GA hires former MasterCard CEO

Growth investor General Atlantic has hired Gene Lockhart, former president and chief executive officer of MasterCard Worldwide, as a special advisor. 

Lockhart will focus on new investment opportunities and General Atlantic’s existing portfolio companies in the financial services sector. He joins a number of other operating executives who work as special advisors to the firm focused on financial services, including Hans Morris, former president of Visa, and Nigel Morris, former co-founder of Capital One Financial Services.  

“It’s people like Gene and Hans and Nigel and a handful of others who have the same backgrounds that we look to in many ways to really help augment our knowledge and capabilities in being able to drive outsized growth with less execution risk for our portfolio companies,” said Jonathan Korngold, a managing director and head of the financial services division at General Atlantic. “It helps inform our thinking as to what the next generation of investment opportunities are likely to be, where we spend our time and where we put our firm’s resources against.” 

In addition to MasterCard, Lockhart has also worked as president of the global retail bank at Bank of America, where he led the bank’s global retail and commercial banking businesses. Prior to Bank of America, he was head of Midland Bank UK and chairman of First Direct and Thomas Cook. 

Lockhart’s appointment follows a number of other special advisor hires for General Atlantic this year. In February, the firm hired Enrique Castillo and Javier Molinar, former chief executives of Ixe Grupo Financiero, and Luis Cervantes, the co-founder and former chairman of asset management firm Finaccess Mexico. All three professionals work with General Atlantic’s Latin America team to help identify business opportunities in Mexico.

General Atlantic’s recent investments in the financial service sector, one of its most active sectors of late, Korngold said, include UK-based insurance intermediary Hyperion Group, a $171 million investment in Brazilian independent broker-dealer XP Investimentos and an investment in Madrid-based Santander Asset Management alongside Warburg Pincus.

General Atlantic targets investments of between $75 million and $400 million and manages about $18 billion, including committed capital and portfolio investments.