The Firm That Wrecked Private Equity for the Middle East - Bloomberg #Abraaj

The Firm That Wrecked Private Equity for the Middle East - Bloomberg:

The collapse of Abraaj Group didn’t just kill the private equity firm Arif Naqvi built in Dubai. It ruined the entire market.

Since Abraaj’s swift and spectacular collapse was set in motion almost two years ago when investors like Bill Gates got suspicious, virtually no money has been raised by private equity firms based in the Gulf Cooperation Council despite strong performance almost everywhere else, according to Seattle-based data provider PitchBook and London-based Preqin. 

“The collapse of Abraaj has eroded institutional investor confidence built over the past 15 years in emerging market-based private equity firms,” said Alex Gemici, the chairman and chief executive officer of Dubai-based Greenstone Equity Partners, which helps find investors for private equity funds. “We don’t see significant deployment of foreign institutional capital into fund managers based in the Middle East.”