'I don't believe in luck or chance. Success comes when you get the fundamentals right. This is no accident.' Fifteen years after Investcorp was set up to invest Arab financial surpluses in the markets of the West, such aphorisms from its chief executive and founder Nemir Kirdar are not to be taken lightly. Kirdar himself takes nothing lightly. For 18 months, he has been trying to learn golf, but is yet to tread on a green. 'I'm not going to do that until I have mastered the basics,' he says. He means it.

The bank founded by Kirdar in 1982 mastered the basics some time ago and many have benefited from its enviable track record of buying, restructuring and then profitably selling underperforming businesses. Yet, Investcorp is still something of an outsider: the newcomer that has broken the Arab banking mould to become a major player in the toughest investment banking market in the world - the US. It may have been involved in some of the highest-profile leveraged buy-outs of the 1980s and 1990s, but Investcorp is still regarded by some as the new kid on the block.

Prime mover

This summer, Kirdar and his team of 200 people in London, New York and Bahrain have once again had the opportunity to enjoy changing attitudes. In early July they completed the sale of Prime Service, one of America's largest rental equipment companies. The firm was bought by Investcorp and its clients for $300 million. Less than two years later, Investcorp announced an initial public offering of 26 per cent of the company at a price that valued Prime as a whole at almost $660 million. After this offering, Atlas Copco approached Investcorp about buying all of the remaining stake. In June, Atlas made a cash tender at a price of $32 a share, valuing the company at almost $900 million. On 8 July, the deal was completed.

The Prime transaction counters any suggestion that the Gucci buy-out and sale, completed in April 1996, was a one deal wonder. That deal produced a profit for Investcorp and its clients of about $1,000 million. Since the public offering of Investcorp's final stake in the firm, Gucci shares have appreciated substantially, gaining the bank further credit in the American financial community. Even its competitors were forced to acknowledge that Investcorp had come of age on Wall Street.

The glamour of the Gucci name make it the bank's best known deal, not least because of the hair-raising shenanigans in the Gucci family before and after Investcorp took a 50 per cent stake in the Florence-based luxury goods manufacturer in 1988. It will be talked about by investment bankers for decades to come, but Kirdar prefers to say little about it.

It was certainly profitable, in the end. But it took eight years for Investcorp and its clients to exit from the deal, more than twice the preferred time scale. At times, managing Gucci tested Investcorp to the limits. The Prime deal - completed in less than three years; highly-rewarding to Investcorp, its clients and the company's senior management; and exited smoothly with a sale to a high-quality purchaser - is much closer to Investcorp's idea of a perfect transaction.

Attention will now shift to the way that Investcorp handles its £476 million ($760 million) acquisition of Welcome Break, the largest deal yet made in Western Europe. The amount paid was above the $300 million- 500 million band favoured by the bank. It also took Investcorp into the unfamiliar UK motorway services sector.

Some critics said Investcorp paid too much for the company, but Kirdar has little patience for this view. 'We never look at what other people say about prices,' he says. 'I don't care what the price is. My question is: what is the potential for unlocking the value in the asset we are buying? Welcome Break is very-well positioned. There is a lot of potential for it to be upgraded.'

The keys to successful investment banking are easy to define but hard to make. First, there has to be the ability to identify good deals. There has to be the capacity to raise sufficient money at the right price to finance transactions. The investment bank must introduce changes within the acquired company to release the locked-in value without destabilising it or losing key staff. Finally, it has to be able to sell on its investment at the right price, at the right time.

Kirdar leaves nothing to chance. As many as 200 potential deals are examined each year. About three or four acquisitions will be completed and a matching number of sales executed. But what matters is not the number or type of deals, but the quality of the analysis that goes into them before the purchase process even begins. More precisely, as every management guru will attest, that means having the right people on the team and getting the best out of them.

For Kirdar, this is not a slogan. It occupies the majority of his time and culminates in an appraisal process that is unique to Investcorp. Every October, each of Investcorp's 18 top managers are asked to submit a detailed report on what they have done and what they would like to do.

They are also encouraged to express criticisms of the performance of the bank and their colleagues, including Kirdar. He then carefully reads what can be almost 1,000 pages of reports from his staff. In mid-January, when the previous year's financial statements have been compiled, all 18 with Kirdar go off-site to an hotel and spend two weeks focusing on what is contained in the reports.

It is an intimate process. Says Kirdar: 'I will go one-on-one with each one of them. There are no time limits and no consequences for what is said. We sit together until we agree about what we are going to do in the year to come.' The result is an appraisal process for top managers, a business plan for their teams and a strategy for Investcorp as a whole.

The priority now, apart from maintaining the pace of deal making in the US, is developing Investcorp's reputation in Western Europe. 'I want this company to be known for its integrity, excellence, professionalism and creativity on both sides of the Atlantic,' he says. 'Because this is the way we will be able to distinguish ourselves from our competition. The more we are known on both sides of the Atlantic, the more our brand name will be respected and recognised.'

The strategy is already beginning to express itself. The London team has been strengthened. In April, Investcorp announced it had bought 70 per cent of Helly Hansen, the Norwegian seagear and outdoor clothing manufacturer. Inevitably, more deals will follow.

Kirdar recognises the strategy will be extremely demanding in the fragmented European market. 'It is going to take a long time, but as our name becomes known, we are going to get access to non-auctioned, good deals.'

So the final question is: when will Kirdar stop? Since Investcorp was founded with capital of $50 million, he has seen most of his original colleagues comfortably retired, massively enriched by their time with the bank. The bank itself, which is quoted on the Bahrain Stock Exchange, now has a market capitalisation of almost $300 million. Some analysts believe the returns from the Gucci and Prime deals were so great that the bank could report profits without doing a single transaction for up to two years

So is he indispensable? Kirdar says no. He is developing a bank that will live long after he is gone. Yet, retirement, they say, is as much a challenge as work. Perhaps that is why Kirdar is taking so long perfecting his golf swing and putting technique, skills he has little time to practice at present. The trouble is: will he ever be satisfied with anything other than a hole in one?