BDO East Africa, member of BDO International, and Creed Capital, a Beirut-based corporate finance advisory firm, have joined forces to provide financial services between the MENA region and East Africa.

The firms have signed a strategic joint venture agreement leading to the creation of Creed East Africa.

The new venture will operate out of two regional head offices based in Mauritius and Beirut and will focus on providing financial and business advisory services to customers interacting between both regions, in the areas of corporate development, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, regional partners’ identification and capital placement transactions.

Alexandre Ziad Karkour, Founder and CEO of Creed Capital, said: “We are confident that by coupling our established cross-regional expertise with BDO’s regional presence.”

“We would succeed in delivering highly innovative business advisory solutions to our existing clients in the MENA region, as well as to an expanding number of corporations, SMEs, investors and entrepreneurs, in both regions,” he added.

Creed Capital is a strategic consulting, corporate finance and M&A advisory firm with presence in Beirut, Paris and London, and a regional access across the EMEA.

Beyond the MENA region, Creed Capital has been actively involved in Sub Saharan Africa since 2007.

The firm currently manages exclusive mandates in over 12 countries across East Africa and West Africa.

BDO is an international network of public accounting, tax and advisory firms, which perform professional services under the name of BDO.

BDO East Africa, was admitted to the BDO network in 2009 and currently provides advisory services through its firms in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

The diversified services of BDO in the region coupled with the cross regional business advisory expertise of Creed Capital, will allow the new company to offer its extended market base, a vast range of expertise and industry knowledge adopting the best practice techniques across the complete spectrum of business advisory lines.

Afsar Ebrahim, Deputy Group Managing Partner of BDO Mauritius, commented: “BDO has a reputation for delivering high quality client service in every territory in which it is represented. We are proud to join forces with this team of competent professionals to strengthen our footprint across the East African market.”