DIC hires Morgan Stanley Private Equity co-founder

Dubai International Capital, the Middle East investment firm, has appointed David Smoot as managing director for private equity. In his new role, Smoot will report to Sylvain Denis, chief executive officer of DIC Private Equity, the firm said.

Smoot joins DIC from Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, where he worked for 11 years. At Morgan Stanley, he co-founded Morgan Stanley Private Equity, prior to which he was a managing director in its financial sponsors group. He advised clients such as Bain Capital, Blackstone Group, First Reserve and Warburg Pincus on M&A, IPOs, debt and equity financings, the firm said. Before Morgan Stanley, Smoot was at Salomon Brothers where he specialised in energy and chemicals investment banking.

At DIC, he will be involved in growing the firm’s operations in North America and expanding its private equity portfolio there.

DIC’s private equity management team now comprises of Denis, Smoot, Alan Hyslop, Michel Gaudreau, Peter Jansenberger and Brian Lindley. Hyslop and Gaudreau are the other managing directors while Jansenberger and Lindley are directors.

Established in 2004, DIC is a wholly owned supsidiary of Dubai Holding, which manages assets of more than $12 billion (€7.6 billion). DIC Private Equity focuses on investments in secondary buyouts in developed markets such as Europe and North America.

Some notable DIC Private Equity transactions include the £800 million ($1.6 billion; €1 billion) buyout of Tussauds Group, a UK leisure company; Germany’s Mauser, an industrial packaging manufacturer, for €850 million; Doncasters, a UK engineering company, for £700 million; and FastenTech, a US engineering company, for $492 million.