Mohammed Diab

Mohammed Diab (born 1955) is Managing Director and Partner of DEFI Gestion SA, a Lausanne-based private equity and venture capital firm. He trained as a civil engineer at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and later earned an MBA (University of Lausanne / HEC). He is fluent in French, English and Arabic, and has built a network of contacts that is particularly well developed across Switzerland and France.

By his own accounting he has more than three decades of professional experience, including roughly 25 years in private equity, of which the large majority — over 20 years — has been at DEFI Gestion. DEFI Gestion, founded in 1990, has historically managed close to CHF 200 million in assets for both institutional and individual clients. The firm runs two investment teams — one focused on buy-outs and one on venture capital — with roughly two-thirds of capital deployed into buy-outs and one-third into venture capital.

In addition to his executive role at DEFI Gestion, Diab is a partner in the affiliated vehicles DEFI Holding SA, VDCapital and DEFI EuroCap III. He sits (or has sat) on the boards of directors of numerous portfolio and partner companies, including Bartech, Cepasco, Plumettaz, Captain Invest, Emera, DS Care, Park and Reitzel — reflecting a hands-on, board-level style of ownership typical of Swiss private equity.

DEFI Gestion has since wound down its active investing; aggregators list its most recent new investment as Dentalia (September 2018) and one of its latest exits as Cepasco (2023), after a total of dozens of investments and exits over the fund's life.

• Deploys through two distinct strategies — leveraged buy-outs (majority stakes in established companies) and venture capital (minority stakes in growth companies) — historically weighted ~2/3 buy-outs, ~1/3 VC.
• Broad, generalist sector appetite: consumer goods, food, industrial and electronics, transport and logistics, automobiles, leisure, and medical/health and social services (a recurring theme, including dental and life-sciences deals).
• Focus on Swiss and French companies, leveraging Diab's regional relationship network.
• Prefers an active ownership model — Diab and colleagues typically take board seats rather than passive minority positions.
• Invests on behalf of institutional and private clients, i.e., committed fund capital rather than personal angel checks.