Investment firm Accelero Capital – co-founded and part-owned by Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris – is reportedly to manage a new fund set up to buy European telecoms businesses.
Accelero – which focuses on the telecoms, digital media and…
Investment firm Accelero Capital – co-founded and part-owned by Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris – is reportedly to manage a new fund set up to buy European telecoms businesses.
Accelero – which focuses on the telecoms, digital media and other technology sectors – is managed by executives with whom Sawiris worked on turning around Russia-based telecoms group Wind before selling it and other assets to VimpelCom for US$6.5bn in 2011.
According to a Financial Times report, the fund’s management team has approached leading European institutional fund management groups about investing in the new private equity fund, which will target smaller telecoms businesses which are underperforming or being sold by parent companies struggling in the current economic climate.
While the fund management team will seek to raise most of the finances externally, Sawiris and other anchor investors are expected to invest some of their own capital, the report stated citing a person with knowledge of the process.
According to the report, the fund’s management team includes Khaled Bichara, whose resignation as CEO of OTMT was announced yesterday, Aldo Mareuse, a former financial officer of Orascom Telecom Holding and Wind Telecom; and Ossama Bessada, who recently resigned from his positions as CEO of Italy’s Wind Telecomunicazioni and head of VimpelCom’s European and North American business units.
Sawiris is Accelero’s non-executive director and holds a 20% stake in the firm, according to its website.
Accelero was not immediately available for comment.
