Published: June 1, 2011
Emerging Capital Partners has named its first chief investment officer as it prepares for an upturn in deal flow.
Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) has proved that private equity firms can thrive in Africa. In the 11 years since the Washington-based firm started looking at investment opportunities there, it has raised more than US$1.8bn and completed 50 investments and 20 exits on the continent.
The firm’s co-chief executive, Hurley Doddy, expects this success to continue, driven by consumer, communications and financial services businesses. To ensure that the firm effectively manages this expected increase in investments, it created the role of chief investment officer. In May, it appointed Andrew Brown to the position.
Based in Paris, Brown oversees and implements ECP’s investment process and strategy across its six funds. He has also joined the investment committee of ECP Africa Fund III, which has made four investments in the financial services, industrials and media sectors since closing last year.
Brown says his appointment is part of ECP’s evolution: “The firm had reached a point where it made sense to have a dedicated resource at a senior level to oversee the whole investment process.”
Lucky for some
Brown has 13 years of experience in African private equity, having started his career at the UK’s CDC, where he established an Egyptian office. He joins ECP from Amundi Private Equity (formerly Société Générale Asset Management Alternative Investments), where he was head of investment for its North Africa-focused Kantara Fund.
He believes that living and working in Africa has made him aware of the issues that the companies ECP invests in will face and some of the ways in which they can be managed.
“Over the course of that time you see a lot of situations and you can bring that experience to bear in the way a transaction is processing,” he says.
Brown has joined a firm that boasts a track record investors are prepared to back, built on its expertise in core sectors including telecoms, natural resources and financial services. But Brown explains that the firm’s success is partly due to it being open to unexpected opportunities.
“Every equity business needs to remain flexible to take advantage of other opportunities as they arise and that’s also part of our strategy,” he says. “We need to remain open to new things.”
These opportunities could be in the infrastructure development projects that are currently in production across the continent or in the power sector. Millions of Africans lack access to reliable power, which is a barrier to economic development.
Whichever sector the opportunity may come in, it will be managed by one of ECP’s network of six offices across the continent, which gives Brown optimism for the year ahead.
“I don’t see many concerns in terms of dealflow,” he says. “Our network across Africa is a fundamental strength in terms of being present in the key markets to be able to generate and identify opportunities.”