[ad_1]
The Indian-born financier who helped open the floodgates to Middle Eastern wealth for Masayoshi Son’s $100 billion Vision Fund is making an attempt his second act. This time, he’s going solo.
At MushyBank Group Corp.’s splashy tech automobile, Rajeev Misra helped safe commitments price $45 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and $15 billion from Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co.Investments in high-flying startups ensued — Uber Technologies Inc. and WeWork Inc. amongst them — however many bets blew up as markets turned. Misra largely stepped again from that enterprise in 2022 after a tenure marred by inside clashes and funding writedowns.
Undeterred by these losses, Misra’s now making an attempt a comeback — this time in credit score. He’s even leaning on the identical Middle Eastern community to boost cash. It’s a bet that has shades of the form of chutzpah he and Son displayed final time spherical, although Misra now says he’s decided to do higher after watching the funding errors made within the aftermath of MushyBank’s scramble to rent individuals.
“I have learned my lessons,” Misra, 62, stated in an interview with Bloomberg News. He’s already raised $6.8 billion for his One Investment Management from backers together with Mubadala and Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Royal Group. Misra is in search of to spice up the scale of the fund to greater than $10 billion, and hopes to get Saudi Arabia to speculate as properly.
While he’s vowing to deploy shoppers’ money with a dose of warning, it’s an endeavor that may include its personal set of dangers, notably given his previous historical past with Middle Eastern cash. A world economic system slammed by two wars and different geopolitical upheaval may as soon as once more carry market turbulence. And even Misra acknowledges there are limits to the area’s largess. “Endless well, bottomless pit? There is no such thing,” he stated. “If you lose money, that pit is closed.”
UAE Passport
Regardless of whether or not Misra succeeds or fails, it’s simple that he’s a uncommon outsider to be entrusted with the Middle East’s billions, reflecting astute maneuvering and a capability to take care of key relationships regardless of the blow-ups on the Vision Fund. He additionally stands out as one in all few buyers who’ve deftly sidestepped the financial rivalry between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, drawing cash from either side.
The clearest signal of his relationship with Abu Dhabi’s ruling household is his UAE passport — one of many world’s strongest journey paperwork and handed out to a really choose group of foreigners. Misra travels to the area at the very least six occasions a yr, staying on the swanky Four Seasons Hotel in Abu Dhabi and, in Riyadh, on the Ritz-Carlton — the positioning of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s 2017 crackdown.
Home to sovereign wealth funds that management over $4 trillion in property, the Middle East is central to Misra’s plans. Five of the ten most energetic state-backed entities in 2023 have been from the Gulf, at the same time as world friends pulled again — the PIF alone spent $31.6 billion.
During the down years of Vision Fund, Misra stored in contact with its Middle Eastern backers and, over in-person conferences, appraised them in regards to the standing of investments. This, together with efforts to maximise their returns, helped him to retain their belief even when many bets by Vision Fund soured.
Vision Fund
The Vision Fund was unveiled shortly after MushyBank’s Son had pulled off what was till then his largest wager — the $32 billion acquisition of chipmaker ARM Holdings Plc.
“Masayoshi Son told me, ‘Rajeev, the next revolution is coming, AI. I need to invest, and we need to raise money,’” Misra stated. That dialog, in mid-2016, was mere months earlier than the Vision Fund launched.
The financier’s relationship with the Japanese govt dates again to the early 2000s. At Deutsche Bank AG, he helped Son finance the most important leveraged buyout in Asia on the time — the 2006 buy of Vodafone Group Plc’s Japanese wi-fi enterprise. At MushyBank, Misra was the architect of a mortgage bundle that helped Sprint Corp. — the US service Son acquired in 2012 — stave off chapter.
Those offers earned Son’s belief, propelling Misra to the highest echelons of MushyBank and putting him on the coronary heart of Vision Fund’s origin story. “We put together a small presentation, and went to Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia,” he recounts.
“We’ve never managed any money, we don’t have any people and he wanted to raise $100 billion,” Misra stated.
The PIF dedicated $45 billion over the course of a 45-minute assembly — attended by the crown prince and arrange by the fund’s Governor Yasir Al Rumayyan. Abu Dhabi got here in with a $15 billion pledge of its personal.
