Andrew Nikou

Andrew Nikou is the founder, Managing Partner and CEO of OpenGate Capital, a global private buyout firm. The firm is focused on the acquisition of lower middle market, non-core divisions of larger companies located around the world. From its offices in Los Angeles, CA, and Paris, France, the firm seeks to acquire change-intensive and underperforming businesses ripe for transformation. To date, the firm has completed more than 30 transactions and has acquired more than $8 billion in gross consolidated revenues. The firm and its founder are best known for their acquisition of TV Guide Magazine in December 2008, and the publication’s turn to profitability in the first quarter of 2010.

Nikou is actively involved with the management of each of the legacy companies his firm invests in including Kem One SAS, Kem One Innovative Vinyls, Benvic, Aluminium France Extrustion, Profialis, NorPaper Avot Vallée, and Pacific Crest Transformers.

Nikou has received recognition for his business achievements. In 2012, Andrew Nikou was a recipient of The M&A Advisor's "Top 40 UNDER 40" Award, for the West Region. In 2010, Nikou was named a Top Dealmaker of 2010 by Mergers & Acquisitions magazine, and was dubbed a “private equity whiz" by international business and private equity publications.

Andrew Nikou was born in 1977 in Vancouver, Canada. His parents left their native Tehran before the Iranian Revolution and relocated to Canada, later moving with Nikou to California when he was four years old. His father, who majored in mathematics at a German university, worked at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Nikou grew up with a passion for trading baseball cards and competing in breakdancing competitions. Nikou graduated from William Howard Taft Charter High School in Woodland Hills, California, where he was active in the Persian Community. Nikou studied finance at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. After graduating, he worked for the Patent and License Exchange, a start-up financed by Softbank Capital.

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