With its 850 million euros in assets, the investment fund manager focused on the African continent is strengthening its Casablanca office with the promotion of two new partners: Adnane Zerhouni and Wilfried Poyet.
The private equity firm with 850 million euros in assets under management via five vehicles has a portfolio of around thirty companies, had a busy year in 2022 with half a dozen investment transactions and Release. Nevertheless, it continues to strengthen its offices, in particular that of Casablanca. The fund announced on Wednesday October 12 that it had promoted two new partners: Adnane Zerhouni and Wilfried Poyet.
Having joined the group in 2018, the first is based in Casablanca. He recently led several investments in the region such as Best Health or CFG in Morocco, Global Corp in Egypt. Before joining Amethis in 2018, Adnane Zerhouni was M&A Director of the Saham Group in Casablanca (diversified pan-African group, major player in the insurance sector in particular) for 6 years, where he executed numerous acquisition and disposal transactions on the African continent. Previously, he worked as an investment banker in London for nearly 7 years in the M&A departments of Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital. This Moroccan holds a Master of Science in Management with a specialization in economics from HEC Paris, and also holds a Certificate of Continuous Education from Columbia University in New York. In the Casablanca office, he is responsible for identifying and analyzing opportunities, leading the teams in charge of executing transactions, as well as monitoring portfolio investments. It focuses its efforts mainly on the MENA region.
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Also based in the economic capital of the Kingdom, he has several operations to his credit in Morocco, where he has lived for more than sixteen years, the latest being Magriser, a pioneer in irrigation systems in the Kingdom. Another in the specialized logistics sector should be finalized in the coming weeks.
Prior to joining Amethis in 2018, Wilfried was Director of Strategy and Finance for a major Moroccan industrial group for more than five years. Previously, he worked for ten years in private equity in France and Morocco, where he is notably a member of the board of directors of Dislog.
Before joining Amethis in 2018, Wilfried Poyet was director of strategy and finance for a leading Moroccan industrial group for more than 5 years (agro-industry, real estate and cement works: 60 subsidiaries, turnover of 600 million euros, 4,000 people). Previously, he worked in private equity for 10 years, part of which was in France (Oseo (BPI) and Odyssée Venture) and another in Morocco (Capital Invest and Upline Investments), where he carried out more than twenty operation (seed, venture capital, development, LBO and turnaround), within several sectors of activity: IT, distribution, industry, transport and services.
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Wilfried Poyet holds an engineering degree from ISEN (Lille, France), and a Specialized Master’s degree in corporate finance from EM Lyon. He is of French nationality and has been living in Morocco since 2006.
At Amethis, Wilfried Poyet is notably responsible for the sourcing and analysis of opportunities, as well as the supervision of due diligence and the management of the teams in charge of the execution of transactions as well as the monitoring of investments in the portfolio.
As a reminder, Amethis now has more than 45 employees, including 11 partners, spread over six offices (Paris, Casablanca, Cairo, Abidjan, Nairobi and Luxembourg).