Karim Moussa

Today I’m bringing you a special episode with our sponsor EFG Holding. I recently interviewed Karim Moussa, Co-CEO of EFG Hermes Buy-Side, Head of Private Equity & Asset Management & CEO of Vortex Energy. Karim tells me how he got started in private equity, and how the thesis of investing with purpose led EFG to expand renewables, education and healthcare.

This episode is brought to you by EFG Hermes One, your one app for investing in more than 35 stock markets. Start investing today!

I’ll be back with a new guest in a couple of weeks. But before that, we’ll be airing the panel discussion on how AI will continue to impact Egypt and the region that I moderated in May. The panel was part of The Shift by e&, organised by the fantastic team at The Narrative Summit.

Chapters:
0:00 On this episode...

2:12 Hustling in Berlin

6:48 First Steps in Deutsche Bank

9:23 A detour to Dubai

11:29 Moving into Private Equity

17:46 Building Vortex Energy

24:01 Egypt’s renewables potential

26:56 Investing in education

35:00 Lightning Round

Music ID: 5ROQ12DERYHSUUVQ

Creators and Guests

Host

Malak Fouad

Founder, A&T Media and Host, What I Did Next

What is WIDN with Malak Fouad?

Connecting the dots across the Middle East through storytelling. Join host Malak Fouad, as she brings you the most inspiring people and unpacks their life journeys — successes, failures and everything in between!

So I went to Karim Awad and I told him, look, if we buy wind farms in France for

200 million, 100 million in equity and 100 million in debt, will you give me 5 million?

He said, OK, of course, if you raise 100 million, I'll give you 5 million.

Done. Went to Abu Dhabi and told him, look, you know.

Of course, he never thought you'd do it, huh?

The whole thing of also doing something good while you're investing, not just making money.

It's a thesis that I liked from day one. And if you see, we've done it after that education. Yes.

Hi, and welcome to What I Did Next from A&T Media. I'm Malak Fouad, your host.

Today, I'm bringing you a special episode with our sponsor, EFG Holding.

I recently interviewed Karim Moussa, Co-CEO of EFG Hermes Buy-Side,

Head of private equity and Asset Management, as well as CEO of Vortex Energy.

Even though Karim and I have many friends in common, we had never met.

Yet, our conversation was easy and chatty.

We talked about both his professional and personal life, and we started with his school days.

I was a naughty boy back in the days. I wasn't a good student.

I was a troublemaker in day one.

My colleagues or old friends would remind me of that. But,

my beginning of my career started with a tragedy with the loss of my dad.

I used to live with my dad. My mom and dad were divorced for a long period before.

And because I was a misbehaving teenager, I was living with my dad mostly.

And right before the last year of school, he passed away in the summer.

And it was, for me, a big turning point.

I grew up overnight. I had to take responsibility for myself immediately.

And, you know, from being, you know,

bottom top percent in class. I finished, I had to do High school,

my German, and I was not that good to do Abitur. So I did High school,

and I finished with top 10% in class.

And I ended up, you know, packing my stuff and moving to Germany to study engineering

and business in Germany.

You know, Karim, it's really interesting that you took the experience of losing

your father, it switched into a positive long term for you. A lot of kids would

have gone off the rails even more. They

expected me to do so at that time as well. I had no other choice.

And I think it set the tone for a lot of what came after. It wasn't that easy

as well immediately after because I,

the business of my dad went belly up and, you know, there wasn't a lot of cash for me to study.

So my mom used to send me some small amounts and I had to, you know,

I studied engineering and business, which is in the German engineering schools,

Technische Universität Berlin, is a tough degree to attempt.

And I was working on the side. And I did pizza man, I worked in construction

site, I did movers, I did Santa Claus.

What do those side hustles teach you? Because you meet people that you wouldn't

meet in your life today, but people I find who grow up in this way with

having to hustle and having to really do things on their own without help,

they're so much more resilient.

They have a resourcefulness that other people don't. Do you feel that about yourself?

Well, it teaches you to survive in a very early days when you're very young.

And Berlin in the 90s, late 90s was also a rough place. It's not like,

you know, you're studying in California on the beach. It's cold.

It was still, you know, coming out of sort of the East-West transition.

And it wasn't an easy place. And studying engineering, German mechanical engineering

and business in the same time while you were working, all kinds of jobs was tough.

But I, you know, the first couple of years, I've done all these,

you know, these fancy jobs

and then I ended up after finishing the four diploma, which is the so-called

Semi-Bachelor in Germany, I ended up doing office work.

So I worked part time in a fund, Berlin Capital Fund, which was a Tech, BioTech,

fund. And I started sort of understanding a bit, you know, the finance world.

But I was at that time sending faxes and typing in Excel spreadsheets but I

was earning good money and since then I actually called my mom,

with the age of 22 and told her I'm fine, I don't need any more cash and since

then I've been financially completely independent.

That's such an inspiring story and I think when.. I hope young people listen to

this and I think about people like my own children who are beginning their journeys like you were

and these are important stories and, you know, not everything gets handed to

you and you have to figure things out and you have to,

you know, find your own,

you know, well of resources inside to get you through it.

