WealthBriefing – GCC Region Awards 2015

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.

Donald has been active in MENA Financial Services Executive Search since 2007. He and his team at Sheffield Haworth have contributed to the ongoing development of many of the region’s most prestigious institutional, corporate and sovereign entities. Sheffield Haworth, established in 1993, is the world’s largest dedicated Financial Services Executive Search firm and opened its first Middle Eastern office nearly a decade ago. Donald leads the regional Wealth Management practice and conducts searches across the Middle East, Africa, the UK and Switzerland. He is an alumnus of Imperial College, London.

As founder and chief executive of Tharwa Management Consultancy, Faranak Foroughi has over 25 years' experience advising wealthy Emirati and GCC families and working with global institutions such as Citibank, Merrill Lynch, HSBC, Barclays Private Banking and National Bank of Dubai. She established and managed the private banking business of National Bank of Dubai in 2001 and was responsible for the Dubai and London business until mid-2007.

As a specialist private client practitioner, Hugh Cathcart is responsible for the continuing development of Sanne’s expertise and service in the private wealth and family office sector.

Hugh has over 20 years’ experience of establishing and managing structures to meet the needs of private clients and significant international families, including leading the offshore services of a large family office. He has worked extensively with high value complex investment propositions and structures, and has considerable international experience including dealing with UHNWI clients and their families from the Middle East and Russia.

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.

Leonie Kerswill is a partner in the Middle East firm of PwC based in their Dubai office where she focuses on private wealth management. She draws on more than 25 years' experience in the sector advising shareholders and high net worth individuals on asset structuring, setting up and running family offices and on succession planning.

Before moving to Dubai, Leonie was a partner in PwC in London. As a consequence she has extensive experience of UK tax issues as they affect wealthy individuals and their families; for example the ownership of UK property and residence issues.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Past Chairman of STEP’s Arabia Branch, Warren Luyt is the Managing Director of Trident Trust’s Dubai operations. He joined the Group in 2006 to establish its presence in Dubai, having spent six years in Mauritius managing a specialized financial services business. Warren is a qualified solicitor, admitted as an Attorney of the High Court of South Africa in 1992. Prior to his move into financial services, he established his own successful corporate and financial legal practice in South Africa, still trading as Brooks & Luyt.

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

Ayman Abuhabsa was appointed head of private banking at Mashreq in 2012 where, as a seasoned banker, he deploys over 15 years’ experience across the sector.

Prior to this, Ayman worked at Emirates NBD where he was managing director and head of UAE private banking, with a particular focus on the onshore markets. His time there coincided with the complex post-merger integration between Emirates Bank and National Bank of Dubai.

Ayman also worked for nearly 10-years as a senior banker at Merrill Lynch in London covering an EMEA private and institutional investor base in excess of USD 1bn.

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.

Dr. Rassem N. Zok has over 20 years of experience in investment banking, capital markets and asset management having held senior positions at Credit Lyonnais, Sakura Bank, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan, in both Paris and London.

He joined Standard Bank Dubai as CEO for the MENA Region in January 2010; prior to that Rassem was president and COO of International Financial Advisors, a Kuwaiti-based listed investment company.

Rassem is a graduate of the London School of Economics and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris where he obtained an MPhil in Economics and Finance and then a PhD in Economics.

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.

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.

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.

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.