- General Atlantic announced it expanded its senior leadership team with the promotions of Gabriel Caillaux, Martin Escobari, and Anton Levy
Investment firm General Atlantic has announced the expansion of its senior leadership team with the promotions of Gabriel Caillaux, Martin Escobari, and Anton Levy to co-presidents. In these newly created roles, they will work closely with Chief Executive Officer Bill Ford to lead the firm’s strategy and will assume greater responsibilities for the global investor program. Ford will continue to lead the firm as the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Management Committee.
General Atlantic has $35 billion in assets under management and the firm is currently invested in over 110 growth companies around the world with over half of its portfolio outside of the United States and more than one-third being in emerging markets.
Caillaux oversees General Atlantic’s business in EMEA. Escobari serves as Chairman of the Investment Committee and heads the firm’s Latin American investments. And Levy heads the firm’s technology investing activities globally. Together, they have spent over four decades at General Atlantic.
“As we have developed our global growth investing strategy and grown our investor base, our business has achieved greater scale and complexity. To maintain our momentum, we believe that now is the right time to expand our senior leadership team. I am convinced that digital disruption, growth in the emerging markets and the rise of entrepreneurship will continue to expand our global opportunity set,” said Ford. “Our Co-Presidents will help us capture such opportunities and continue to deliver attractive returns to our investors. The broadening of our senior leadership team will also enable me to further focus on our long-term strategy and our growing Asia business while spending more time deepening our strategic capital relationships.”
The General Atlantic Management Committee will continue serving as the governing body for the partnership with a focus on operational and strategic decision making. Along with Ford, Escobari, Caillaux, and Levy, the Management Committee includes Sandeep Naik and Graves Tompkins. Naik is the head of India and Southeast Asia. And Tompkins is the global head of capital partnering and human capital.
“We’re incredibly energized by the entrepreneurs we engage with around the world, and I believe that investing on the local level from our established global platform delivers tangible benefits for those who partner with us. I look forward to working with Bill, Martín, and Anton as we continue to build General Atlantic together to achieve the firm’s long-term ambitions,” added Caillaux.
General Atlantic is known for pioneering growth equity investing. And the firm maintained a singular focus on this strategy by identifying companies with high growth potential around the world and helping them scale.
“We see on a daily basis how the adoption of technology and transformative power of data are shaping not just individual businesses, but whole industries. General Atlantic is at the forefront of this as we seek to bring insights from around the world to our local partners, and we believe innovation is rapidly accelerating. We’re excited to work with some of the best entrepreneurs in the world as they harness the power of technology,” commented Levy.
The firm was originally founded 40 years ago by Chuck Feeney. Since then, General Atlantic deployed over $34 billion in over 360 companies globally. By the end of the year, General Atlantic expects to have a capital base of $16 billion.
“Over the firm’s 40-year history, General Atlantic has taken a thoughtful, long-term view on our business strategy and structure to best pave the way for sustained growth. I am honored to build on that legacy as we continue to expand our investing activities across sectors and regions, particularly in the emerging markets, which continue to have immense potential as the primary drivers of global growth in the future,” explained Escobari.
General Atlantic also announced that Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer Thomas Murphy is going to retire at the end of the year after 25 years with the firm. He is going to be succeeded by Michael Gosk — who joined General Atlantic as an Operating Partner earlier this year. Before that, Gosk spent more than a decade with General Electric across a series of financial leadership roles and most recently serving as Chief Tax Officer. Before GE, he was a partner at the global law firm McDermott Will & Emery and a partner at KPMG.
