Lumière Capital Partners is led by seven co-founding Managing Partners whose combined experience spans private banking, institutional asset management, venture capital, sovereign wealth fund advisory, and cross-border M&A execution across the Middle East, Europe, and North America.
This is not an advisory team — it is an execution team with deep, direct relationships at the decision-making level across every geography we operate in. Their expertise is augmented by the on-the-ground capabilities of our strategic partner Titan Global in Saudi Arabia.
Mark Olson
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
United Kingdom & UAE
25+ years in private banking and alternative investments. Former senior roles at Morgan Stanley, RBS, ABN Amro, and KPMG. Leads global deal execution and private credit structuring. Credentials: CFA, CPA. Mark's institutional pedigree ensures that every transaction Lumière touches meets the documentation and governance standards expected by the world's most demanding capital allocators.
Donté Smith
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Luxembourg, USA & UAE
Donté is a finance-trained operator and capital formation specialist with over 16 years of experience building, scaling, and financing high-growth enterprises across multiple continents. His career began in structured finance at Bank of America, where he managed distressed asset portfolios during the 2008 financial crisis, followed by a strategic role at the Tata Group supporting the Jaguar Land Rover acquisition. From there, he moved into operating leadership — serving as CFO, EVP of Finance, CEO, and President across a series of enterprises spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, India, and Australia. Across these engagements, Donté has scaled businesses from early-stage to over $1B in revenue, negotiated and structured more than $2B in capital transactions, co-founded a major manufacturing facility, and managed complex licensing, joint venture, and distribution agreements across multiple jurisdictions. Today, he leads Lumière Capital Partners, a cross-border capital formation and institutional underwriting platform operating across nine jurisdictions through entities in Luxembourg and Delaware.
Hussain Al-Khamees
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Saudi Arabia & Bahrain
Hussain is a senior business leader and Managing Partner with over 20 years of international experience across commodities, global market expansion, and strategic investment in Saudi Arabia, the GCC, and international markets. He has extensive worldwide experience in commodities trading, supported by a strong global network of producers, traders, investors, and institutional partners. Hussain specialises in startups and growth-stage businesses, advising on funding, scaling, and international expansion, and structuring high-value cross-border opportunities. Working closely with family offices, international investors, and strategic partners, he helps align capital with high-growth ventures and supports companies entering and expanding within the Saudi market. As Managing Partner, he provides strategic leadership, governance oversight, and execution driven direction, enabling sustainable growth across multiple sectors.
Robert Greiss
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Qatar & UAE
Former Deloitte Private Deal Origination Lead with direct management of $100M+ portfolios in Qatar. Connects private capital with transformation opportunities across the GCC's most sophisticated family enterprise ecosystem. Specializes in family enterprise advisory, generational transition structuring, and private wealth mobilization at the institutional level.
Samar Abuwarda
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Africa
Samar commenced her banking and investment experience in 2003. Throughout her experience, she has conducted several transactions inside Egyptian and International markets with several local and international institutions. She has dealt with conventional and Islamic clients.
Samar is well experienced in both commercial and investment banking. The commercial banking pertained to procuring loans and facilities for large, medium and small enterprises. On the other hand, investment banking experience pertained to project finance, conventional and Islamic syndicated loans, financial advisory, risk management, procuring funding for investment companies, oil and gas finance with derivative option, mergers & acquisitions and private equity.
Working as banking and investment advisor, Samar handled projects related to enhancing trade and investments between African countries. In addition, Samar conducted financial engineering for distressed companies beside participating in loans restructuring negotiations with the dealing banks.
As a result of her experience, she is highly skilled in applying door-to-door service. This is achieved by preparing the client's full package. This includes financial statements analysis, financial modelling and cash flows analysis along with marketing the designated deal to other banks and / or investors.
Since 2020, Samar published sixteen articles with Islamic Finance News "IFN" Journal and two articles with Africa Global Funds Magazine. The articles' theme tackled different topics such as syndications, leasing, sovereign wealth funds, artificial intelligence, the economic outlook for some Asian countries and others.
Samar holds a master degree in finance and investment from Nottingham Business School, University of Nottingham -UK. The master's degree and dissertation were achieved with a distinction award. The topic of the master's dissertation related to utilizing stochastic dominance techniques in portfolio optimization, derivatives and cross hedging.
David Haukaas
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
North America & Luxembourg
20+ years in institutional investment management at ADIA and ColumbiaThreadneedle, leading multi-billion-dollar profit optimization, mergers, and restructurings. Now specializes in advisement and deal origination across critical emerging sectors including UAS/AAM (Unmanned Aerial Systems/Advanced Air Mobility), AgTech, Energy Transition, Data Centers/Mining Infrastructure, and Fintech.
Maintains a global, high-impact network spanning institutional investors, corporate decision- makers, and political leaders. David's deep expertise in next-generation infrastructure and technology sectors positions Lumière at the forefront of the most transformative investment themes shaping the global economy.
Strategic Family Office Advisor
Strategic Family Office Advisor
Luxembourg
A seasoned practitioner with over 25 years of dedicated family office advisory experience across
Europe, the GCC, and Asia. Former Managing Director at a leading Luxembourg multi-family office, with direct oversight of multi- generational wealth preservation mandates exceeding €3B AUM.
Provides Lumière with institutional-grade guidance on family office governance frameworks, succession planning, and bespoke co-investment structuring — ensuring every client engagement is calibrated to the long-term interests and values of the families we serve.
Credentials: LLM (International Finance), STEP Member.