Canadian financier Charles Field-Marsham, who founded Kenya’s top investment bank, exits in management buyout

Charles Field-Marsham, the Canadian investment banker who helped shape Kenya’s modern capital markets, has sold Kestrel Capital East Africa to a management-backed investor group, closing a chapter that began when he arrived in Nairobi in the 1990s to build a brokerage from scratch.

The buyer, Theo Capital Holdings, is a consortium of local investors that includes Kestrel Chief Executive Francis Mwangi. Terms weren’t disclosed. The deal, unveiled as Kestrel marked its 30th anniversary, keeps day-to-day leadership in place while shifting ownership from Field-Marsham to a Kenya-led vehicle.

Field-Marsham lived in Kenya from 1993 to 2003, founded Kestrel in the mid-1990s and spent the next three decades turning it into one of the market’s most-watched research and execution houses. The transaction formalizes what had already been true for years: management has been running the franchise; now it owns it.

From pioneer to handover

Kestrel’s board and management framed the buyout as a continuity plan that preserves the firm’s client relationships and research culture. Local analysts described it as a landmark in Kenya’s markets, given the rarity of pure management buyouts in the brokerage and investment-banking space.

Field-Marsham’s exit also reflects a broader shift as homegrown capital pools deepen and senior dealmakers who came to Kenya in the liberalization wave of the 1990s hand over to domestic investors. The firm’s leadership says it will use the new structure to push product breadth and regional distribution while staying anchored in Nairobi.

A career built in Nairobi

The Canadian dealmaker’s résumé is closely tied to Kenya. He launched Kestrel after moving to Nairobi as a young banker and later expanded into other East African businesses. He married Rita Biwott—daughter of the late cabinet minister Nicholas Biwott—further cementing links to the country’s business and political networks.

Kestrel, meanwhile, earned a reputation for fundamental research and for pushing market plumbing forward, including early trades on the Nairobi Securities Exchange’s Unquoted Securities Platform. Those nuts-and-bolts contributions rarely grab headlines, but they helped professionalize coverage of listed names and deepen buy-side engagement with Kenyan equities.

What the new owners inherit

Theo Capital inherits a franchise with hard-won credibility—and a tougher operating backdrop. Equity turnover in Nairobi has lagged global peers, and research monetization across frontier markets is more complex than it was a decade ago. Management argues the MBO gives it latitude to invest through the cycle, with a focus on execution quality for local institutions and cross-border investors.