Andre Sokol

Andre G. A. Sokol (born Aix-en-Provence, France on May 6, 1972) is a financier who has been involved in some of the world’s largest Mergers and Acquisitions transactions. Since 2007, he has been involved in private equity investing. He is known to have a broad international network of personal relationships in the worlds of business and finance.

Biography

Andre Sokol began his career in investment banking joining in 1994 S.G. Warburg & Co., a British investment bank, which subsequently became part of the UBS AG Group.

As an investment banker at UBS, Andre Sokol was involved as a lead advisor on some ground breaking transactions including in 2000 Vodafone Group’s acquisition of Mannesmann AG for over US$200 billion and which remains the largest ever hostile bid, as well as the sale of Orange Plc to France Telecom for £31 billion. During this time, Andre Sokol worked closely with Sir Christopher Gent, Ken Hydon and Sir Julian Horn-Smith.

In 2001, Andre Sokol joined UBS’s investment banking team in Los Angeles, led by Ken Moelis. Andre Sokol returned to London in 2002 still working for UBS and advising Vodafone on a number of high profile transactions. Andre Sokol became a Managing Director at UBS at 32, one of the youngest Managing Director’s at UBS’ Investment Banking Division. He was ranked Europe’s 4th most active M&A banker in Europe by Mergermarket for the period between 1998 and 2004.

Andre Sokol joined Vodafone Group Plc as its Group Director of Mergers and Acquisitions in 2004 and became responsible for M&A activity worldwide for the company. In this position, he led one of Vodafone’s most active periods of M&A, executing transactions valued at over US$33 billion in aggregate. These transactions included the US$16 billion sale of Vodafone Japan to Softbank (controlled by Masayoshi Son), the US$4.6 billion acquisition of Telsim in Turkey, the US$3.2 billion acquisition of Venfin in South Africa, the US$1.5 billion acquisition of Bharti in India, the US$4.5 billion acquisition of TIW in Romania and the Czech Republic, the US$1.3 billion sale of Vodafone Sweden and the US$2.6 billion sale of Vodafone’s stake in Proximus in Belgium.

After leaving Vodafone in December 2006, Andre Sokol founded Akira Capital with
 
< Prev   Next >