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Although Investcorp calls itself a merchant bank, it is more like a leveraged buyout firm, the Arab world's answer to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Kirdar rounds up brand-name companies and repackages them for sale to deep-pocket clients in the Persian Gulf. At the right moment, Investcorp and its partners "cash out" by selling off acquisitions at a profit--through a private sale or a public stock offering. Investcorp certainly spends money like a billionaires' bank. An eight-story headquarters in Bahrain (Investcorp House) is complemented not only by the premises on New York's Park Avenue but also by posh offices in London's Mayfair district. White-uniformed butlers glide around serving executives catered gourmet lunches at their desks. Many clients receive annual invitations to conferences like one held in July at New York's Waldorf-Astoria. In 1992, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, Investcorp threw a lavish party at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Guests nibbled on caviar served from ice sculptures and strolled under garlands of peonies adorned with caged songbirds. When major deals are in the works, senior executives zoom across the Atlantic on the Concorde. "They fly the Concorde if they want a salami sandwich," jokes a former bank adviser. "I've never seen anybody throw money around like Investcorp."
Before launching Investcorp, Kirdar worked for Chase Manhattan Bank, where he was in charge of operations in the Persian Gulf. (Many of his senior executives are Chase alumni.) He was there at the height of the oil shocks of the 1970s and forged close ties with some of the richest men in the region. Abdul-Rahman Al-Ateeqi, a former Oil Minister and Finance Minister of Kuwait, has been Investcorp's chairman since the beginning. The vice chairman, Ahmed Ali Kanoo, heads a family with a net worth estimated at $1.5 billion.
In 1983, just a year after the bank was launched and when Kirdar and his colleagues were doing business from rented space in a Holiday Inn in Bahrain, he boasted that he was putting together a bank "like something J.P. Morgan envisaged." Thanks to Kirdar's connections, Investcorp was able to raise $50 million in start-up capital and four years later another $50 million. Investcorp's list of founding shareholders reads like a Who's Who of the gulf, including the names of dozens of leading businessmen and members of the region's ruling families, among them Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the former Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, and seven members of the Saudi royal family. The vips generated tremendous interest, and when the new bank sold a large chunk of its stock to the public, prospective buyers in Bahrain queued up at dawn.