The Key Man

Arif Naqvi’s deal-making skills helped make him big in private equity investing in the Middle East.

Arif Naqvi was born in Karachi, Pakistan. His father was a middle-class businessman who could just about afford to send him to an exclusive local grammar school. Naqvi later attained a place at the London School of Economics, got good grades and then trained as an accountant. After a few false starts, in 1990 he moved to Saudi Arabia to join a company involved in consumer goods, logistics and banking. But Naqvi’s ambitions were too big to allow him to work for someone else, and he had an ability to charm people and win their trust. He convinced wealthy Pakistani expatriates he met at a poker game to lend him money to fund his own projects. In 1994, he relocated to Dubai. His early ventures were nothing special, but he began making a name for himself on the social scene.

In 1998, Naqvi found investors to help him buy a grocery and liquor business serving the Middle East. The move was typical private equity sleight-of-hand – he acquired the $98 million company with loans secured against the business itself and without...