Warburg Pincus Promotes Jeffrey Perlman to CEO as Chip Kaye Takes Co-Chair Role

Jeffrey Perlman, the former head of Asia Pacific real estate and current president at Warburg Pincus, has been promoted to chief executive of the US private equity giant.

Perlman is succeeding CEO Chip Kaye, who will shift to a co-chairman role alongside Timothy Geithner, Manhattan-based Warburg Pincus said Wednesday in a release. The changes take effect on 2 September.

Perlman began his career at Warburg Pincus in 2006 and joined the executive management team in 2018. The firm credits him with significantly expanding the franchise in Asia, including opening the Singapore office in 2016, overseeing Southeast Asian private equity activities and building out the real estate business across APAC.

The announcement comes one year after Warburg Pincus named Perlman as president to succeed Geithner, the former US Treasury secretary, who ascended to the chairman role at that time.

“Tim and I are pleased at how smoothly the transition has gone over the past year, and we are looking forward to Warburg Pincus’s next chapter under Jeff’s leadership,” Kaye said. “With Jeff’s deep commitment to our firm’s values, culture, and history combined with the great depth of talent across the globe, the firm is well positioned to continue to deliver for our investors against a more complicated geopolitical backdrop.”

ESR Chairmanship

The 41-year-old Perlman has served as chairman of Asia-focused real estate fund manager ESR, in which Warburg Pincus holds a 14.04 percent stake, since 2019. In May, the Hong Kong-listed industrial specialist received a preliminary buyout proposal from a Starwood Capital-led consortium.

Kaye, 60, joined Warburg Pincus in 1986 and has served as CEO for over two decades, building the firm into a global powerhouse with more than $83 billion in assets under management.

Kaye led Warburg’s entry into Asia in 1994 as the firm established early offices in China and India. During his tenure as CEO, Warburg-managed private equity funds have generated over $100 billion in profits, according to the firm.

“I am deeply honoured to succeed Chip as CEO and am excited by the tremendous set of opportunities ahead of us,” Perlman said. “Chip helped build and steward Warburg Pincus’s one firm model and has fostered collaboration and shared success across the firm, truly defining our culture. We owe him a deep debt of gratitude.”

Third-Generation Leader

Perlman’s elevation to CEO represents only the third generation of leadership for Warburg Pincus since its 1966 founding by investment bankers Eric Warburg and Lionel Pincus.

The firm has invested more than $117 billion in over 1,000 companies worldwide across its private equity, real estate and capital solutions strategies.

In Asia, Warburg Pincus has worked with entrepreneurs to co-found some of the region’s most successful startups, including ESR, DNE and data centre operator Princeton Digital Group. In addition to his ESR duties, Perlman serves on the boards of PDG, Vietnam’s BW Industrial Development and MoMo, and Singapore-based self-storage operator StorHub.