You know, I hope these stories resonate.

I'm actually reading a book right now, 'Green Lights' from Matthew McConaughey,

which talks a lot about this, you know, how, you know, life,

you know, throws you into, you know, tough moments, worst times, humiliation,

loss of friends and family

and he calls it red lights.

And every red light at the end turns at one point of time to a green light.

Red and yellow lights and and it's really what you do out of it and you know if,

i i figured that out very early in my life and and it was.. I mean, I had many

red lights in my career, you know, and the discussions maybe that we will continue

with that came and but, you know, changing, facing the problem,

pivoting and persisting into it,

and focusing on it, it will always turn green.

Do you look back on that time as being the hardest period?

Because I went through a very challenging time when I was in my mid-30s, I got very sick.

And now when I'm confronted with anything that makes me nervous or I'm a bit

anxious about, I remind myself that I won't ever go through the same difficulty

as I did then, so it just becomes so much easier.

Do you feel like that about that time in your life?

I mean, I don't remind myself, but I think it's plugged into you.

It's like in your coding, you know, you're already programmed.

Yeah, I think I understand that.

How hard is the next one compared to the previous one?

Yeah. Let's start with Deutsche Bank. That was your first major job.

Tell me a little bit about that. That was also in Berlin.

No, I joined in Frankfurt. Oh, you were in Frankfurt?

Yeah, I joined in September 2001, a very small team that does mid-cap M&A,

which I learned a lot in that team.

Doing mid-cap German M&A, small

transactions, small team, you get a lot of exposure to the deal-making.

I was, you know, interacting with, you know, with all these,

you know, Mittelstand, German entrepreneurs, succession issues,

It was also with big German corporates, AIS, Airbus, BMW.

And you're getting a lot of exposure. And this team was doing a lot of transactions,

sell-side, buy-side, 12, 13 transactions a year.

So I've learned a lot. But I also didn't have an easy start.

It's a very German environment that made cap market.

And it was right after 9-11, right, when you started?

I was just about to say, I joined the team September 1, nine days after.

And I was the only foreigner, not just Arab, the only foreigner I've ever had,

nine days after, an Egyptian pilot that studied in,

in Technical University of Hamburg, which is an hour away from Technical University

of Berlin, in Germany, was one of the pilots that flew the plane in one of the towers.

I honestly had some colleagues looking, you know, afraid at me.

There were all these very German aristocratic teams.

But anyway, I worked hard and I succeeded.

I, you know, proven myself. I got promoted over the years to an associate and,

and every time, I had these HR, I was on a fast track every time, I

had this HR reviews, I told them whenever you do something in the Middle East, let me know. And

they called me one day and told me look they are going to open up in the Middle

East and there's this guy called Ken Borda who runs Australia and Asia who's going to move to the Middle Eat and he needs

a business manager.

And Karim, why were you interested in anything to do with the Middle East?

Because you're obviously the language, the culture?

And by that time, I spent 10 years in Germany and I missed eating foul and tamaya

and going back and hearing the call of prayer and being in the Arab world.

I had never been to Dubai. I did the video conference with Ken Borda and I joined him.

But this was a major redlight that I discovered the year after.

That job, I was a young deal-maker and that job business manager was more or

less an extended secretary.

I was taking minutes and booking private jets and, you know,

talking to the regulator to

open offices and, you know, negotiating office rents and stuff like that.

And it was tough. I didn't like it at all.

And why did you do that? I mean, that was not a promotion.

I don't know. I was young and I heard that I was an offer in Dubai and,

you know, joined the CEO to open up Deutsche Bank.

And, you know, it was exciting. But the moment I had to literally carry his

bag, which he gave me a few times to do, I said, this is not going to work.

And I didn't know what to do. At that time, there was no investment banking.

So I'm private bank because of Deutsche Bank. 2005 in Dubai,

there was not even DIFC, we're in Emirates Towers.

And he realized I'm the wrong guy in the job and he just told me,

look, I mean, there's an investment banker coming who's going to open,

you know, from Hong Kong, who's going to open an investment bank and give it a try.

And I, you know, I met him and the guy told me, look, I don't want to hear about

what you did in Frankfurt.

You know, I put you on probation. I had six years. I was in six years in Deutsche

Bank and in the fast time, put you on probation for six months and,

you know, prove again if you can do it or not. Otherwise, you're out.

So I, you know, after six years in my career, I went on probation period.

And then we did some interesting data. So, Sokhna Port to Dubai Port,

we did Dubai Port IPO, we did EFC.

You're obviously a risk-taker because you could have stayed in the cushy job.

You were on a fast track, but you went out and you said, no,

I want to try something different. Even though the initial step wasn't to your

liking, it led to something else. So, there is a risk-taker there.

You have to, otherwise it becomes very boring.

Yeah, yeah.

Your entire life becomes very boring.

That's true.

I think at the moment it becomes boring, you have to start something else.

Otherwise, you know, otherwise you will degrade.

