Strategy

Citadel Capital’s strategy is to acquire or create national companies that can serve as platforms for regional expansion in specific industries. For each deal, the firm raises an Opportunity-Specific Fund (OSF) to control a single platform investment. To date, Citadel Capital has raised 18 OSFs that control Platform Companies in 15 industries with investments worth more than US$ 8.3 billion. The firm has long pursued an incremental approach to investment that is serving it well during the current economic climate.

Citadel Capital is a control investor and is majority owned by its senior management and staff. It is also a principal investor in its own transactions, with equity of more than US$ 735 million committed to its own deals. While the firm is primarily focused on opportunities in the Middle East and Africa, it has a strong interest in proximal African nations. Going forward, Citadel Capital plans to open offices in South Sudan and Ethiopia to support its growing investment presence in those regions.

The firm focuses on opportunities supported by two primary themes:

Natural Advantages: Opportunities that arise from the Middle East and Africa region’s numerous advantages, including lower labor, raw material and energy costs, as well as its favorable geographic location and climate.

Inefficiencies: Markets that have suffered from a lack of private investment, where the existing participants lack the necessary scale and sophistication to compete effectively, or where state control and subsidies have left a legacy of inefficiencies.

Among the industries on which the firm currently focuses are cement, mining, energy, food transportation and logistics and metallurgy.

Depending on the investment cycle, Citadel Capital is flexible in regards to the entry point it uses to pursue deals and is open to consolidation plays / industry roll-ups, leveraged buyouts, distressed deals and even greenfield investments.