StanChart's Shankar to launch Africa-Asia private equity fund

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Standard Chartered board member V. Shankar is leaving the London-based bank to launch a private $750 million-$1 billion private equity fund focused on Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia, he said on Wednesday.

"It's an arc connecting Indonesia to South Africa, very much focused on the South-South flows," Dubai-based Shankar, who is chief executive of Standard Chartered Europe, Middle East, Africa and Americas, told Reuters at the World Economic Forum Africa in Cape Town.

The fund is intended to provide late-stage growth capital to emerging market firms looking to break into other emerging or frontier markets, added Shankar, who has been at Standard Chartered for 14 years.

"The value-add is going to be investing into a company in Indonesia and bringing them into Africa, and vice versa," he said. "I don't intend to do hostile takeovers and buyouts. It's about working with entrepreneurs in these markets."

Shankar said the fund was still in its early days and did not yet have a management team, but he was considering opening a Singapore regional office to compliment its Dubai base.

(Reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa and Elaine Hardcastle)