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Samena, who has raised $200 million for its debut $350 million Special Situations Fund, has added five people.

Samena Capital, an investment management group focusing on principal investments on the Subcontinent, Asia, Middle East and North Africa has added five people to its investment team. The firm has just raised $200 million for its debut $350 million Samena Special Situations Fund. Atul Punj of Punj Lloyd is one of the founding shareholder of Samena Capital.

The new members include Swaroop Patel, who has 15 years of experience in the Asian credit markets, underwriting, structuring and leading new issue transactions. He has worked with Bank of America and ABN AMRO before.

Robert Clements, who founded the hedge fund GEAM in 2005, after spending more than 6 years with Hermes Pension Fund (London)as head of emerging markets will also be joining the team. Also in the team are Celia Farnon and Philip Young, who are veterans from the Japanese markets. Lien Ber Luen, another old Asia hand, will be joining them from Credit Suisse's Global  Proprietary Trading business from Hong Kong.

"We are already working on a number of potential transactions, and leveraging both the local market knowledge of our founding shareholders and the financial acumen of our expanded
investment team,"  said Shirish Saraf, President and founder of Samena Capital.