About

Zahid Kamal leads the three-member legal team at Fajr Capital, a Dubai-based private equity investor whose shareholders include sovereign investors from Abu Dhabi, Brunei Darussalam, and Malaysia, as well as private institutions from the GCC and beyond. Kamal is actively involved in various aspects of Fajr Capital’s transactions (including origination, execution and portfolio management) and strategic initiatives. He is also a member of Washington D.C.-based Emerging Markets Private Equity Association’s Middle East Council. Prior to Fajr Capital, Kamal was a senior lawyer at Ashurst LLP in London and Dubai. He recalls his first legal role at Blake Morgan, a regional legal firm in Southampton, UK, which provided the strong foundation for his eventual move into international in-house legal work. ‘By pure luck this team was comprised of mainly ex-city lawyers, which meant we were usually working on a number of significant deals—including ECM and private equity work—despite being a regional firm. In the absence of abundant resources and an army of people one would find in a city firm, there was a requirement to be resourceful, innovative and take on responsibility at an earlier stage. All very usual experience for a lawyer in-house, especially in the Middle-East’, he highlights. Whilst at Ashurst’s London office, Kamal jumped at the chance to move to Ashurst’s Dubai office in early 2008—which is where he originally worked with Fajr Capital in an external counsel capacity. His work resulted in an in-house job offer from Fajr Capital, which Kamal accepted when he was ready for a new challenge in mid-2011. Kamal explains that he joined Fajr Capital at an exciting stage in the firm’s growth trajectory and his transactional experience became an important component in executing the firm’s investment strategy. ‘There was no legal function at Fajr before I joined’, he explains, ‘but a refocused investments team and an integrated legal team meant we were able to originate off-market opportunities and invest in great companies’. As he has grown into the role, Kamal has added investment and portfolio management responsibilities to his legal ones: ‘I now sit on the board and the executive committees several of our portfolio companies, including Cravia Group and Global Environmental Management Services. This creates for a varied workload and provides excellent commercial exposure and opportunities to add value to our portfolio companies’, Kamal explains.