Gavin Wilson

CEO at DAI Capital

Speaker

Gavin Wilson leads DAI Capital, the investment banking and asset management arm of DAI. Gavin brings to DAI a wealth of experience at the very highest levels of the development finance, emerging markets, and investing arenas, with a distinguished record of service that spans the public and private sectors.

Gavin worked for 13 years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, including as a Managing Director in the firm’s Investment Banking Division in London. He co-headed Goldman’s EMEA Industrials Group and was previously head of the firm’s New Markets investment banking execution team, focused on the emerging markets of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. His transaction experience covered principal investing, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, privatizations, joint ventures, structured finance, corporate restructuring, and debt, equity, and hybrid issuance.

On both sides of his tenure at Goldman, Gavin worked for the World Bank Group for a total of 16 years, including as the founding CEO of IFC Asset Management Company (AMC) from 2009 to 2017.

Gavin led the development and growth of AMC, an International Finance Corporation subsidiary that established an innovative business model for multilateral development finance. Operating as a private equity fund manager, AMC mobilized and actively managed commercial capital for profitable investment, while also achieving strong development impact. Under his leadership, AMC raised more than US$10 billion in capital across 13 funds—including private equity, infrastructure, private credit, and fund-of-fund products—and made more than 100 investments in companies and funds covering 69 emerging and frontier markets.

Gavin has also served as a Commissioner on the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, as a member of the Steering Group for the Redesigning Development Finance Initiative, and as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Sustainable Development.

Earlier in his career, Gavin worked for McKinsey & Company and as a special advisor at the Bank of England.

Gavin holds a BA in philosophy, politics, and economics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.