Investcorp ditches co-CEO structure in shake-up

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Bahrain’s Investcorp, best known for its investments in luxury groups including Gucci and Tiffany, has shaken up its leadership team in a move that hands more power to executive chair Mohammed Alardhi.

The company said on Monday that it would ditch its co-chief executive structure, with one of the co-CEOs, Hazem Ben-Gacem, leaving the business while the other, Rishi Kapoor, will become vice-chair and chief investment officer.

Alardhi “will assume additional responsibilities previously undertaken by the co-CEOs”, it said. The co-CEO structure had been in place since 2015.

Founded in 1982, Investcorp was set up by the Iraq-born financier Nemir Kirdar as a pioneering asset manager that channelled the Middle East’s oil riches into developed markets.

The group quickly made a name for itself, buying into luxury brands Tiffany and then Gucci in the 1980s. Kirdar left his executive role in 2015 and passed the reins to Alardhi.

Alardhi, a former chief of the Omani Air Force, set out ambitious targets for increasing the group’s assets after he took over from Kirdar. Investcorp now manages $52bn of assets, and the company employs about 500 people across 14 offices.

As part of Monday’s announcement, Investcorp also said that its investment activities would in future be organised in three “business verticals”: private equity, real assets and credit, alongside an expansion of its executive committee.

“As we increase our focus on leveraging the strength of our existing investment platform, we recognise it is the right time to broaden our executive leadership to support our future growth plans,” said Alardhi in a statement.

As part of the changes, Ben-Gacem, who has been at Investcorp for three decades and co-CEO since 2018, will remain vice-chair of Investcorp Capital, an Abu Dhabi-listed investment vehicle that is part of the wider group.

While Investcorp’s dealmaking has been relatively low profile in recent years, it did attract attention for an unsuccessful attempt in 2022 to acquire the Italian football club AC Milan.

Last February the group opened an office in Tokyo to raise funds and pursue acquisitions of high-end Japanese manufacturers and other hidden gems.

It has also invested in a wide range of assets, including a dialysis service provider in Asia, a packaging company in India, student accommodation in the US and a company working on the redevelopment of John F Kennedy airport in New York.