GLG hires Middle East specialist from Goldman
Alternative asset manager GLG has hired the Goldman Sachs banker responsible for helping develop the US bank’s relations with some of the Middle East’s largest wealth funds.
Youssef Kabbaj, the Dubai-based head of strategic coverage for the Middle East and North Africa, is set to join GLG to build the firm’s links with large institutions based in the region, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Kabbaj is understood to have been among the group of Goldman Sachs bankers based in the region handling the firm’s relationships with institutions in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Libya.
During his time at Goldman Sachs, Kabbaj is reputed to have become one of the bank’s leading revenue producers globally as he sold billions of dollars of collateralised loan obligation equity tranches to investors in the region, according to sources.
CLOs parcel portfolios of leveraged loans, and equity tranches are the highest-paying but most exposed portion of the portfolio. They lose money if any defaults occur in the underlying portfolio of loans. GLG’s hire of Kabbaj comes seven months after it hired one of Goldman Sachs’ top proprietary traders, Driss Ben-Brahim, to head its macro trading operation as well as its emerging markets special situations fund after the departure of Greg Coffey.
Last week, Financial News reported that Goldman Sachs had recalled Alasdair Warren, one of its most senior bankers based in the Middle East, to London a year after sending him out there to run its financing business in the region.
Warren was one of many senior bankers redeployed from Europe and the US to the Middle East last year, amid hopes that the region would provide a lucrative source of income as developed markets were hit by the global financial crisis.
Goldman Sachs and GLG Partners declined to comment.
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