Middle East Investment Summit - list of speakers 

PhD in “Strategies of Islamic Private Equity Funds of Funds for the development of Arab Countries”, from Paris Dauphine University, 2009, postgraduate of International Business Law from the Sorbonne, he is lecturer of Islamic Finance strategies in Egypt and France, chaired and moderated several conferences treating the global Islamic Finance...

Faisal has been working at SGRF for the past three years, where he is responsible for direct investments in private equity. He started his career as a bank internal auditor specialising in corporate credit, and then moved to financial controlling for a start-up mobile operator that won the 2nd GSM license in Oman, before joining an IT services...

Razi Amin is a Senior Adviser to the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Washington, DC. He was recruited in 2010 by the CEO, whom Razi had advised previously on the recapitalization of the Swedish banking system. At IFC, Razi advises the Chief Investment Officer for alternative investments and fixed income products in the emerging...

Muhammad Owais Ansari is the Chief Actuary of FWU Global Takaful Solutions and is an expert in Takaful related issues. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) and has significant experience of working for and advising Takaful Companies, Conventional Insurers and Regulatory authorities in the Middle East & UK.

Henry Azzam is the Chairman for Deutsche Bank for the Middle East & North Africa region, and was until September 30, 2010 Deutsche Bank’s Chief Executive Officer for the MENA region. Before joining Deutsche Bank on May 1, 2007, Dr. Azzam was Chief Executive Officer of Amwal Invest, an investment bank he founded in May 2005 and has guided it...

Jacques Bernard is consulting with prime financial institutions in the GCC having set-up his private consulting firm since June of 2010 in Dubai. Previously Jacques was appointed Chief Investment Officer at National Bonds Corporation in April 2008 to manage all investments and risk associated. Jacques, with the support of NBC’s prominent...

Jose Maria Carbajo is a Managing Director of ETS, a position he has held since 2003. Previously, Mr. Carbajo worked in Investment product development at Deutsche Bank. He has strong experience in the product development, asset allocation and portfolio management business, especially developing and managing quantitative trading and asset allocation ...

Javier is the head of business development at TechRules, with more than 20 years financial experience helping institutions with both products and technology solutions, and now with an emphasis on wealth management projects for private banks and family offices. His present position Javier spends most of his time helping private banking...

Askari has over 20 years financial markets experience, with an emphasis on alternative investments. Prior to FourWinds, Askari managed a private client portfolio comprising traditional and alternative investments at Cantab Capital Management. He helped set up and co-manage the Analytical Proprietary Trading Group at UBS in New York, developing...

Paddy Dowdall is an Investment Manager for Merseyside Pension Fund This role covers a wide range of investment issues including, the management of relationships with external Fund Managers and reporting of investment performance to Members. A key focus for Paddy over the last few years has been the formulation and implementation of strategy on...

Mr. Alan Durrant joined the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) in September 2009 as Chief Investment Officer of the Asset Management Group (AMG). Before joining AMG, he served as the head of asset management Gulf Finance House in Baharain, where he served at that role for two years. Since joining AMG, Mr. Mr. Durrant successfully oversaw the...

Rob Farrow currently serves as Corporate Treasurer for Alghanim Industries. Based in Kuwait, he is responsible for Alghanim’s global Treasury activities. Rob is a full member of the UK Association of Corporate Treasurers, having started his Treasury career in 1985 with Ford Credit. After a spell as Treasurer of Ford Credit plc he became the...

Mr. Florian Fenner is Chief Investment Officer for UFG Asset Management, one of Russia’s oldest and largest investment groups (originally founded 1994, AUM $1.3bn). He joined the firm as Managing Partner in July 2002, and runs UFG’s five Russian region-focused debt and equity hedge fund strategies as well as the 16-year track record Pyotr Stolypin ...

Simon Gray joined the DFSA in 2006 as Director, Supervision covering asset management, private banking and funds. His remit includes the supervision of Islamic Financial Institutions as well as conventional Firms offering Islamic Windows. Simon has spent much of his working life in the private sector with senior roles including Baring Asset...

