WealthBriefing GCC Awards 2017

Ausaf Abbas founded Coombe Advisors to provide strategic, business and financial advice to a network of clients and associated businesses, with a focus on family offices, the wealth management industry and growth-oriented companies. Prior to that, Ausaf had a 25-year career at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, where he held various senior management positions in both investment banking and wealth management. His international experience includes 13 years based in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, and extensive experience managing wealth businesses across the MENA region. His broad range of interests include acting as senior advisor to a real estate investment banking firm and serving as a director of SEO London and Tara Arts, two charities focused on education and Asian theatre.

Laurence is the Regional Director, Client Solutions, EMEA for Asiaciti Trust in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He joined Asiaciti Trust in late 2012 and has over 35 years’ experience in the offshore finance industry. Based in the Middle East for the past 28 years he has particular skills and experience in cross border planning, the establishment of offshore trusts, foundations and company formation. Laurence also acts as a Non-executive Director for GSB Capital Ltd in the Dubai International Financial Centre. Before joining Asiaciti Trust he held a number of senior positions within the Trust & Fiduciary industry and more recently was Head of Fiduciary Services, MENAP for a major international financial institution in the Dubai International Financial Centre. In these roles he successfully serviced clients in the EMEA region with their international needs and works closely with other cross border specialists in the establishment of international trusts and a variety of investment structures. Laurence maintains a comprehensive knowledge of legislative changes and industry trends affecting cross-border issues. He is a full member of STEP Worldwide (Society of Trust and Estate Planners) and was the founding Chairman of STEP Arabia.

Tim Casben is managing partner of the firm’s Dubai office and heads the firm’s corporate practice in Middle East, focusing on corporate structuring, finance, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and private investments. Tim works across a number of sectors including advising family offices on succession structuring and working with the firms IP team advising the new wave of technology related entrepreneurs.  Before moving to Dubai Tim spent 12 years with Lawrence Graham in London principally advising entrepreneurs on IPO’s and M&A transactions. He has worked in the Middle East for over eight years.

Michael Chahine invested his 35 years experience in global finance, corporate and investment management in Nexgen Desert Green Consultancy, a management consultancy focused on family businesses and wealth management solutions, he founded as its CEO in April 2016.

Prior to this he had been general manager at Emirates NBD Private Bank where he headed the private bank.  He has also worked at major global players such as Citibank, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and HSBC with global assignments in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Chicago, New York, London, Geneva and Dubai.

Michael enjoys close strategic relationships with institutions, sovereigns, merchant families and family offices across the MENA Region, and in particular the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Walid is a partner at Deloitte & Touche and heads its private client services practice in the Middle East. He is an international corporate finance lawyer with 35 years’ experience across the five continents. Walid is a leading family business advisor who dedicated the last 20 years to building and serving family offices. He provides legal strategy, dynastic planning and mediation services to elite business families and HNW family business entrepreneurs in the GCC and the MENA region.

Sabila is CEO and Founder of Din Consultants, HQ in London and is an accomplished global business management, marketing and gender specialist. She works with global private banks, elite family offices and entrepreneurs - delivering propositions for growth. She works extensively with World Bank/IFC across EMEA, building financial capacity to drive female SME growth and gender financial inclusion. In addition to her consultancy, she also runs a ‘property private client office’. Prior to setting up her businesses, she held senior roles at ABN AMRO, Asia, JWT HK and was an Associate, IBM e-business fs consultant, EMEA.

Valérie is head of CRM –Asia Pacific based in Singapore and has overall responsibility for business development and the services delivery for the Asia and MENA region. Prior to joining Sanne, Valérie worked for more than fifteen years as a corporate law and funds lawyer at leading law firms in Paris, Luxembourg and Dubai. She has gained considerable experience working with asset managers and family offices with respect to structuring their cross-border investments globally.

Yann is the Managing Partner of M/HQ. He chiefly focuses on private wealth and immigration practice. He has vast experience advising successful individuals and entrepreneurial families with Middle Eastern exposure on implementing inter-generational wealth transfer strategies and structuring their operational assets and global wealth. He is regularly involved in the ongoing management of such structures – as a board member, council member, guardian or protector. Yann is recommended by all of Chambers & Partners Private wealth, Legal Week’s Private Client Global Elite and Who’s who legal private client. He was the Chair of STEP Arabia from 2015 to 2018

Executive vice chairman and chief executive officer, Que Capital Limited. Que Capital is headquartered in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). Manoj has held senior management & leadership positions at several global investment banks: Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital & HSBC. At these institutions, he led the Global South Asian and East African market franchises. He also played a critical role in re-building Barclays’ investment banking and wealth management franchise in the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. He is the founder of “MP Morgan Capital Partners Pte. Ltd.”, a Singapore-based venture capital & consulting firm.

Izabella Szadkowska is a partner in Al Tamimi & Company’s corporate structuring department. Prior to joining Al Tamimi, Izabella trained at Linklaters LLP, practiced at Clifford Chance LLP and White & Case LLP. Izabella combines private practice and in-house experience, having acted as head of group legal department for a major UAE conglomerate, Al Rostamani Group. She specialises in corporate and commercial work, M&A transactions and also provides corporate restructuring, ownership restriction and trust structures advice and assistance. Izabella’s areas of practice also include incorporation/ transfer of incorporation and corporate services under law of the Dubai International Financial Centre and Abu Dhabi Global Market as well as other free zones and on-shore.

With more than 31 years’ banking experience in the UAE, Mannan Adenwalla assumed the role of managing director of private banking and asset management group, LGT (Middle East) in 2012. Mannan had previously been managing director of Clariden Leu Asset Management, Dubai which he set up and then led for six years.

