GA promotes management worldwide

Global growth equity firm General Atlantic has promoted ten members of its management team.

The firm has promoted Raul Rai and Sunish Sharma in Mumbai, Oliver Thum in Dusseldorf and Sean Tong in Hong Kong to managing director.

The promotions come after the firm recruited two managing directors last month, Ranjit Pandit from McKinsey and Jeff Leng from Warburg Pincus to the firm’s Mumbai and Hong Kong offices respectively.

The firm now has four managing directors in Mumbai, three managing directors in Hong Kong and two managing directors in Germany.

The promotions underline the firm’s growth in India and China. It has also invested more than $600 million (€421 million) in nine investments in India. Next year General Atlantic plans to invest in four or five more companies in the country and it expects the size of its deals there to increase, according to a spokeswoman.

It has also invested $500 million in China since 2000, using its Hong Kong office as a base.

Rai joined General Atlantic in 2005 from UBS, where he was managing director and global co-head of software investment banking. Before joining UBS, he was a vice president at investment bank Goldman Sachs covering the telecom, media and technology industries.

Sharma has served as a director of online broker Sharekhan and on the boards of IT companies Hexaware, Infotech, and IBS. He joined the growth equity firm in January 2004, from consultant McKinsey & Company where he worked for more than six years.

Thum specialises in healthcare but he holds a cross-industry pan-European brief. Before joining the firm in 2001 he was a consultant at Bain & Company working with private equity clients.

Tong is responsible for opportunities in Greater China. He is on the board of WuXi Pharmatech and he joined the firm from US bank Morgan Stanley.

General Atlantic has also promoted London-based Gabriel Caillaux and Jan Hammer, Dusseldorf-based Jan-Daniel Neumann as well as US-based Alexander Chulack, Adrianna Ma and Brett Rochkind to principal.

The firm does not raise funds but instead employs an “evergreen” structure based on long term commitments from its principal investors. It has $15 billion of capital under management, comprising commitments of more than $6 billion from its investment base and a portfolio of approximately $8 billion.