Getting involved in college
Shariff began preparing intellectually for a career in the financial sector at Amherst, where he was a double major in chemistry and economics. Outside the classroom, he was a member of the rugby team and was active in the Asian Students Association. In addition, he served on the presidential committee on South Africa, a student-faculty committee appointed by former president Peter Pouncey. The committee evaluated Amherst's policy of investing its endowment in companies that did business in South Africa.
"As a result of our work, I learned really that as an educational institution, [Amherst] could do a lot to encourage development in countries that were developing," said Shariff. "We attempted to sponsor a program that allowed an exchange program between Amherst and a local educational institution in South Africa."
Shariff's Amherst education has provided him with a liberalism that has framed his way of thinking and allowed him to develop confidence in how he approaches problems. The Amherst community has also given him the support necessary to overcome the obstacles of being a Muslim man in America building a business in the financial services sector.
"I feel very fortunate to have received a letter, which I still have, that allowed me to become part of that community," he said.
An ambitious thesis
While at Amherst, Shariff formed a close relationship with professor of economics Geoffrey Woglom, who served as Shariff's thesis advisor his senior year. Woglom called Shariff "a very thoughtful student with a good sense of humor and a high lilting voice that I remember to this day."
Shariff's thesis looked at how programs at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank affected those countries to which they lent money. It was "a very ambitious thesis on the role of the International Monetary Fund in affecting the development of poor countries," recalled Woglom.
Shariff discussed his thesis with fondness. "My thesis was an incredibly interesting topic and drew heavily from my background in science," he said. "I basically attempted to measure things accurately without sample selection bias. The metrics, the pure before-and-after studies done [by the IMF and the World Bank], were clearly biased, because other things could be happening at the same time. So, I built a model that said conditional lending would be best: If you lent a country some money, perhaps you should lend it in increments, provided you watch and measure the targets you are attempting to effect."
Shariff's thesis earned him the Economics Prize for the best thesis in the department. With Woglom's encouragement, Shariff sent his thesis to both the IMF and the World Bank. By the time he graduated, the World Bank had purchased the right to use the model developed in his thesis as part of the 1989 Report on Adjustment Lending, a seminal study on lending and development.
Upon graduation, Shariff went to the World Bank to refine his thesis and test it with live data under the guidance of development macroeconomists, including Stanley Fischer. At the time, Fischer served as Vice President, Development Economics and Chief Economist at the World Bank and later became First Deputy Managing Director at the IMF.
Lehman Bros. opens doors
Shariff then spent nine years at Lehman Brothers. He began his career in 1992 in the firm's global utilities practice. He spent eight years as an investment banker in that practice and one year as a senior vice president in the firm's mergers and acquisitions (M&A) practice, with a focus on cross-border electricity and energy transactions. He was responsible for coverage of U.S. and European utilities' activities in Latin America and Asia.
In his second year at Lehman Brothers, Shariff visited India for the first time as part of the firm's efforts to establish a presence in India. This experience was an emotional one for him. "My family had left the [Indian] subcontinent for Africa in the 1910s. My grandfather was born in Africa, so, for my family, the return was ceremonial of sorts," said Shariff. However, it was also an important professional and intellectual visit. "I knew then that whatever I had learned, I would have an opportunity to apply it in that part of the world with a very clear sense of purpose."
Divyata Ashiya '90 worked for three years with Shariff on Lehman Brothers' effort in India. "[Though] Karim had never been to the country, he embraced the experience, the newness of it and the challenges that were so clear, and I saw in him an excitement and a commitment to that country's development," she said. "Even then, I knew he would go back there and do something substantial for that part of the world, leveraging his contacts and his skill set."
Birth of Marco Polo Partners
Shariff left Lehman Brothers in 2001 to go into collaboration with a group of investment bankers with whom he had worked closely. They founded Marco Polo Partners, an independent boutique investment banking firm with an international focus.
Marco Polo consists of three businesses: a trading platform for trading emerging markets securities, a pure cross-border advisory M&A business and a principal fund-management business that invests in companies that operate across countries such as India and the U.S.
Currently, Shariff splits most of his time between India and the U.S., attempting to establish connections between the very different economies of the two nations. Right now Shariff is advising several large Indian pharmaceutical companies with global aspirations, specifically acquisition efforts in the U.S.
"I am particularly keen on doing work in the pharmaceutical sector, because the healthcare sector in the United States is under substantial pressure, and I believe you can do more for less over there," said Shariff. "[Marco Polo's] focus is not so much outsourcing, [which] has been extendedly debated in the U.S. press, but more about resourcing. In a global world where capital is sourced everywhere and technology is replaceable, doesn't it make sense to build some component of labor in India and grow it there?"