Before this he worked for ABN AMRO Bank, where he managed his clients and a team of relationship managers for nearly ten years. Having begun his career in the banking industry in 1984, Mannan’s responsibilities at LGT include developing the business across non-resident Indian and subcontinent markets.

Elissar is a seasoned international banker with over 25-year experience in the financial industry and the region where she enjoys a reputation for delivering private banking services with an investment banking touch. As CEO for Citibank UAE her responsibility cover the institutional client group and Global Consumer Bank overseeing corporate, investment banking and wealth management services. She is also senior executive officer for Citi DIFC entities.

Elissar’s banking career began as a management associate covering the wealth management Middle East desk in the London office of Republic National Bank of New York. She then moved to Credit Agricole Indosuez (CALYON) in Abu Dhabi and Dubai before joining ABN AMRO Private Bank covering Abu Dhabi and Egypt.

Elissar joined Citi in 2005 as head of private banking in Abu Dhabi and later served as CEO for Citibank Lebanon before assuming her current position.

Walid is a partner at Deloitte & Touche and heads its private client services practice in the Middle East. He is an international corporate finance lawyer with 35 years’ experience across the five continents. Walid is a leading family business advisor who dedicated the last 20 years to building and serving family offices. He provides legal strategy, dynastic planning and mediation services to elite business families and HNW family business entrepreneurs in the GCC and the MENA region.

Patrick is currently an executive director at Banque Richelieu GCC after joining fromDeutsche Bank Wealth Management Dubai. His previous position was senior vice president at DBS Private Banking Dubai. Patrick aims to exploit his reputation as a trusted advisor with entrepreneurial families to help drive the bank’s growth in the ultra-high net worth NRI private client segments, principally in the ME and Africa. Patrick’s 20-plus years’ experience in the sector began at Allied Irish Banks where he rose through the ranks to head up its deposit-taking unit in Jersey. His subsequently moved to BNP Paribas, then Bank of Nova Scotia before joining ABN AMRO Jersey where he rose to become head of private banking and later its country head. He moved to Dubai to join Lombard Odier in 2012.

Gary Dugan is CEO of The Global CIO Office and of Asset Manager, Purple Asset Management based in Singapore. Gary Dugan is a seasoned investment professional with 37 years’ experience working in Managing Director roles at some of the world’s leading Banks and Wealth Managers. For the past twenty years he has held Chief Investment Officer roles manging money for institutions such as sovereign wealth funds through to Ultra- High Net Worth clients. For the core of Gary’s career (1993-2004) he worked at JPMorgan. Subsequently he held CIO roles at Barclays, Merrill Lynch in Europe, and Emirates NBD and NBAD in the Middle East. Gary is well-known in the industry for his outspoken but often-timely call on financial markets. He has a track record of calling the markets crashes of 1987 and 2007 and the tech wreck of 2000. But he also saw the upside in markets advising clients at Merrill Lynch to buy equities on March 17th, 2009 within two days of the market low. More recently he was advising extreme caution on markets in early February 2020. His views are widely featured on TV and quoted in the financial media. He regularly speaks at investment conferences throughout, the Middle East and Asia. In 2015, he was awarded GCC Private Banker of the year by Wealth Briefing. He has a degree in Economics from Salford University. He is an ASIP in the CFA Institute.

Georg Hartmann is head of private banking Middle East at Liechtensteinische Landesbank (LLB) where he is responsible for the bank’s activities in the Middle East having been instrumental in developing and implementing its global private banking strategy. Prior to this Georg worked at McKinsey & Company, in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Europe and the US as a core member of its family business practice, private banking practice and risk management practice. Georg has served many UHNWI families helping them build up or restructure their family offices. He also advises on organisational topics such as family governance, family charters and next generation issues.

As managing director at Bank J Safra Sarasin (Asset Management) Dubai, Manoj Kapur is responsible for leading a team of private bankers, a role he assumed in March 2010. He has over 30 years of banking experience in the sector in management, private banking and corporate banking. Manoj joined the bank from Lloyds International Private Banking where he was head of private banking for nearly four years. He was a senior manger at HSBC Private Bank in Dubai prior to that.

Kieran McDonnell is a director within the international private banking team based in Dubai and has over 15 years’ experience within the financial services industry. He relocated to Dubai in 2013 to be part of the team opening Arbuthnot Latham’s first international office in the DIFC. Prior to joining Arbuthnot Latham in September 2012 as a chartered financial planner, Kieran was a senior financial planning specialist in the International client group at Coutts & Co. He is a fellow of the Personal Finance Society, the financial service arm of the Chartered Insurance Institute.

Sofia leads the regulatory and compliance practice of RethinkME and has extensive experience in the financial services sector and of consulting across Europe, Middle East and Africa. She has a strong knowledge of financial products regulatory framework derived from extensive work experience in top-tier financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered, and is a member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments. Sofia’s expertise covers compliance, operational and regulatory risk management across retail and wholesale markets.

Bruce is a chartered accountant with over 37 years financial services experience, previously a partner in PwC, latterly as Global leader of their Wealth Management practice and the key driver of their bi-annual Wealth Management Report. Bruce is now CEO of Weatherill Consulting providing advice on client centricity and wider strategic matters to wealth managers. He is the author of The Value of Trust: the quest by Wealth Managers for Trusted Advisor status and a number of other thought leadership reports. Bruce is chairman of ClearView Financial Media and a non-executive of a number of companies including Fidelity Holdings UK, The Wisdom Council, ComPeer, JDX Consulting and Ten Group.