The Pioneers: Financial Times Interview With Robert Koenigsberger

A financier who has pioneered investment in private companies in emerging markets, Robert Koenigsberger has funded landmark environmental lawsuits on a historic scale.

"I was in emerging markets before they emerged," jokes Robert Koenigsberger. "It was the pioneer days, the mid to late 1980s, with a bunch of countries in default, and banks that were holding defaulted assets. It was hardly an asset class."

The financier has specialised in using private capital investment to help transform emerging economies internationally, largely in South and Central America. "Sometimes I've had to pinch myself, sitting in a meeting with a finance minister talking about debt and restructuring," he says, "because my undergraduate and graduate theses were on the historical origins and implications of the Latin American debt crisis."