Amethis elevates two as partners to beef up top deck

Africa-focused private equity firm Amethis, which was created nine years ago, has expanded its top team by elevating two executives as partners, taking the total count to six.

It has appointed Khady Koné-Dicoh and Jean-Thomas Lopez as partners. Koné-Dicoh and Lopez are both early team members, having joined the firm in 2013 and 2012, respectively.

Koné-Dicoh was raised in Côte d’Ivoire and comes with 15 years of African private equity and investment banking experience. She has led five investments and divestments for the company. These include the investment and exit from the supermarket chain CDCI in Côte d’Ivoire; investment in the leading LPG bottles distributor in Burkina Faso, Sodigaz; investment in the one-stop shop logistics company Velogic; and investment in the hospitality and leisure company in Mauritius, VLH.

She particularly covers Western and Southern Africa for Amethis.

Prior to joining Amethis, Koné-Dicoh was a manager in Société Générale’s mergers and acquisitions team. Over seven years, she advised transactions in the telecom, health, fast-moving consumer goods and hospitality sectors across Europe, Middle East and Africa for both strategic players and private equity funds.

She holds a Master of Science in Management from EM Lyon Business School and a master’s degree in business law from Lyon III University. She is also an alumna of the London Business School.

Lopez is French and based in Luxembourg. As portfolio manager, he is responsible for portfolio management of the four Amethis vehicles and is also engaged in the direct supervision of some deals. He also supervises Amethis-regulated Luxembourg Alternative Investment Fund Manager (AIFM).

He has led three investments and divestments for the company. These are the investment and exit from Petro Ivoire, an oil and gas distribution company in Côte d’Ivoire; Novamed, the biggest operator in the healthcare sector in Côte d’Ivoire; and Groupe Premium, an equipment distributor in Morocco for agriculture, construction, mining and quarrying industries.

He is also a board member of Amethis Investment Fund Manager SA (Luxembourg) and non-executive board member of Petro Ivoire, Novamed and NSIA Participations in Côte d’Ivoire, Sodigaz (Burkina Faso) and Groupe Premium (Morocco).

Prior to joining Amethis in 2012, he launched, managed and successfully sold several companies in the French food catering and restaurant industry. He started his career in stock market risk management. He then joined French development finance institution Proparco, where he worked on Sub-Saharan African equity and debt transactions, based between Africa and Paris.

In 1998, Lopez joined an industrial Cameroonian group operating in five African countries. There, he was in charge of eight companies across a diversity of sectors, expanding the group’s regional activities, monitoring transnational risk and improving profitability.

Lopez holds a degree in finance from Dauphine University (Paris).

Amethis has been created through a partnership with Edmond de Rothschild Private Equity. It makes growth equity investments throughout the African continent and has an investment capacity exceeding €725 million.