“Then we scrambled to hire people ,” Misra stated. The funding selections that adopted culminated in a markdown of greater than $16 billion for the primary Vision Fund within the yr to March 2023.
The fund has now returned nearly 70% of the cash raised to buyers and even at a conservative valuation, is price 1.2 occasions the capital raised, in response to knowledge offered by MushyBank. An identical funding within the S&P 500 Index would have doubled in worth throughout the interval.
Misra says he not has an energetic function within the Vision Fund, although he is nonetheless on the funding committee. He’s additionally concerned in worker compensation and in making certain most returns for the fund’s restricted companions, the most important being PIF and Mubadala. He considers his stint the most effective training he may have obtained in investing.
He says he’s nonetheless shut with Son, however acknowledges they met simply twice final yr and principally make amends for the telephone.
OneIM
Part of the explanation for his choice to step again from the Japanese automobile, Misra says, was to keep away from a battle of curiosity as he began to chart out his subsequent act. The new enterprise will deploy capital throughout asset lessons amid turmoil in markets around the globe, specializing in credit score — an asset supervisor that goes past investing within the expertise sector.
Misra was born in 1962 within the Indian metropolis of Jamshedpur, named for the founding father of Tata Group, the place his father labored on the time. He studied on the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi earlier than transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. From there, armed with an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, he launched into a profession that took him from Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank to UBS — and briefly Fortress Investment Group, which was acquired by MushyBank.
He nonetheless spends a couple of weeks yearly in his sprawling villa on a four-acre plot near the center of New Delhi — a metropolis the place his household was as soon as compelled to lease a single room on a rooftop amid a money crunch after his father unexpectedly died of a cardiac arrest.
Misra began to construct his Middle Eastern connections in 2013, sensing a chance in a pocket of wealth that was a black field to many buyers. Gulf state-backed funds didn’t have a significant overseas presence on the time.
He rapidly understood the significance of face time with the important thing individuals to get entry to the massive checks, and began to make frequent journeys to the area. Over time, he’s strung collectively a Rolodex that features the PIF’s Rumayyan, with whom he’s typically noticed on the kingdom’s annual flagship Future Investment Initiative.
In Abu Dhabi, Misra works carefully with the inside circle of Sheikh Tahnoon, who’s on the helm of a $1.5 trillion empire. His key contacts within the UAE capital embody Syed Basar Shueb, chief govt officer of the $246 billion International Holding Co; Sofia Lasky, a distinguished govt who sits on the boards of a number of native corporations; and Peng Xiao, CEO of G42 — a agency that’s on the coronary heart of Sheikh Tahnoon’s push into AI.
At his new fund, Misra is eyeing returns of 20%, acknowledging the times of 30% returns on giant swimming pools of capital could also be over. He believes credit score has at the very least one other yr to play out and should look to foray into non-public fairness after that, pledging to take fewer dangers this time round. That’s a break from the previous when the Vision Fund injected billions into a variety of startups at hovering valuations and shook up the enterprise capital trade.
OneIM is low key by these requirements. An internet site arrange lately has few particulars on operations or investments. Misra plans to maintain it that approach, whereas his handpicked staff of 25 funding professionals — led by trusted long-time lieutenants Munish Varma and Yanni Pipilis, each of whom labored with him at Deutsche Bank and Vision Fund — scour for alternatives primarily in US and Europe.
Last yr, it offered loans to WeWork, in response to securities filings by the now-bankrupt workplace firm. It’s additionally supported Apollo Global Management Inc.’s leveraged buyout of Wagamama proprietor The Restaurant Group Plc, Bloomberg News reported this month.
In one other departure from what he’s described as a chaotic strategy at his earlier job, OneIM has invested solely $1 billion of the $7 billion it’s raised up to now, Misra stated. Once alliances, platforms, and a much bigger staff are in place, deploying capital sooner goes to be simple, he stated. “You can’t force me to deploy faster unless odds are in my favor.”
When requested about his profession trajectory and what the longer term could maintain, Misra quotes from an astrologer that his household has consulted for many years.
