year after the bank was launched and when Kirdar and his colleagues were doing business from rented space in a Holiday Inn in Bahrain, he boasted that he was putting together a bank "like something J.P. Morgan envisaged." Thanks to Kirdar's connections, Investcorp was able to raise $50 million in start-up capital and four years later another $50 million. Investcorp's list of founding shareholders reads like a Who's Who of the gulf, including the names of dozens of leading businessmen and members of the region's ruling families, among them Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani...
...bank has reported healthy profits year after year. (In 1994 it posted a net profit of $51 million, down from record earnings of $67.3 million in 1993.) Its stock, listed on the Bahrain Stock Exchange, has quadrupled in price since the bank's founding. But for Investcorp clients who participate in takeovers arranged by the bank, it has not always been smooth sailing. Many deals have been duds. Dellwood Foods, a troubled New York dairy acquired in 1985, languishes unsold in Investcorp's portfolio. Also unsold is Chaumet, a world-famous French jeweler, which has racked up millions of dollars...
...Investcorp's biggest deal ever was the 1990 takeover of Saks Fifth Avenue. When Investcorp bought the prestigious chain, it was evidently hoping to repeat its triumph with Tiffany. Investcorp certainly promoted Saks to its clients that way. A 1990 private-placement memo to Arab clients obtained by TIME contains an extremely bullish forecast on the first page: Saks was expected to produce an investment return of 25.9% a year, and was likely to be sold within four years. One reason Investcorp failed to repeat its Tiffany coup with Saks is that the $1.6 billion purchase price was $200 million...
...Investcorp managed to raise billions of dollars when its track record is so uneven? Its sales force is based in Bahrain, about an hour's flight from most of the bank's clients. Scores of Arabic-speaking marketers travel throughout the region, offering deals and updates on past transactions. It's a level of "expensive, personalized service," says Kirdar, that Investcorp's competitors can't match. Investcorp's success in the Middle East may also be due to its marketing documents, which are not overseen by Western regulatory agencies. The contrast is striking between an Investcorp private-placement memorandum...