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Name: Ali Aneizi
Age: 31
Ocupation: Director (corporate finance, mergers, acquisitions and private equity)
Religion: Muslim
Country of origin: Libya
Nationality: British
Current home: London
Family status: Single
Five o'clock on a Friday afternoon. It is the warmest day of the year so far, and for some the weekend has started early. The bars and cafés in London's financial district spread their tables out on the pavements, and City folk take a break in the sun before the journey home. Suits and the City somehow go together and this, as I discover later, is the reason for the slight delay. Ali had been changing out of his jeans and Timberlands and dressing up to meet me.
Ali Aneizi isn't among them, though. He's still in the office, working. At 31, Libyan-born Ali is a high-flier with a rather grand title: director of corporate finance, mergers, acquisitions and private equity at Baker Tilly, one of the leading firms of accountants and business advisers.
His smartly-dressed PA greets me and shows me to a meeting room where tea, coffee and biscuits are waiting. A few minutes later, Ali arrives in suit and tie. He immediately takes off his jacket and slings it over the back of a chair.
Ali is a chartered accountant whose main job is selling businesses or helping management teams raise private equity to finance buyouts. This might sound a bit dull, but he specialises in one of the more glamorous areas of the market - media and related businesses - which is how he came to get his photo in the Sunday Times for arranging a management buyout at Gymbox.
Gymbox once came seventh in a poll of "the world's hippest hangouts," and Ali describes it as "a quirky gym" that tries to combine exercise with entertainment. "It's got these interesting classes," he explains. "There's Bitch Boxing taught by a world female ex-boxing champion. They've got another class called Boob Aerobics."
Ahem, yes. Not sure we need to know the details of that, but I think we get the general idea. "The management team came to us. They wanted to buy the gym off the shareholders. It was owned by Fitness First. They needed some finance to back them. They needed someone to negotiate the transaction for them. They came to see us and we took them on.
"We've actually done two deals for Gymbox now. We did their buyout from Fitness First, then we helped them raise private equity to fund a rollout. They're going to open two or three new sites in London."
Great! Definitely looking forward to those and all the, er, entertaining aerobics.
Ali's parents moved from Libya to Britain when he was five. They came from the Benghazi region and, in Ali's words, were "a reasonably influential" family.
"My grandparents on both sides were involved politically. On my father's side, my grandfather was head of a delegation that lobbied the UN to get Libya its independence in the early 1950s. He was also finance minister and Libya's first ambassador to Lebanon. On my mother's side, my grandfather headed up the equivalent of the British House of Lords."
It was work rather than politics that brought the family to London. "My father is a reinsurance executive. He was sent here in the late 1970s to establish a reinsurance company, a joint venture between the Libyan state and the Algerian state. He's chairman of that business, and he's here looking after the Libyan interests."
Being Libyan in Britain has had its tricky moments, especially during the confrontation over the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in 1984.
"At the time I was reasonably young, but I distinctly noticed a change in the way my family conducted themselves in the wider community," Ali says.
"For example, we'd be at a restaurant and someone would ask where we were from, and we wouldn't say we were Libyan. It was just an unnecessary issue to raise at the time. My mother would sometimes say she's Syrian, and my father would say he's Tunisian."
Little of this registered with Ali at the time because he was too young, but some effects became "more noticeable after 9/11. People look at an Arab or Muslim walking down the street and invariably jump to conclusions. There’ve been occasions when I've been on the tube and people have looked and stared."
As far as work is concerned, though, he feels his ethnic background hasn't held him back. "I've never really experienced any sort of prejudice in a professional sense or a business sense," he says. "In my experience deliverability is everything, and if you deliver it doesn't matter who you are, what colour you are, or where you come from."
Ali is Arab, Muslim, Libyan and British, but he's reluctant to list these identities in any sort of order.
"I don't think I can," he says. "I feel like I may suffer from a multiple personality disorder at times, because who I'm with will determine how I am, how I interact. For example, if I'm at work I'll feel more British than Libyan. If I'm in the mosque, I'll feel more Muslim than Arab. If I'm with my immediate family, I'll feel more Libyan than Arab.
"Part of why I think I've got on well with work is being able to adapt to different types of people, from all types of backgrounds.
"If I'm in a business meeting and surrounded by Westerners, I'll be very Western and very modern in my approach. If I was in a meeting surrounded by Arabs, my approach would be very different. I'd probably be louder, a little bit more assertive - there tends to be an element of warm-bloodedness and enthusiasm. In Western circles things are more composed, more methodical."
So does this mean he's a bit of a chameleon? "Chameleon is probably quite accurate."
