Arif Naqvi, chief executive of Dubai's Abraaj Group, hates the way Westerners speak about his part of the world. His private equity firm, he says, does not operate in emerging markets or, worse, frontier markets. 'We have taken the risk out of investing in what the West mistakenly calls 'emerging markets,'" he says in elegant, Pakistani-accented English from a Madison Avenue outpost "They're growth markets," he insists. While his remarks contain a healthy dose of marketing, Naqvi has a point His $9 billion private equity firm-currently the largest investor in emerging markets outside of Brazil, Russia, India and China-has a track record many developed-world money managers would kill for. Despite operating in places where the rule of law often comes into question, limited partners report an impressive 17% annual return since inception in 2002.
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