Private equity giant Abraaj files for liquidation
Once a rising star of the investment world, firm may become one of the industry’s largest-ever failures By Simon Clark Abraaj Group, the emerging-markets private-equity firm under pressure from creditors and investors, said Thursday its Cayman Islands-based holding company filed for liquidation, in what could be one of the industry’s largest-ever failures, The Wall Street Journal reports. Founded in Dubai in 2002 by Pakistani deal maker Arif Naqvi, Abraaj managed nearly $14bn at its peak earlier this year and was a rising star of the Middle East investment world. But the firm came under pressure in recent months as some investors in its funds alleged it misused some of their money and two lenders claimed hundreds of millions of dollars of debt were unpaid. The court-supervised restructuring of Abraaj Holdings in the Cayman Islands “imposes a moratorium on the enforcement of all unsecured claims against the company, allowing t...