No question of nipping out of business meetings to pray?
"It's difficult to be a fully practicing Muslim here, or anywhere else for that matter! I'm one of those people who've stuck to the fundamentals and core principles of belief, and made concessions in other areas. I believe in the faith. I consider it to be important to me and I fast during Ramadan, but regular prayers aren't something I'm good at. That's quite tough, and I'd like to think I'm not going to be judged negatively by my creator because of that."
In his work, Ali reckons he spends half his time trying to originate transactions.
"That means speaking to corporates, speaking to investors - people with money, in the main - private equity houses who're looking to buy businesses, staying in touch with the banks and lawyers. There's an awful lot of networking to be done because it's all about developing relationships with the right people, being in the right place at the right time to originate deals."
I wonder if his Arab culture might be useful with this kind of sociable wheeling and dealing. "I don't think it's a negative," he says. "Arabs tend to be quite gregarious by nature, quite good at meeting people, articulating themselves. So in that respect, I think it's helpful."
Does it resemble the Arab system of wasta [connections], I ask.
"That's a term I haven't heard for a while. It's nothing like that. That would be frowned upon - 'I know someone who knows someone who might be able to do a bit of a favour' - it doesn't work that way."
On the surface Ali seems very British, but he also feels a sense of belonging to an Arab community.
"A lot of my friends are Arabs. I did my early schooling at King Fahd Academy, which is predominantly an Arab school that taught the English syllabus, so I've grown up with Arabs and stayed in touch with a lot of my friends."
Unlike many Arabs, though, he's not preoccupied with politics.
I've got views and opinions. I'm not particularly active in any way, but I feel part of it. I can sympathise with what's going on in the region, but what takes up most of my thoughts and most of my energy is my life here and my work."
Meeting him in the office, you might get the impression he's a workaholic, but friends say he plays hard too and loves a good party.
"This is a very difficult city to get bored in," he says. "There's a lot to do, but it's more than that. It just feels right. It fits."
When he's in the office and not meeting clients, he prefers to dress casually - the chameleon again.
"I just work better when I'm in my casual clothes," he says. "Obviously when I'm in front of a client, it's different. Image is important."
He travels to work in jeans and a t-shirt, with a rucksack on his back. It was probably the rucksack that led to him being stopped and searched at St Paul's underground station shortly after the July bombings last year.
"It was very polite, very civil and I was happy to help," he says. "I'm sure I fit a certain profile. If I was in their shoes, I'd stop me too. Why take the risk? I was comforted by it more than anything else. A lot of people would argue about civil liberties, but those who blew themselves up didn't think about civil liberties."
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Ali Aneizi isn't among them, though. He's still in the office, working. At 31, Libyan-born Ali is a high-flier with a rather grand title: director of corporate finance, mergers, acquisitions and private equity at Baker Tilly, one of the leading firms of accountants and business advisers.
His smartly-dressed PA greets me and shows me to a meeting room where tea, coffee and biscuits are waiting. A few minutes later, Ali arrives in suit and tie. He immediately takes off his jacket and slings it over the back of a chair.
Ali is a chartered accountant whose main job is selling businesses or helping management teams raise private equity to finance buyouts. This might sound a bit dull, but he specialises in one of the more glamorous areas of the market - media and related businesses - which is how he came to get his photo in the Sunday Times for arranging a management buyout at Gymbox.
Gymbox once came seventh in a poll of "the world's hippest hangouts," and Ali describes it as "a quirky gym" that tries to combine exercise with entertainment. "It's got these interesting classes," he explains. "There's Bitch Boxing taught by a world female ex-boxing champion. They've got another class called Boob Aerobics."
Ahem, yes. Not sure we need to know the details of that, but I think we get the general idea. "The management team came to us. They wanted to buy the gym off the shareholders. It was owned by Fitness First. They needed some finance to back them. They needed someone to negotiate the transaction for them. They came to see us and we took them on.
"We've actually done two deals for Gymbox now. We did their buyout from Fitness First, then we helped them raise private equity to fund a rollout. They're going to open two or three new sites in London."
Great! Definitely looking forward to those and all the, er, entertaining aerobics.
Ali's parents moved from Libya to Britain when he was five. They came from the Benghazi region and, in Ali's words, were "a reasonably influential" family.
"My grandparents on both sides were involved politically. On my father's side, my grandfather was head of a delegation that lobbied the UN to get Libya its independence in the early 1950s. He was also finance minister and Libya's first ambassador to Lebanon. On my mother's side, my grandfather headed up the equivalent of the British House of Lords."
