Compensation is a difficult management issue, not least due to the human element to it. Ray Everett. chief executive of Aon Hewitt in the Middle East, a position that he has held for the past year, and Asia-Pacific and Middle East and Africa regional head of McLagan (a division of Aon Hewitt focusing on financial services). Aon Hewitt is one of the world’s pre-eminent human resources consulting companies and there is a lot to learn from them in this series.
My co-author today is Karl Happe, chief investment officer of Allianz Global Investors’ Insurance Related Strategies. Although the strategies developed and deployed by Allianz are aimed at the insurance market, there are many important lessons that most investors would benefit from, in particular family offices.
My co-author this week is Brooke Coburn, Managing Director and Co-Head of Carlyle Growth Partners and Carlyle Equity Opportunity Fund.
The Carlyle Group is one of the largest and most successful alternative asset managers in the world. With nearly USD 200 billion in assets managed across 130 funds and 156 fund of funds it is daunting just trying to figure out where to start in learning from their best in class experience. I decided to approach the middle market team and highlight their story as, I believe, investors in the Middle East can learn the most from their approach and experience.
In the first of an occasional series titled Executive Insight I will write together with a regional business leader who shares the benefits of their experience.
Anthony Mallis, the chief executive of Securities & Investment Company (SICO) of Bahrain between 2001 to 2014, grew a boutique brokerage company into a regional asset management powerhouse. (Tony is humble in his accomplishments and all promotion of his accomplishments is attributable solely to his co-author.)
Mr Mallis was hired to a challenging assignment; turn around or close a money-losing entity that was caught short by the GCC market malaise of the late ‘90s. In 2001 the GCC and Mena capital markets were still nascent, with the Gulf still affected by low oil prices and mid-’90s collapsed share prices. Locally, commercial banks had little interest in the domestic capital markets, focusing on deposit-gathering, the local retail markets and pushing third-party foreign investment products to their clients. The small number of local investment banks had a largely real estate focus, or were parochial when it came to regional investments – focusing on their domestic markets for both clients and proprietary activities. Continue reading