Investors in a $1.6 billion-Abraaj Group fund have hired advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal Holdings LLC to help recover money owed by the floundering Middle Eastern private equity firm, Bloomberg News reported. The New York-based company will represent Abraaj Private Equity Fund IV’s backers in talks with liquidators as they seek to recover more than $99 million owed by the Dubai-based buyout firm. The stakeholders have formed an investor committee led by Boston-based HarbourVest Partners. Alvarez will also represent the fund if it’s elected to a liquidators’ committee for Abraaj Investment Management Ltd., which is the buyout firm’s asset management business. Representatives for Alvarez and HarbourVest declined to comment. Court-appointed liquidators Deloitte LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP are trying to settle more than $1 billion of debt owed by Abraaj, once one of the most influential emerging-market investors until its dramatic collapse this year. The private equity firm is undergoing a court-supervised restructuring after it was found to have borrowed money from some of its own funds to meet operating expenses without investors’ consent.