2005 to 2007, 2008, three years, we did a lot of these transactions, good transactions.

And then that's the time where also that business became boring.

I was, you know, the broker, the investment banker between, you know,

an entrepreneur selling, making a lot of money or an investor buying,

you know, and restructuring or growing the business.

And I was always the middleman. And, you know, there's, you know,

for some people with some time that business is not fulfilling,

I wanted to be either the entrepreneur or the investor, you know.

And I decided to move to the buy-side, the private equity side.

And I like the idea of EFG because Hassan and Yasser at that time,

you know, they hired a team from Goldman to ramp up their private equity.

You know, EFG was known as a big sell-side brokerage and investment bank,

but, you know, private equity was still young and, you know,

there was something to be done. So I joined them.

2009 by now?

That's, yeah, right before Lehman, 2008. I negotiated before Lehman and then

I joined right after the crisis.

And you had Ashraf Zaki in investment banking in Cairo at that time?

Yes, yes, but he was leaving. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hazam Shawqi, the guy who came from Goldman, was effectively my boss at that time.

And then I, yeah, and then we started. Then I started my career within private equity at EFG.

And let's discuss that a little bit in more detail. You spent many,

you are still very much involved in private equity. You're heading it.

How did those early years evolve to what you're doing now for that platform?

When I joined, there was a fund, the so-called Old Horas Fund.

My first investment, you know, having sold Sokhna port to Dubai Ports,

there was a project with a feedlot with lots of cows and some slaughterhouses

that always interested me.

And I went back to Captain Osama Sharif and told him, you know,

tell me more about this and connect me to your partner, Danny Fakhri,

who was running that project.

Like they were importing livestock and, you know, there's a shortage in Egypt

with, you know, halal, fresh meat.

You know, you can import frozen, but your baladi beef is, you cannot,

you don't have arable land and enough water to feed everyone with fresh meat.

So the concept of importing livestock, putting them in a feedlot for a few months

and then, you know, slaughtering them on the ground, halal, and becomes like a,

you know, a premium baladi beef, cheaper than the baladi.

Was a great opportunity. We invested in our business and we created the brand,

Sokhna Beef and we were selling actually Sokhna Beef in Carrefour and first year

we did $100 million of revenue,

and then the revolution came.

Yep and that was a big..for you and for your work, it was a big pause

Completely there was a you know a series of change and ministries and

and you know Egypt was not open for business

actually for some time after that I was living most since 94 I left 95 I left

Egypt so I was at that time going back to Egypt but you know you know I was,

I paused and stayed in Dubai and, you know, I said, okay, let's just do deals,

you know, outside Egypt.

We were pretty much a big Egyptian-focused fund and set up.

You shifted the focus, instead of looking towards Egypt and inward,

you persuaded the bank that it was better to look outward.

We had still life ammunition, capital from the fund, and we could do regional

deals. So the mandate was there.

Although most of our these were in Egypt because naturally we knew the country

best and we were doing the best deals there.

In parallel, we did this first infrastructure fund Inframed under the Union for

the Mediterranean under,

Mohamed Rashid's leadership at that time and we did there the first wind project,

that's how we started understanding renewables, 114 MegaWatt,

wind development in Jordan,

which was one of the first IPPs on the defeat and tariff in the Levant.

So this was a line that was already, you know, tailored to do things outside Egypt. Then...

Back to setting a goal, I was telling the team, let's just look for undervalued

listed companies and taking them private. So there was a theme that we focused on.

We identified Damas as a very interesting company to do so with.

And we ended up taking Damas private with Manai Group for a $445 million transaction.

We put ourselves $85 million from our fund.

And a few years later, we sold out 2X and made like, over 30% IRR or a little

bit less than 2x and over 30% IRR.

So that was a good deal. That was the first sort of deal. And then,

but at that time, we did not have any more money. The funds were done and we

had to start a new strategy.

At this point, you had only one deal in the renewable energy sector.

And then it eventually evolved into Vortex down the line. Absolutely.

Q Invest, the Qataris were attempting to invest in EFG or buy, you know, EFG in 2012.

And we started working with them back by the Qataris, there was a lot of capital

and they, you know, they saw what we've done in the renewable space.

And we've been asked to look at Turkey

and try to find opportunities in the wind, specifically, like we've done in

Jordan and Turkey. So with their introduction, we went a lot to Turkey.

I never really managed to transact there.

The Turks always think that the Arabs are going to rip them off.

And the Arabs always think that the Turks are going to rip them off.

So there's never a common ground on the...

It dates back to the Ottomans. This is old history.

So we ended up, and then the deal fell apart with Qatar investing in EFG.

So I ended up again from square zero.

But then I told the team, you know what, the wind is not Turkish and it's not,

Egyptian or Arabic or German. And the turbine, whether you put it in the Middle

East or you put it in Germany or France, it's the same turbine.

Let's just go to Europe and let's pitch.

We all came from Europe, most of the team as well. Bakker came from the UK.

I worked in Germany. So let's just pitch them opportunities with feed-in tariff,