OUR TEAM
Euphrates Ventures
GEOFFREY BATT
Managing Partner
Geoffrey has over ten years of public and private investment experience in Iraq, launching the Euphrates Iraq Fund in 2010. Prior to founding Euphrates, Geoffrey was an analyst at Quantrarian Capital Management. He spoke at The Value Investor Congress and Santangel’s Investors Forum, and was invited to give a guest lecture on frontier market investing at Harvard Business School. He was a Senior Advisor to the Atlantic Council’s “Future of Iraq Project”, where he worked with Career Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Mr. Batt studied philosophy at Columbia University.
GRANT FELGENHAUER
Managing Partner
Grant has been actively investing in Iraq since 2012. He travels frequently to all regions of the country to assess investment opportunities and to maintain long-standing relationships with portfolio company management teams and a network of local entrepreneurs. Prior to Euphrates, Grant was a partner in the Moscow and London offices of Hermitage Capital Management, the largest foreign portfolio investor in post-Soviet Russia. Grant is a frequent speaker on emerging markets in financial media and academia. Grant is Chairman of the Iraqi Children Foundation and a Trustee of the Iraq Fund for Higher Education (Baghdad Business School). Grant holds a BA in Economics from Yale and a JD from Columbia Law School.
SHWAN IBRAHIM TAHA
Partner
Shwan has over 20 years of experience in the financial sector focused on the Middle East. From 1997 to 2006, Shwan worked for Franklin Templeton as part of Mark Mobius's emerging markets team. In 2006, Shwan joined a two-man team to co-manage a hedge fund that was funded and sponsored by George Soros. Shwan subsequently took over management of Rabee Securities, an Iraqi brokerage firm which he had acquired in 1999. Rabee Securities was the sole manager of the two largest listings in Iraq, AsiaCell and Zain. Recently, Shwan has also focused on the thriving start-up scene in Iraq as an angel investor. Shwan obtained a biomedical engineering degree from Case Western Reserve University and an MBA from George Washington University.
RAWAZ RAUF
Partner
Rawaz is one of Iraq’s leading angel investors and a senior financial and strategy advisor to his family-owned group of companies. He has more than a decade of experience in the telecom and technology business in Iraq. He currently serves in various roles, including as a member of the board of directors of Dilnia Insurance, and commercial strategy advisor to Ashur Brick. Rawaz has been one of the first angel investors in Iraq’s nascent start-up ecosystem, and he is a cofounder and CEO of Ecopay, an environmentally-friendly start-up focused on distributing electronic voucher payments across Iraq. Rawaz holds an MBA from the American University of Iraq Sulaimani and an engineering degree from University College London UCL.
TEAM
Euphrates Iraq Fund Ltd
GEOFFREY BATT
Managing Partner and Founder
Geoffrey Batt has been investing on the Iraq Stock Exchange since January 2008. In October 2010, Mr. Batt launched the Euphrates Iraq Fund. Prior to his Iraq investments, Mr. Batt was an analyst at Quantrarian Capital Management. He is a Senior Advisor to the Atlantic Council's Task Force on the Future of Iraq. Mr. Batt studied philosophy at Columbia University.
GRANT FELGENHAUER
Managing Partner
Grant has been actively investing in Iraq since 2012. He travels frequently to all regions of the country to assess investment opportunities and to maintain long-standing relationships with portfolio company management teams and a network of local entrepreneurs. Prior to Euphrates, Grant was a partner in the Moscow and London offices of Hermitage Capital Management, the largest foreign portfolio investor in post-Soviet Russia. Grant is a frequent speaker on emerging markets in financial media and academia. Grant is Chairman of the Iraqi Children Foundation and a Trustee of the Iraq Fund for Higher Education (Baghdad Business School). Grant holds a BA in Economics from Yale and a JD from Columbia Law School.
DANIEL CLOUD
Principal
Daniel Cloud co-founded Firebird in 1994, one of the first funds to invest in post-Soviet Russian equities. Dr. Cloud holds a PhD in philosophy from Columbia University. Dr. Cloud taught at Princeton University from 2008 through 2015.