The relationships built along the way
J.P. Morgan alumnus Mac El-Omari applies his decades of investment banking experience in his own business and explains how he found his niche.
Mac El-Omari shares the challenges he experienced after leaving J.P. Morgan and how he adjusted. Login to the Alumni Network site to view the video.
Thirty years and countless deals later, Mac El-Omari says one thing still matters most in investment banking: the relationships built along the way.
When he was the former Vice Chairman of J.P. Morgan Asia Pacific, El-Omari advised multinationals looking to establish themselves in Asia in the 1990s, when China's investment banking scene was taking off, while also helping to structure major deals.
“It's a great blessing to have worked at J.P. Morgan,” says the Lebanon-born El-Omari, who grew up in New York and France.
Now, he's drawing on lessons from his time at J.P. Morgan and the network he built to power his work as co-founder of 6E Capital. Established in 2021, his venture capital and private equity fund—the number six is a nod to the number of people in his family — him, his wife and their four children — supports businesses across Asia that focus on healthy food and beverages.
El-Omari hopes that, alongside his entrepreneur wife, his work will help China tackle the sharp rise in malnutrition rates seen over the past few decades.
Beyond business
El-Omari handled some of the firm's highest-profile deals in Asia, but the one that changed his life, he says, was his first major assignment: a deal involving UK mobile operator Orange in the early 1990s. It was then that he truly saw how his work could shape the real world.
“It sealed the deal for me, that I wanted to be an investment banker for the rest of my life,” he says. “I fell in love with the job.”
He learned the so-called “Buddhist way of doing business”—always being mindful, honest, fair and not letting emotions get the best of you, even when they ran high during stressful negotiations. “You really have to be very altruistic and go after what’s good for the client,” he says. “It was more than just business.”
J.P. Morgan gave him grit – an optimistic determination to see every task through to the end. “And I've kept that with me,” he says. “It still helps me define myself to this day.”
Those skills proved crucial with one of his last major deals at the firm: the $5.8 billion initial public offering of Budweiser Brewing Co. on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2019—just two years after he took on the added role of vice chairman of global investment banking.
Spanning more than a year, the transaction ranked among the largest consumer IPOs by a global company listing a subsidiary in Asia.
For his work, Budweiser for the first time in its history awarded El-Omari its, “Dream, People, Culture” award, which previously went exclusively to Budweiser employees. El-Omari proudly displays the award in his office.
“Your connectivity and service to the customer is what endures,” he says. “There is nothing more rewarding personally and professionally.”
A new direction
After decades at the firm, retiring was bittersweet. But El-Omari wanted to branch out on his own, using knowledge from J.P. Morgan to help young businesses thrive.
To mark the occasion, the lifelong running enthusiast signed up for the Marathon des Sables, often dubbed the toughest footrace on Earth. The 155-mile, seven-day multi-stage ultramarathon is held annually in the Moroccan Sahara.
“I just love running, it's very meditative for me,” he says, though he has no plans to repeat the grueling Sahara race, instead sticking to his daily Hong Kong runs.
Shortly after the ultramarathon when El-Omari launched 6E Capital, the plan was to help struggling, but promising, early-stage Chinese companies get back on track and build a solid foundation that one day might propel them to an IPO.
El-Omari tapped former Fortune 500 clients from across industries to join his advisory board. Yet, his business model faltered. “We could tackle big-picture problems, but not the small, day-to-day ones,” he says. Ultimately, he had to pivot.
“It was a wake-up call,” he says. “And I actually went through a dark phase—I was depressed and in a really tough spot. I had to sit back and reconfigure everything.”
El-Omari returned to the relationships he'd developed at J.P. Morgan. Former clients ended up placing large-scale orders to a Chinese bakery company he owns a minority stake in. “I told them, ‘I'm not here to sell you any investment banking products, but I am here to sell you some bread.’” The bakery business went from generating barely any income during the Covid-19 pandemic, to its current over $30 million.
Now, El-Omari's fund also invests in companies including a Korean healthy beverages, and he's an independent non-executive director in an infant formula company. “I let go, I humbled myself, and everything came together,” he says. “I found my niche. I found my purpose.”
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