It was work rather than politics that brought the family to London. "My father is a reinsurance executive. He was sent here in the late 1970s to establish a reinsurance company, a joint venture between the Libyan state and the Algerian state. He's chairman of that business, and he's here looking after the Libyan interests."
Being Libyan in Britain has had its tricky moments, especially during the confrontation over the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in 1984.
"At the time I was reasonably young, but I distinctly noticed a change in the way my family conducted themselves in the wider community," Ali says.
"For example, we'd be at a restaurant and someone would ask where we were from, and we wouldn't say we were Libyan. It was just an unnecessary issue to raise at the time. My mother would sometimes say she's Syrian, and my father would say he's Tunisian."
Little of this registered with Ali at the time because he was too young, but some effects became "more noticeable after 9/11. People look at an Arab or Muslim walking down the street and invariably jump to conclusions. There’ve been occasions when I've been on the tube and people have looked and stared."
As far as work is concerned, though, he feels his ethnic background hasn't held him back. "I've never really experienced any sort of prejudice in a professional sense or a business sense," he says. "In my experience deliverability is everything, and if you deliver it doesn't matter who you are, what colour you are, or where you come from."
Ali is Arab, Muslim, Libyan and British, but he's reluctant to list these identities in any sort of order.
"I don't think I can," he says. "I feel like I may suffer from a multiple personality disorder at times, because who I'm with will determine how I am, how I interact. For example, if I'm at work I'll feel more British than Libyan. If I'm in the mosque, I'll feel more Muslim than Arab. If I'm with my immediate family, I'll feel more Libyan than Arab.
"Part of why I think I've got on well with work is being able to adapt to different types of people, from all types of backgrounds.
"If I'm in a business meeting and surrounded by Westerners, I'll be very Western and very modern in my approach. If I was in a meeting surrounded by Arabs, my approach would be very different. I'd probably be louder, a little bit more assertive - there tends to be an element of warm-bloodedness and enthusiasm. In Western circles things are more composed, more methodical."
So does this mean he's a bit of a chameleon? "Chameleon is probably quite accurate."
No question of nipping out of business meetings to pray?
"It's difficult to be a fully practicing Muslim here, or anywhere else for that matter! I'm one of those people who've stuck to the fundamentals and core principles of belief, and made concessions in other areas. I believe in the faith. I consider it to be important to me and I fast during Ramadan, but regular prayers aren't something I'm good at. That's quite tough, and I'd like to think I'm not going to be judged negatively by my creator because of that."
In his work, Ali reckons he spends half his time trying to originate transactions.
"That means speaking to corporates, speaking to investors - people with money, in the main - private equity houses who're looking to buy businesses, staying in touch with the banks and lawyers. There's an awful lot of networking to be done because it's all about developing relationships with the right people, being in the right place at the right time to originate deals."
I wonder if his Arab culture might be useful with this kind of sociable wheeling and dealing. "I don't think it's a negative," he says. "Arabs tend to be quite gregarious by nature, quite good at meeting people, articulating themselves. So in that respect, I think it's helpful."
Does it resemble the Arab system of wasta [connections], I ask.
"That's a term I haven't heard for a while. It's nothing like that. That would be frowned upon - 'I know someone who knows someone who might be able to do a bit of a favour' - it doesn't work that way."
On the surface Ali seems very British, but he also feels a sense of belonging to an Arab community.
"A lot of my friends are Arabs. I did my early schooling at King Fahd Academy, which is predominantly an Arab school that taught the English syllabus, so I've grown up with Arabs and stayed in touch with a lot of my friends."
Unlike many Arabs, though, he's not preoccupied with politics.
I've got views and opinions. I'm not particularly active in any way, but I feel part of it. I can sympathise with what's going on in the region, but what takes up most of my thoughts and most of my energy is my life here and my work."
Meeting him in the office, you might get the impression he's a workaholic, but friends say he plays hard too and loves a good party.
"This is a very difficult city to get bored in," he says. "There's a lot to do, but it's more than that. It just feels right. It fits."
When he's in the office and not meeting clients, he prefers to dress casually - the chameleon again.
"I just work better when I'm in my casual clothes," he says. "Obviously when I'm in front of a client, it's different. Image is important." He travels to work in jeans and a t-shirt, with a rucksack on his back. It was probably the rucksack that led to him being stopped and searched at St Paul's underground station shortly after the July bombings last year.
"It was very polite, very civil and I was happy to help," he says. "I'm sure I fit a certain profile. If I was in their shoes, I'd stop me too. Why take the risk? I was comforted by it more than anything else. A lot of people would argue about civil liberties, but those who blew themselves up didn't think about civil liberties."
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