Egon Durban, one of the leading technology investors in the golden world of private equity, he is at the center of a resurgence of operations in the sector.
When Elon Musk decided to bet on Twitterone of his first calls was to Egon Durban, an old friend who is on the board of the social media company. Durban is also a director of VMware, which is being acquired by chipmaker Broadcom Inc. in one of the biggest deals in the history of a technology company.
Egon Durban’s close connections to billionaires ranging from Elon Musk to Michael Dell they’ve secured his swift rise at Silver Lake, the investment firm he heads, and given him a ringside seat to the latest string of mega deals.
Total, Silver Lake and major portfolio firms have been involved in more than $120 billion in deals over the past 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Silver Lake has invested during the last year in all kinds of projectsfrom the autonomous car company of Alphabet to the data mining company Splunk. Durban has a long history with Twitter, having helped broker peace talks with an activist investor in 2020 and agreeing to buy a $1 billion stake in the company.
Also He was one of the main architects of the landmark $24 billion leveraged buyout of Dell in 2013the personal computer maker he founded.
Who is Egon Durban?
Durban grew up in Texas and studied finance at Georgetown University before working as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. He joined Silver Lake in 1999 as a founding director and has seen his assets soar to around $90 billion.
In recent years, he has helped Silver Lake move beyond its original focus on technology to transact in adjacent areas such as media and sports.
The company invested in Hollywood talent agency company Endeavor Group Holdings Inc., where Elon Musk was briefly a board member, as well as the owner of the New York Knicks basketball team. He also owns a stake in City Football Group Ltd., which controls professional clubs from Manchester to Melbourne.
He has also made mistakes. Egon Durban worked directly with Elon Musk on his unfortunate plan to delist Tesla in 2018which eventually collapsed and led to a shareholder lawsuit.
And the Silver Lake executive received a rare public rebuke Wednesday when he failed to win enough votes to be re-elected to Twitter’s board at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. The advisory firm Institutional Shareholders Services Inc. had recommended that he not be re-elected to Durban because he sits on so many other boards.