“It will go upwards and upwards,” he says with a smile.
At MushyBank Group Corp.’s splashy tech automobile, Rajeev Misra helped safe commitments price $45 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and $15 billion from Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co.Investments in high-flying startups ensued — Uber Technologies Inc. and WeWork Inc. amongst them — however many bets blew up as markets turned. Misra largely stepped again from that enterprise in 2022 after a tenure marred by inside clashes and funding writedowns.
Undeterred by these losses, Misra’s now making an attempt a comeback — this time in credit score. He’s even leaning on the identical Middle Eastern community to boost cash. It’s a bet that has shades of the form of chutzpah he and Son displayed final time spherical, although Misra now says he’s decided to do higher after watching the funding errors made within the aftermath of MushyBank’s scramble to rent individuals.
“I have learned my lessons,” Misra, 62, stated in an interview with Bloomberg News. He’s already raised $6.8 billion for his One Investment Management from backers together with Mubadala and Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Royal Group. Misra is in search of to spice up the scale of the fund to greater than $10 billion, and hopes to get Saudi Arabia to speculate as properly.
While he’s vowing to deploy shoppers’ money with a dose of warning, it’s an endeavor that may include its personal set of dangers, notably given his previous historical past with Middle Eastern cash. A world economic system slammed by two wars and different geopolitical upheaval may as soon as once more carry market turbulence. And even Misra acknowledges there are limits to the area’s largess. “Endless well, bottomless pit? There is no such thing,” he stated. “If you lose money, that pit is closed.”
UAE Passport
Regardless of whether or not Misra succeeds or fails, it’s simple that he’s a uncommon outsider to be entrusted with the Middle East’s billions, reflecting astute maneuvering and a capability to take care of key relationships regardless of the blow-ups on the Vision Fund. He additionally stands out as one in all few buyers who’ve deftly sidestepped the financial rivalry between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, drawing cash from either side.
The clearest signal of his relationship with Abu Dhabi’s ruling household is his UAE passport — one of many world’s strongest journey paperwork and handed out to a really choose group of foreigners. Misra travels to the area at the very least six occasions a yr, staying on the swanky Four Seasons Hotel in Abu Dhabi and, in Riyadh, on the Ritz-Carlton — the positioning of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s 2017 crackdown.
Home to sovereign wealth funds that management over $4 trillion in property, the Middle East is central to Misra’s plans. Five of the ten most energetic state-backed entities in 2023 have been from the Gulf, at the same time as world friends pulled again — the PIF alone spent $31.6 billion.
During the down years of Vision Fund, Misra stored in contact with its Middle Eastern backers and, over in-person conferences, appraised them in regards to the standing of investments. This, together with efforts to maximise their returns, helped him to retain their belief even when many bets by Vision Fund soured.
Vision Fund
The Vision Fund was unveiled shortly after MushyBank’s Son had pulled off what was till then his largest wager — the $32 billion acquisition of chipmaker ARM Holdings Plc.
“Masayoshi Son told me, ‘Rajeev, the next revolution is coming, AI. I need to invest, and we need to raise money,’” Misra stated. That dialog, in mid-2016, was mere months earlier than the Vision Fund launched.
The financier’s relationship with the Japanese govt dates again to the early 2000s. At Deutsche Bank AG, he helped Son finance the most important leveraged buyout in Asia on the time — the 2006 buy of Vodafone Group Plc’s Japanese wi-fi enterprise. At MushyBank, Misra was the architect of a mortgage bundle that helped Sprint Corp. — the US service Son acquired in 2012 — stave off chapter.
Those offers earned Son’s belief, propelling Misra to the highest echelons of MushyBank and putting him on the coronary heart of Vision Fund’s origin story. “We put together a small presentation, and went to Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia,” he recounts.
“We’ve never managed any money, we don’t have any people and he wanted to raise $100 billion,” Misra stated.
The PIF dedicated $45 billion over the course of a 45-minute assembly — attended by the crown prince and arrange by the fund’s Governor Yasir Al Rumayyan. Abu Dhabi got here in with a $15 billion pledge of its personal.