Sigmund is a Strategy, M&A and Private Equity professional; in the last 10 years he has advised or managed investments for aggregated US$ 10b and at all stages of the M&A life cycle, in sectors as varied as Telecoms, Energy, Retail, Wholesale, Manufacturing, in Western and Eastern Europe, in the Middle East and in Africa. Prior to founding McLA...

Mr. Laurent Hopman is the founding partner of 21North Advisors, an independent multi-family-office based in Bahrain. 21North Advisors provides institutional quality, bespoke, non-GCC portfolio management services for ultra-high-net-worth families, with client fees as its only revenue stream. Mr. Laurent Hopman was formerly part of the Investment...

Shahid Ikram is Head of Sovereign and Absolute Returns for Aviva Investors in London. He has spent over twenty one years at the company having joined in 1990, progressing from gilt fund manager to head up the firm’s Global Sovereign Debt and Absolute Return capabilities. In 2009, Shahid was appointed Deputy CIO for Fixed Income in...

A French national. After a Master of Finance at ISEFI, Ecole Supérieure de Commerce, Pierre-Emmanuel held various positions with major investment banks in London, such as Credit Suisse First Boston, Bank of America and Commerzbank. Subsequently he was head of trading at Langlade Capital Management and head shares, futures and options management at ...

Amaury holds a PhD from MIT in Engineering and Applied Mathematics and an MSc and BSc from PUC Rio. Prior to Vision Brazil Investments, his professional experience included: (1) Founding Partner and CIO of Capitania Asset & Risk Management; (2) Managing Director, Head Trader, and Treasurer for Bank of America in Brazil; (3) Head of Brazilian FX...

Mishal Kanoo is Deputy Chairman of The Kanoo Group, one of the largest family owned group of companies in the Middle East. The Kanoo Group has diversified interests including shipping, travel, machinery, logistics, oil & gas, power, and chemicals. Mishal is the 4th generation to run the vast organisation. Today, he sits on the boards of over 15...

Jarmo Kotilaine joined the National Commercial Bank (NCB) of Saudi Arabia as its Chief Economist in November 2010. Prior to that, since 2008, he had served as Chief Economist of NCB Capital, the investment arm of the NCB Group. Dr Kotilaine has built a high profile amongst the GCC business community and with the regional and international media. ...

Mark Lemmon is the Chief Executive Officer of the MENA Infrastructure Fund. MENA Infrastructure Fund was established in September 2007 and to date has made investments in a container port operation in Egypt and in a power plant company (an IPP) in Oman. Mark was previously Deputy Chief Executive of HSBC’s global Project and Export finance...

Mr. Magnoli Bocchi is Chief Economist, member of the Management Team and the Investment Committee at the Kuwait China Investment Company (KCIC). Prior to joining KCIC, Mr. Magnoli Bocchi was with the World Bank as a Senior Economist. He also was a Research Associate with Harvard University and an economist with the Inter-American Development...

Raghu is the head of research at Kuwait Financial Center (Markaz), a leading asset management company based in Kuwait with AUM exceeding $3b. He leads the strategic research initiative of Markaz with specific focus on asset allocation, capital market, quantitative finance, and real estate. Prior to this assignment, he was involved with a wealth...

Ibrahim Mardam-Bey is an entrepreneur, financier and business developer with extensive international experience. Currently the CEO of Merchant-Edge a merchant investment company, he was also the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Siraj Capital. He possesses a broad range of unique experiences and track record in the international...

Adil Marghub is the Manager of Infrastructure & Energy in the MENA Region for the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Adil has extensive experience in infrastructure investments (debt, equity, mezzanine) and advisory transactions in emerging markets. He has diverse geographical exposure with transaction experience in Latin America, Middle...

