Sarkozy assembles veteran crew for financial-services investing

Olivier Sarkozy, former head of financial-services investing at Carlyle Group, has built out the senior team for his new venture, called Further Global, which is in market targeting $1.25 billion, two people with knowledge of the firm told Buyouts.

Sarkozy hired Richard Venn, former chairman and CEO of CIBC World Markets; Susan Ciccarone, former managing director at Goldman Sachs; and Mark Monaco, who worked at Credit Suisse, private equity firm Windward Capital Management and iPayment, Inc.

Further Global also hired a few senior advisers and associates to round out the group, according to one of the sources, an LP who has heard the pitch.

Sarkozy, half-brother of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, left Carlyle last year. From 2008 through 2016 he was managing director and head of Carlyle’s financial-services group.

“Olivier [Sarkozy] is a charismatic guy … but there’s a lot of guys in market with financial-services firms,” said the second LP, who has also heard the pitch.

Buyouts reported in September that Sarkozy was working on his new fund, and sources said then that he had locked up anchor commitments.

Other financial-services-related firms currently or recently in market include Stone Point, Lightyear Capital and Aquiline Capital Partners, which closed its third flagship fund on more than $1.1 billion in April 2016.

Carlyle raised its first global financial-services fund in 2008, collecting about $1.1 billion. That fund was generating a 12.4 percent net internal rate of return and a 1.5x multiple as of June 30, 2016, according to performance information from California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

Fund II closed in 2014 on about $1 billion and had deployed about $708.2 million as of Sept. 30, 2016, Carlyle’s third-quarter 2016 earnings report said. Fund II was generating a 1.1x multiple and 10 percent gross IRR as of that date, Carlyle said.

Sarkozy’s team brings years of experience in financial-services investing.

Venn had an almost 40-year career at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, where he retired as a senior executive vice president, advising senior executives on strategic development and joint ventures, according to his biography with ratings firm DBRS, where he was a director.

Venn retired from CIBC after working in various roles, including chairman and CEO of CIBC World Markets from 1992 to 2001; and as managing director and deputy chairman of CIBC World Markets since 2001, according to his Bloomberg biography.

Ciccarone joined Emerging Global Advisors in 2012 as chief financial officer. She became chief operating officer in 2014, according to her biography on Crunchbase. Ciccarone spent almost three years at Goldman Sachs, focused on M&A and capital-raising for financial institutions. Prior to that she was with UBS’s financial-institutions group, her bio said.

Monaco spent more than six years as CFO at iPayment Inc. He worked for about 10 years at Windward Capital Partners, a middle-market PE firm. Before that, he worked at Credit Suisse from 1991 through early 1996, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Action Item: Check out Carlyle’s third-quarter earnings statement here: http://bit.ly/2kGhnZ7

Olivier Sarkozy, half-brother of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Photo courtesy Reuters/Andrew Kelly