Chief Financial Officer CFO
Al Watan Holding Company
Total years of experience :16 years, 10 Months
Offer quality recommendations to CEO regarding entire matters of accounting, accounts receivable, accounts payable, budget management and control, budget preparation, financial information systems, collections, fiscal planning, financial statement preparation, investing, and payroll. Participate and play an integral role in strategic planning process as well as devise and deploy robust institutional financial plans utilising historical and projected data. Leverage professional expertise in executing Oracle Fusion financial system (ERP) for the Education Holding Group. Maintain optimal oversight over group of nine experts in Finance, Procurement, and Inventory.
• Inherited badly planned ERP framework in midst of an installation; redesigned to cover all important processes with defined workflows, hierarchies, and budgets, leading to successful Oracle Fusion ERP Go-Live.
• Enabled 50% reduction in month-end reporting time via implementation of new accounting procedures and shortening cycle schedule in half.
• Redesigned Annual Budgetary Process aimed at stress-test scenarios and hypotheses in order to overcome uncertainty efficiently.
• Collaborated with CEO to develop a five-year strategy plan covering all divisions of the institution, with time-bound and achievable goals, each related to key performance indicator (KPI).
• Successfully renewed over $90M in bank credit lines.
• Member of the Executive Council.
Reported directly to CEO as well as administered control over the entire management of Group’s financial affairs. Enhanced strategic planning and accountability. Significantly contributed to achieving Group’s goals by offering leadership, quality recommendations, and guidance regarding financial models, tax, investment, M&A, and growth strategies. Allowed extensive audits, reporting, and compliance improvements as well as developed new financial monitoring and reporting platform to decrease manual processes and optimised transparency.
• Allowed extensive audits, reporting, and compliance improvements as well as developed new financial monitoring and reporting platform to decrease manual processes and optimised transparency.
• Designed a full suite of reports ranging from year-to-date and monthly, bottom-up forecasts of financial data at granular levels.
• Restored year-end margin to budgeted levels by identifying performance issues with substantial businesses.
- Reporting directly to the CEO & COO, leading staff of over 16 professionals in 6 countries, coordinating strategic planning, budgeting, forecasting, allocations, controls, audit, contract compliance, reporting, analysis, risk management and board reporting.
- Responsible for the group’s legal, regulatory and trademark matters; Responsibility of Acting Head of IT from 2018; Authorised signatory for all activities except Ministry of Social and Labor Affairs.
- Engineered the growth of the group to a turnover of ≈ $ 100 Million - a 250% increase in turnover from the year 2015 to the year 2020 with 21 operating restaurants.
- Oversaw due diligence for part sale and acquisition of business liaising with the Board and Transaction Advisors; successfully received an offer for one of the highest valuations for a F&B operator in the GCC.
- Assisting the Board, CEO & COO with the development of strategic and annual plans, with evaluation and reporting of progress on plans.
- Prepared and implemented financial, operational and tax strategies by constructing various financial models and feasibilities for the businesses.
- Implemented group-wide ERP solution with SAP across 6 countries, uniting all functional areas under a group-wide information system, including a partial Business Intelligence (BI) solution.
- Developed and implemented company’s Franchise, Joint-Venture, Taxation and Financial policies.
- Developed a customised Balanced Scorecard to monitor KPI’s at an organisation and department level, aligning day to day work to the corporate strategy of the group.
- Oversaw preparation of annual budget, variance statements and annual internal and external audits; including maintaining relationships with Big 4 firms in all GCC countries.
- Improved information flow to external auditors, reducing audit costs by 25% and improving time of completion by 50%.
- Established robust relationships with business bankers and lenders; successfully obtained $18 million in debt facilities from multiple banks and increased overall credit limits by over 100% with all suppliers.
- Managed all investor relations with shareholders and joint-venture partners, including managing personal investments, portfolio and funds of some of the shareholders.
- Develop a risk-based audit planning for assigned business and operational areas of the bank.
- Perform a review of bank policies and procedures.
- Prepare/update control assessments and audit programs for assigned business and operational areas of
the bank and execute or review audit work in accordance with audit programs.
- Prepare draft audit reports and submits to the Head of Banking Operation Audit for review.
- Carry out specific ad-hoc responsibilities and tasks including fraud investigations as prescribed by the
Chief Internal Auditor or Head of Banking Operations Audit.
- Direct the activities of assistants and provide on job training to auditors and evaluate their performance.
- Provide input into the risk based annual planning process of the Banking Operation Audit Department.
- Establishing a process of strategic planning and execution of audit and assurance assignments of several
reputed organisations as senior in-charge on multiple assignments, including holding companies and
conglomerates with multinational footprints involving complex consolidations.
- Obtaining an understanding of the key market forces and other macro-economic factors affecting the
business of client.
- Risk analysis by assessment of processes and evaluation of internal controls.
- Led the focused team coaching teams and designed ideas to improve the audit efficiency and profitability
without compromising the quality of the audit work and reputation of the organisation.
MBA Finance