Muhammad Sarfaraz

Leading group-level finance across a diversified real estate portfolio of 1, 000+ income-generating units, including residential, commercial, retail, industrial assets, and holiday homes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Manage financial strategy, consolidation, and board MIS for a multi-entity structure, enabling data-driven decisions across leasing, property management, and hospitality.
• Direct liquidity management and capital deployment to maintain group stability and optimize cash flow positioning.
• Track financial and occupancy performance across ~1, 000+ units (residential, commercial, retail, warehouses, labor accommodations), driving revenue and occupancy efficiency.
• Lead annual budgeting, rolling forecasts, and financial modeling for operating assets and development projects, aligned with long-term investment strategy.
• Conduct portfolio-level financial reviews of private landlord and externally managed assets, ensuring compliance, yield enhancement, and value protection.
• Ensure audit readiness, regulatory compliance (including VAT and WPS), and robust internal controls across all entities.
• Supervise financial controls for community assets and ancillary revenue centers (e.g., resident facilities).

Marsa Properties is a premier real estate development and portfolio management company located on the Corniche of Ajman. The company manages Marsa Ajman Mall, a key commercial asset generating significant revenue, and oversees a large-scale mixed-use development project aimed at transforming the area into a vibrant urban hub.

- Led financial strategy development for a multi-billion AED mixed-use real estate project, ensuring alignment with the company's long-term vision and growth objectives.
- Successfully transformed Marsa Ajman Mall from less than 30% occupancy to fully leased, implementing leasing strategies that enhanced tenant retention and revenue growth.
- Engaged JLL for a comprehensive market study to identify the highest and best use of undeveloped land, maximizing financial returns.
- Oversaw all aspects of property and asset management, including lease structuring, facility operations, procurement, and service provider coordination.
- Created and implemented the company’s first-ever budget, introduced cost transparency, optimized facility management expenses, and ensured financial efficiency.
- Led negotiations for annual maintenance contracts, streamlining procurement processes to secure cost-effective agreements while maintaining high service standards.
- Developed and maintained relationships with tenants, agents, suppliers, and contractors, ensuring smooth operations, timely accounts receivable collections, and contract execution.
- Regularly reported to the Department of Finance in Ajman, ensuring transparency and compliance with government financial standards.
- Leveraged 10+ years of experience in financial and property management systems, ensuring efficient workflows and digital transformation.
- Promoted to Head of Finance following the resignation of the former accounts lead, assuming responsibility for financial oversight, strategic planning, and operational execution.
- Regularly reported to the Department of Finance in Ajman, ensuring transparency and alignment with government financial standards.

Ploutos Associates Limited is a London-based alternate finance institution that operates in the bridging finance, auction finance, development finance, corporate finance, and trade finance areas of financing, with a core focus on the real estate market. Following are the major components of the job description:

- Conducted comprehensive financial analysis and modeling to guide strategic investment decisions.
- Reviewed and meticulously analyzed financial models provided by borrowers, ensuring accuracy and alignment with industry standards.
- Conducting in-depth investment research on potential investments, industry-specific business trends, and assessing long-term profit-loss scenarios.
- Cultivated and managed relationships with clients (borrowers), lenders, and business introducers to establish the right financial solutions.
- Collaborated closely with clients and introducers to understand their needs to provide tailored financial products and services through the partnership with the right lender.
- Provided ongoing support and communication to lenders throughout the loan origination process.
- Spearhead relationships with clients seeking real estate loans such as bridging finance, auction finance, refurbishment loans, and development finance.
- Conducted thorough comparisons and valuations of financial statements, implementing stress tests on projected cash flows to assess their feasibility.
- Full management of a funding application from application to completion, ensuring award winning service levels
- Leading deal structuring during all the processes from deal origination to the execution, which also includes following up with lenders and third-party service providers, like lawyers, surveyors, and architects.
- Pioneered the launch of "Elite Bridging", a new product tailored for clients seeking short-term loans in minimal time.
- Seamlessly transitioned from Relationship Manager role to Deal Origination, Structuring, and Execution.
- Comprehensive understanding of the lending industry, including various loan products and financial services.

As an Investment Analyst, responsibility is to manage an investment of Rs.75 billion (out of Rs.125 billion Portfolio size) made into Textile, Engineering, Chemicals, Financial Institutions, Consumer Goods, Paper & Board, Automobile, Cement and some other sectors. Principal Responsibilities are as follows:
• Conducting investment research on assigned investment portfolios, taking into account financial market conditions, competitor analysis, asset class characteristics, portfolio repositioning to support the needs of the investment committee.
• Creating custom analysis either to anticipate client concerns or to respond to client inquiries.
• Developing and delivering quarterly updates on investment results and views on undertaken strategies.
• Providing recommendations to the Investment Committee for various investment and divestment decisions.
• Preparing detailed financial models using absolute valuation techniques as well as relative valuation techniques to be presented to Investment Committee at the time of investment/disinvestment decision on respective companies.
• Preparing brief valuation on companies which is presented to Investment Committee as & when required or on the basis of interest generated by the potential buyers.
• Evaluating, analyzing and preparing recommendations on Pre-IPOs/IPOs, Right Issues, Buybacks, Tender Offers, Block Deals, , , and Issuance of Ordinary/Preference Shares Submitted to Chief Operating Officer & Investment Committee.
• Representing portfolio managers and portfolio specialists in response to associate and client inquiries, including ad hoc and follow-up prospect, client, and consultant questions.
• Educating and training diverse groups of associates about capital markets, investments, economics, asset classes and investment portfolios.
• Supporting the full sales cycle (obtaining consultant ratings, prospecting, sales meeting preparation, real-time sales and client service meeting follow-up, client retention inquiries).

Worked as a Senior Equity Analyst at Summit Capital Private Limited where major job responsibility was to assist individuals and institutions in investment and divestment decisions. Investment decision were made by studying micro and macro-economic situation and trends which impact investments by documenting advice as in form of a detailed or short reports on changes in macro-economic changes or policy changes which affect the value of investments by incorporating detailed top-down valuation.

Duties and Responsibilities
• Conducting Investment Analysis and Tracking Economic Trends for the in-depth valuation.
• Presentations to the Banks, Asset Management Cos and financial institutions.
• Preparing detailed feasibility studies and financial models for HNI clients.
• Responsible for organizing and analyzing sophisticated financial data used in client proposals and strategic plans.
• Preparing written recommendations, valuation materials and statistical exhibits for pitches and live deals.
• Evaluate company’s financial performance compared to overall industry and market trends.
• Build complex financial models for valuation purposes.

As an Equity Research Analyst at Summit Capital job description was to research macroeconomic and microeconomic conditions of the country and gauge their impact on fundamentals of company in which clients are either invested or an a fresh pitch is made. This exercise was done by analyzing financial information in order to make investment recommendations on stocks in specific sectors such as Fertilizer, Cement and Automobile Industry and Chemicals sector. The job responsibility included building financial models, researching industries and communicating analysis and investment recommendations to the dealers at sales desk, investors, management and media.

Duties and Responsibilities
• Conducted extensive research and analysis of various securities of Cement, Automotive and Fertilizer sectors by preparing financial models and periodic reports.
• Have been studying Karachi Stock Exchange’s dynamics along with Pakistan’s macroeconomics to recommend timely and accurate investment advices to the company’s clients and internal traders.
• Provide write-ups for daily research product for clients.
• Create and deliver presentations to existing and potential clients.