Sadek Wahba


Sadek Wahba is the founder and managing partner of the Miami-based global infrastructure investment company I Squared Capital.

Early life and education

Sadek Wahba is the grandson of Youssef Wahba Pasha, Egyptian Prime Minister and jurist. His father, Sadek Wahba Pasha had a prominent career in the Egyptian diplomatic service.
Wahba grew up in Cairo and attended the Collège de la Sainte Famille. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, a M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics and a B.A. in economics from the American University in Cairo.

Career

After college, Wahba worked as an economist for The World Bank and later was a banker. His research at Harvard included labor migration and worker remittances as a source of foreign capital to emerging markets. Another area of research has been on measuring causal inference in social studies. One of his publications was selected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as one of its 50 most influential papers in the last 50 years.
In the 1990s, he joined the private sector as a banker at Lehman Brothers. In 1998, he was hired by Morgan Stanley, where he rose to become a senior executive leading infrastructure investments.
After 14 years with Morgan Stanley, he left to form I Squared Capital, a U.S.-based private equity group that invests in infrastructure projects in the U.S. and in developing economies, particularly China and India. The group manages over $13 billion in assets, including a commitment from the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation to invest in Southeast Asia. He is also a commentator on the need for more investment in infrastructure to promote economic growth.

Awards and honors

Wahba is a member of the board of trustees of the American University in Cairo, a senior member of St Antony's College at the University of Oxford, a member of the Brookings Foreign Policy Leadership Council, and was part of the expert committee on the World Economic Forum first report on global infrastructure investments.
In 2019, Wahba became the only person to receive the "Global Personality of the Year" award from Infrastructure Investor magazine twice.