Top 50 Emerging Leaders 2022 (in alphabetical order by CVC unit): Suleiman Arabiat, senior investment manager, Elevator Ventures
Suleiman Arabiat joined Elevator Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of Austria-based financial services firm Raiffeisen Bank International, in October 2021 as a senior investment manager.
Before that, Arabiat was a financial technology-focused investment manager at Arab Bank Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of Jordan-headquartered banking group Arab Bank.
Regarding his CVC trajectory, Arabiat said: “In both roles, my main objective is to make the best investments possible. Populate and screen the deal flow pipeline, manage the portfolio of investments, and handle the strategic relationship with the corporate, which typically revolves around integrating the solutions of our portfolio companies into the corporate’s offering.
“My current role also includes managing the fund of funds segment that Elevator Ventures is launching just now.
“In total, I have been in CVC for almost four years, three years prior to that was in a seed-stage VC fund and accelerator called Oasis500. At Arab Bank Ventures, I assisted in starting it from scratch, training new-to-VC associates, both of which became senior managers in VC, as well as build all the investment and integration processes and activities.”
Arabiat was attracted to CVC because of the possibility of supercharging the value beyond the money that VCs usually bring, as a result of having the corporate eager to integrate the portfolio companies’ solutions.
While working for CVCs, he has been involved in investing in eight fintech companies including open banking payment protocol developer Token, automated investment service Nord.Investments and global payments network Veem.
