Philippe Jabre | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1960 |
| Nationality | Lebanese |
| Occupation | Hedge Fund Manager |
| Title | CEO, CIO of Jabre Capital Partners S.A |
| Children | 4 |
Philippe Jabre is the founder, CEO and CIO of Jabre Capital Partners S.A, a Geneva-based wealth and asset management firm and multi-family office, [1] and a former managing director of GLG Partners, a UK-based hedge fund.
Jabre, born in 1960 in Beirut, Lebanon, studied at college Notre-Dame de Jamhour. He graduated from Concordia University in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in economics [2] [3] and earned an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1982, [4] where he is a member of the Board of Overseers. In 2023, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Saint Joseph University in Beirut in recognition of his contributions to education and philanthropy. [5]
Jabre started his career at JP Morgan and then worked at BAII Asset Management (a French consortium bank later taken over by BNP Paribas). In his 16 years there, he specialised in the budding market for convertible arbitrage, a strategy that involved buying a company's convertible bonds and selling short the company's stock. [4]
After joining GLG in 1997 and having a significant impact on the hedge fund's growth and success, Jabre left GLG after 9 years in 2006, during a 2-year investigation by the FSA. Individuals familiar with the firm say GLG came to view Mr. Jabre as someone who took unnecessary risks. Jabre was fined £750,000 for market abuse in 2006 for breaching FSA principles. This was, at that time, the largest fine the FSA had issued against an individual.
From the FSA website: "On 11 February 2003 Mr Jabre was 'wall crossed' by Goldman Sachs International as part of the pre-marketing of a new issue of convertible preference shares in Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc (SMFG). Mr Jabre was given confidential information and agreed to be restricted from dealing SMFG securities until the issue was announced. Mr Jabre breached this restriction by short selling around $16 million of SMFG ordinary shares on 12–14 February 2003. When the new issue was announced on 17 February 2003, Mr Jabre made a substantial profit for the GLG Market Neutral Fund." [6] Jabre initially considered appealing the fine, but then withdrew his appeal.
The FSA's Regulatory Decisions Committee "decided that Mr Jabre did not deliberately commit market abuse, ruling that he did not violate the FSA's Principle 1 governing market integrity". The Committee opted not to ban or suspend Jabre. [7] In an interview with CNBC, Jabre asserted that “when he was fined in London for market abuse, the rules and regulations were "not as clear" as they are now" [8]
On October 11, 2006, it was announced that Philippe Jabre was set to open a new hedge fund in Geneva, Switzerland, after his non-compete contract with GLG Partners expired. The fund opened in February 2007 and was one of the largest new launches in recent years, as many of Jabre's old clients followed him to his new venture, along with a significant number of new investors. The fund - JabCap Multi Strategy Fund - closed very shortly afterwards with $5 billion under management [1] and Jabre Capital Partners having been one of the largest hedge funds in Switzerland at the time. [9]
In 2018, Mr Jabre decided to draw a line under his hedge fund activities. [10] He returned external capital in the funds as part of a restructuring of the firm, and decided to refocus on its historical wealth management activities. Since June 2020, Jabre Capital Partners has relaunched its asset management activities focused on the firm's core strategies. [1]
Jabre Capital Partners is an active member of the Association Suisse des Gérants de Fortune (ASG). [11]
In 2013, Jabre Capital was one of Europe's top-performing hedge funds [12] and won EuroHedge's Management Firm of the Year award. [13]
In March 2014, the firm won three awards at the HedgePo Investors Choice Awards: Fund of the Year, Global Equity Fund of the Year and Global Multi-strategy Fund of the Year. [14]
Mr. Jabre also wrote the foreword of The Handbook of Convertible Bonds: Pricing, Strategies and Risk Management of Jan De Spiegeleer and Wim Schoutens [15]
In December 2021, Philippe Jabre acquired majority ownership of Brasserie Almaza, the Lebanese beer brewery. [16] This brought the company back into family control almost 90 years after it was founded by the Jabre family in 1933 and was at risk of being closed. In 2022, Jabre reported that Almaza profits had reached 8 per cent of its sales but the difficult economic situation in Lebanon continued to limit the company. [17] Heineken Group, which had a majority stake in the company since 2003, remains a minority shareholder and continues to provide access to international brands and technical expertise. [18]
In 2001, Philippe Jabre founded the Association Philippe Jabre (APJ), a Beirut-based non-profit organization recognized by the Lebanese Ministry of Interior. [19] The association focuses on improving access to education and healthcare for underprivileged communities in Lebanon. It has awareded over 2900 university scholarships and supported more than 8900 individual socio-medical cases. [19]
APJ operated independently but is based on the premises of Arcenciel, a Lebanese NGO it also supports. [19] [20] The association has partnered with cultural and education initiatives in Lebanon, including supporting events like the Beirut Art Film Festival and the Home Works forum organized by Ashkal Alwan. [21] [22]
Philippe Jabre owns a private art collection focused on Western representations of Lebanon from the 17th to the 20th centuries. [23] Curated by Gaby Daher since 1989, it includes over 3,000 works, such as Orientalist paintings, drawings, vintage travel posters, and early photographs. [23] [24]
The collection is housed in a museum space in Beit Chabab, Lebanon, and features works by artists such as Gustav Bauernfeind, Antoine-Alphonse Montfort, David Hockney, and Andy Warhol. [23] [24] Works have been exhibited at the Sursock Museum in Beirut on two occasions in 2016 and 2019.
Works from the collection have been shown in exhibitions such as A Tribute to Lebanon at the Beirut Art Fair (2019), and Impressions of Paradise (2025), which explored Lebanon's image in 20th-century travel and cinema posters. [25] [26]
He is a skier. He is also married [27] with four children. Philippe is a trustee for the American University of Beirut. [2]
He is also the founder of the not-for-profit Association Philippe Jabre (APJ) based in Beirut, which provides financial aid to Lebanese people in need, including the distribution of university grants to students seeking to pursue higher education and post doctorates. [28] Between 2001 and 2021, the APJ granted university scholarships to 2,568 students, according to their website. [29]
His house above Beirut, a family property creatively renovated after suffering heavy damage during the Lebanese Civil War, was designed by architect Nabil Gholam. [30]
