MerchantBridge & Co. Ltd. was a London-based boutique private equity firm that specialized in investments in the Middle East and especially Iraq, where it was one of the largest such firms. It was in existence from 2001 to 2018.
Origins
The firm was founded by Basil Al Rahim – who came from a wealthy Iraqi family and was a former executive for The Carlyle Group – in 2001, with a number of wealthy figures from Arab and Gulf countries as partners. (Its origins lay in an earlier private equity firm, Safron Advisors, which had been founded in 1998 and which covered the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey.) Within the next couple of years, MerchantBridge expanded into the areas of corporate finance and government advisory work. The firm sought to embody a foreign direct investment aspect as well.
The firm's headquarters were on Sloane Street in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea within London. A number of prominent Britons became advisors to MerchantBridge, including Norman Lamont, Peter Palumbo, Baron Palumbo, Elizabeth Symons, Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, and Andrew Buxton.
Investments
In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq