Destination Middle East
Day One
The Middle East’s financial centers are unexplored territory for most investor relations professionals. So when our broker suggested my CEO and I take a trip to the United Arab Emirates in the middle of our roadshow, I was a bit sceptical. Since when did these become target destinations for non-deal roadshows? The answer is: they didn’t. But if you have two or three local funds showing an interest in your story, as was the case here, this region is well worth a visit.
The funds interested in meeting with us were in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and, with Sunday marking the beginning of the working week there, we could easily tack on a weekend trip between our London and US stops. So after a gruelling couple of days of meetings in London, we boarded a plane on Saturday afternoon to Dubai.
The landed us in the city around 10.30 pm, and I was thankful that I had asked our hotel to have a car waiting for us upon arrival – the last thing you want after seven hours on a plane with your boss is a delay in getting to the hotel. It took us about half an hour to get to the city center, where we checked into the Emirates Towers hotel.
Abu Dhabi-based private equity investor Imad Ghandour suggests targeting families in the region when travelling to the Middle East. Oil-rich families here have divisions that handle their investments and are often looking for new opportunities.
For instance, the Saudi Arabia-based Olayan family holds a 26% stake in Peel Holdings, which owns Glasgow Harbour and Mersey Docks, and is currently looking at European investment opportunities through its Crescent Holdings subsidiary. Another possible target is the Futtaim family: the brothers Abdullah and Majed are worth about €5.9bn ($8bn) and have interests in construction and real estate, as well as import/export.
The Olayan and Futtaim families, along with Orascom Telecom, founded Oasis Capital, which has around €150mn in assets under management. All of these wealthy families have their own staff of aroud five employees who handle their deals and investments, and the best way to reach these decision-makers is through a local broker.