Is the Managing Director and Head of MENA Investments at Rashed Al-Rashed Group; one of the large conglomerates in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Eyad has more than 17 years of experience in the investment and finance field in the MENA region. Eyad is responsible for the Group’s investments in the MENA region, which fall under direct...

Michel Meert is senior investment consultant and has more than 20 years experience in asset management. His role is to advise a wide range of institutional clients in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, including foundations, sovereign wealth funds, private wealth organisations and insurance companies, on the design and implementation of...

Mark Mobius, Ph.D., executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group, currently directs analysts based in Templeton’s 17 emerging markets offices and manages the emerging markets portfolios. Dr. Mobius has spent more than 40 years working in emerging markets all over the world. He joined Franklin Templeton Investments in 1987 as president...

Dr Mohammad Farooq is the Head of Centre for Islamic Finance at BIBF. He commenced in his role at BIBF in late 2010. Before joining BIBF, he has been the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Business and Financial Sciences at Royal University for Women in Bahrain. He also taught Islamic finance courses there. Prior to that, he had spent 20 years in the...

Mr. Padovani joined FMIM in October 2009 and is responsible for the risk management framework. This includes analyzing, measuring and monitoring market, credit and operational risks arising from the investment of the assets by the company and also providing broad risk governance advice to management, and portfolio managers. Mr. Padovani began...

A leading real estate industry figure, Mr. Ramadan is the founder and Chairman of Tharaa Holding, Hadara Real Estate Development, RichVille Properties where he was involved in developing and marketing projects worth billions of Dirhams. Tariq Ramadan’s professional experience includes working as Group General Manager at Bonyan International...

Constantin Salameh is the Chief Executive Officer of Abdulla Al Masaood & Sons , a diversified Abu-Dhabi-based private group with operating companies in the automotive & motor sports, hospitality & leisure , industrial, services and construction sectors. He has 25 years of senior cross-functional management experience with multinational companies ...

Dr. Fabio Scacciavillani is the Chief Economist of the Oman Investment Fund, a Sovereign Fund in charge of the inter-generational transfer of Oman’s energy commodities revenues. In this role, he develops forecasts, conducts analyses on global economic trends, evaluates returns on asset classes, and participates in key decisions as member of the...

Mailesh is a Partner of Mercer and Head of Investment Consulting – Middle East and Africa. He is a member of Mercer’s global group of investment consultants focused on advising sovereign funds. After graduating from the London School of Economics, Mailesh has spent over 25 years in the asset management field spanning money management and...

Gurjit Singh is the Chief Operating Officer of Sorouh Real Estate PJSC in Abu Dhabi and oversees the property development operations of the company. Gurjit has been internationally active in the real estate industry for more than 25 years and has worked with the Sime Darby Group in Malaysia and the Sentosa Leisure Group in Singapore where was ...

Dr. Azeemuddin Subhani currently functions as a Canadian Independent Financial Shari‘ah Advisor, with several professional affiliations, Shari’ah-compliance consulting assignments (frontier Alt), speaking engagements at international Islamic Finance conferences (Toronto 2007, IIR Dubai 2008, and Harvard 2008) and visiting teaching positions in...

Prior to joining the Rasmala Group in 2003, Mr. Swats spent 17 years with Citigroup Asset Management. At Citigroup London, Mr. Swats served as Head of European Private Bank Asset Management and Senior Investment Officer of Private Client global equity and balanced portfolios. He was a member of the Global Asset Allocation Committee and Head of...

Deon Vernooy has played a key role in setting up what is now the asset management arm of Emirates NBD and is responsible for the manufacturing and management of the investment products on the platform of the asset management business. From its inception in 2004, he has been responsible for building and expanding the business, transforming the unit ...

Mr. Wages is Head of Private Equity at National Holding, a private investment firm based in Abu Dhabi. Overseeing the group’s private equity activities, Mr. Wages has over 20 years of private equity experience in a variety of industry sectors across North America, Europe and the MENA region. Previously, Mr. Wages served as the managing director...