Former Brookfield Financial honchos set up investment banking firm

Pawan Swamy, former managing partner at the Indian arm of Brookfield Financial (BFIN), and Adil Engineer, former partner at the same firm, have set up a boutique investment banking entity named Credberg Advisors, focused on real estate and infrastructure. 

Early this year, Canada-based Brookfield closed down Brookfield Financial in this country, to focus on asset investment and management. Though Swamy and Brookfield were in talks for a management buyout, this did not go through, sources said.

“We have set up Credberg as we believe there is huge potential for a boutique pure-play investment bank. Most players in the market focus on just real estate and not necessarily on the capital solutions needed in the marketplace today,” Swamy said.

He is chairman and joint managing partner at Credberg; Adil is joint managing partner. Swamy was involved in the sale of ICICI Venture’s 50 per cent stake in the Waverock property to Singapore’s GIC and helped Peninsula Land raise Rs 450 crore debt at BFIN. He was a managing director (MD) at property consultancy JLL before joining Brookfield Financial.

Shobhit Agarwal, former MD of capital markets at JLL had also set up a boutique investment banking firm, ANB Capital Advisors, focused on real estate. It later merged with Anuj Puri’s Anarock.

Rajeev Bairathi, who was country head forcapital markets at consultant Knight Frank set up Shearwater Ventures, an investment advisory and incubation management entity.

In real estate, Brookfield had acquired the Powai commercial portfolio of the Hiranandani family for $1 billion, the infotech Spec­ial economic zone of Unitech Corporate Parks and Equinox Business Park of the Essar group in the recent past. 

It also did some big private equity deals in the recent past, such as buying Leela Hotel assets for Rs 3,950 crore and gas pipelines from Reliance Industries for Rs 13,000 crore.