“Then we scrambled to hire people ,” Misra stated. The funding selections that adopted culminated in a markdown of greater than $16 billion for the primary Vision Fund within the yr to March 2023.
The fund has now returned nearly 70% of the cash raised to buyers and even at a conservative valuation, is price 1.2 occasions the capital raised, in response to knowledge offered by MushyBank. An identical funding within the S&P 500 Index would have doubled in worth throughout the interval.
Misra says he not has an energetic function within the Vision Fund, although he is nonetheless on the funding committee. He’s additionally concerned in worker compensation and in making certain most returns for the fund’s restricted companions, the most important being PIF and Mubadala. He considers his stint the most effective training he may have obtained in investing.
He says he’s nonetheless shut with Son, however acknowledges they met simply twice final yr and principally make amends for the telephone.
OneIM
Part of the explanation for his choice to step again from the Japanese automobile, Misra says, was to keep away from a battle of curiosity as he began to chart out his subsequent act. The new enterprise will deploy capital throughout asset lessons amid turmoil in markets around the globe, specializing in credit score — an asset supervisor that goes past investing within the expertise sector.
Misra was born in 1962 within the Indian metropolis of Jamshedpur, named for the founding father of Tata Group, the place his father labored on the time. He studied on the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi earlier than transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. From there, armed with an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, he launched into a profession that took him from Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank to UBS — and briefly Fortress Investment Group, which was acquired by MushyBank.
He nonetheless spends a couple of weeks yearly in his sprawling villa on a four-acre plot near the center of New Delhi — a metropolis the place his household was as soon as compelled to lease a single room on a rooftop amid a money crunch after his father unexpectedly died of a cardiac arrest.
Misra began to construct his Middle Eastern connections in 2013, sensing a chance in a pocket of wealth that was a black field to many buyers. Gulf state-backed funds didn’t have a significant overseas presence on the time.
He rapidly understood the significance of face time with the important thing individuals to get entry to the massive checks, and began to make frequent journeys to the area. Over time, he’s strung collectively a Rolodex that features the PIF’s Rumayyan, with whom he’s typically noticed on the kingdom’s annual flagship Future Investment Initiative.
In Abu Dhabi, Misra works carefully with the inside circle of Sheikh Tahnoon, who’s on the helm of a $1.5 trillion empire. His key contacts within the UAE capital embody Syed Basar Shueb, chief govt officer of the $246 billion International Holding Co; Sofia Lasky, a distinguished govt who sits on the boards of a number of native corporations; and Peng Xiao, CEO of G42 — a agency that’s on the coronary heart of Sheikh Tahnoon’s push into AI.
At his new fund, Misra is eyeing returns of 20%, acknowledging the times of 30% returns on giant swimming pools of capital could also be over. He believes credit score has at the very least one other yr to play out and should look to foray into non-public fairness after that, pledging to take fewer dangers this time round. That’s a break from the previous when the Vision Fund injected billions into a variety of startups at hovering valuations and shook up the enterprise capital trade.
OneIM is low key by these requirements. An internet site arrange lately has few particulars on operations or investments. Misra plans to maintain it that approach, whereas his handpicked staff of 25 funding professionals — led by trusted long-time lieutenants Munish Varma and Yanni Pipilis, each of whom labored with him at Deutsche Bank and Vision Fund — scour for alternatives primarily in US and Europe.
Last yr, it offered loans to WeWork, in response to securities filings by the now-bankrupt workplace firm. It’s additionally supported Apollo Global Management Inc.’s leveraged buyout of Wagamama proprietor The Restaurant Group Plc, Bloomberg News reported this month.
In one other departure from what he’s described as a chaotic strategy at his earlier job, OneIM has invested solely $1 billion of the $7 billion it’s raised up to now, Misra stated. Once alliances, platforms, and a much bigger staff are in place, deploying capital sooner goes to be simple, he stated. “You can’t force me to deploy faster unless odds are in my favor.”
When requested about his profession trajectory and what the longer term could maintain, Misra quotes from an astrologer that his household has consulted for many years.
“It will go upwards and upwards,” he says with a smile.
[adinserter block=”4″]
[ad_2]
Source link