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erode. Its fortunes have since been turned around by the insights of Kaddoura, who took over the reins in 2016. While maintaining the company’s drive to be a technology innovator, he has refocused its efforts on the needs of its customers and further entrenched the company as a strategic partner for its clients. For Kaddoura, advanced technology only has value if it is making the business of financial institutions – and increasingly larger corporations – more efficient, cost-effective and agile. Technology and innovation are fundamental to its market proposition, but what matters most is the value added for its clients.
A journey of learning Kaddoura’s journey into financial services technology began in 1987 with his studies at the Lebanese American University, where he pursued a degree in computer sciences. He subsequently attained an MBA in finance and international business from Canada’s McGill University. Once that was done, he was snapped up by one of the world’s leading consultancies and thrust into a world of high-profile clients and projects.
After graduating from McGill in 1994, Kaddoura joined Accenture (formerly known as Andersen Consulting), as a member of a small consultancy team based in Saudi Arabia and providing pan-Middle East coverage. Among his clients were some of the key regional banks, oil and gas conglomerates, and financial institutions, who sought his advice on operational restructuring, efficiency improvement, and technology integration.
“Being in a market where there were relatively few management and technology consultants quickly exposed me to projects within the regional public and private sector,” Kaddoura explains. “Within the first few years of my career, I had worked in multiple markets, sectors and disciplines. We had only a few regionally based consultants covering a big and dynamically changing region.”
From there, Kaddoura moved to Booz Allen & Hamilton in 1997, where he advised family offices and sovereign wealth funds on growth strategies, multinational expansions, and environmental sustainability initiatives. After nearly two years, he joined Arthur Andersen in his hometown, where he led the establishment and operations of its business consulting practice, working with clients on mergers and acquisition readiness, operational and organisational restructuring, and growth strategies. “I always wanted to be a banker, yet I stumbled on consultancy and it hooked me,” he explains. “It gave me the opportunity to complement my formal education with real life cases in top institutions, all augmented by some of the leading people development programmes at Accenture, Booz and
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others.” Then followed a move to PwC in 2000, before joining management and technology consultancy BearingPoint in 2002, where he worked as an adviser to the management of key private and public sector organisations on operational planning in Qatar. “My consulting journey was quite rich and diverse, from working on business process engineering in the 1990s to M&A, the establishment of a pure, vital bank, and advising the Qatari government on an educational endowment fund by the mid-2000s,” he says. “In all, I had ten years of advising clients on crucial strategic matters.”
During his time as a consultant, Kaddoura worked with a stellar list of clients, among them American Express, the Abu Dhabi Offsets Group, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Dubai Aluminium and Qatar Foundation. In 2004, Kaddoura felt the time was right to jump fully into the world of business. Specifically, he joined a Dubai government initiative to establish the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), a leading international financial hub in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region.
“As a board member, I need to understand what drives the CEO, so in 2016, when I was asked to step in, I already knew what would work for the company and what would not.”
While at DIFC, Kaddoura partook in defining the government’s 2015 vision for the financial services industry, and helped initiate a quasi-sovereign wealth fund, DIFC Investments, ultimately managing part of its investment portfolio in fintech and banking. “I joined the Dubai government to be part of a team nominated to help establish Dubai as a global player in the financial services industry, and take the DIFC from vision to reality,” Kaddoura remarks. It was also a part of Dubai that operates as an independent free zone within the wider United Arab Emirates (UAE). Thereafter, Kaddoura helped found the quasi- sovereign wealth fund DIFC Investment, for which he was responsible for the management of its broad investment portfolio.
“I joined Dubai government entities to set up the DIFC, and the Dubai leadership had a strong vision for establishing Dubai on the world stage, so I advised it on the framework of the DIFC, which gave me the opportunity to work on both the concept and the implementation phase,” Kaddoura remarks. In 2007, DIFC Investments acquired SmartStream into its portfolio, hence kicking off Kaddoura’s involvement. “ Following the acquisition, Kaddoura took a seat on the board of the company. From there began a journey of transformation for both
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Opposite: SmartStream CEO Haytham Kaddoura revitalised the company after a period of decline.
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