Standard Bank in top-level hiring spree

Standard Bank Private Equity has hired three senior private equity veterans – from Warburg Pincus, Merrill Lynch Private Equity and Emerging Capital Partners – to lead its growing private equity business.

The captive principal investment unit of Standard Bank has poached Navaid Burney, the founder and managing partner of Emerging Capital Partners (ECP). Burney was at ECP for nine years, during which time the firm invested more than $800 million in 35 African countries. He will lead Standard Bank’s African activity from the bank’s office in Johannesburg.

Turkey: key market for Standard Bank

Bilge Ogut, a former partner at global private equity giant Warburg Pincus, joins Standard Bank as deputy global head of private equity and chief executive for the private equity business in Turkey. Ogut has been with Warburg Pincus since 1998 and a partner of the firm since 2004, initially in the technology group in New York, and later in London focusing on investments in emerging Europe. She will be based in Standard’s London headquarters.

Marcelo Di Lorenzo, a former managing director at Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity, has joined the bank to lead its Brazilian private equity business from Sao Paulo. He has been in the private equity business since 1996, when he joined DLJ Merchant Banking Partners in New York.  He returned to Brazil in 1998 with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Private Equity.

Led by London-based Graham Thomas, Standard Bank’s private equity team, which has to date been investing from the bank’s balance sheet, has made nine investments in its key markets of South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil and Turkey. It typically invests between $20 million and $30 million per deal.

In January last year, PEO revealed that Standard Bank had established a presence in Lagos, Nigeria with the hire of Lloyd Onaghimon, a principal investment veteran of Nigerian bank IBTC Chartered.