Associate Profiles

Select below to find out more about our associates:

Tariq L. Ali

has over 23 years of international corporate finance and banking experience. Mr. Ali most recently worked as Group Head of Corporate Finance at National Commercial Bank (NCB) of Saudi Arabia, the largest bank in the Arab world.

Whilst at NCB, Mr. Ali established a highly profitable corporate finance group, focusing on regional M&A, structured finance and securitisation, venture capital, and private placement and syndication. The group successfully structured and completed the largest IPO in the Middle East raising US$ 300 million from the regional and international markets.

Mr. Ali started his career at Citibank where he worked for 20 years in various positions within the corporate finance area in the US, the Far East and the Middle East. His most recent position was Division Head of Structured Finance and Islamic Banking at Citibank’s Saudi Arabian affiliate (Saudi American Bank).

Whilst at SAMBA, Mr. Ali initiated and launched the Securitisation programme (Auto Receivables Asset Backed Securitisation – ARABS) in Saudi Arabia for auto dealers.

Mr. Ali currently sits on three Boards, is a member of the risk committee and chairs an Audit Committee.

Bilal Hakim

has 30 years’ experience with major financial institutions in the Middle East, USA and Asia. Most recently he spent four years with National Commercial Bank, the largest bank in the Arab world.

Working initially as Chief of Staff to the CEO and later as Head of the Consumer Banking Division, Mr. Hakim restructured the organisation with emphasis on building a professional marketing unit, alternative distribution channels, re-engineering and repositioning branches. He also implemented NCB’s major technology upgrade projects.

Prior to NCB, Mr. Hakim spent three years with Chase Manhattan Bank and 23 years in a variety of positions with Citibank in North America, Asia Pacific, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain and Pakistan.

His assignments included: 1) overall responsibility for the trade finance function in 13 Asia Pacific countries involving product design, client and risk management, sales and service delivery; 2) head of transactional banking covering Asia to develop corporate cash management and short term trade finance as a line of business with responsibilities over product design, operation, sales, pricing and servicing; 3) direct management responsibility for operations and technology functions for Citibank in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, regional responsibility for operations and technology functions in North African countries and various assignments in Citibank branches in Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain and Pakistan.

Mr. Hakim has served on the board and executive committee of Prime Bank in Pakistan

F. Paul Carlson, Ph.D.

is owner and president of the Carlson Group of companies in Tacoma, Washington with activities in business consulting, investments and engineering. He has extensive experience in business strategy and business development and has been co-founder of several high-technology start-ups.

Board of director service has included PacifiCorp,Tektronix, Inc., Logic Automation, Inc. (now Synopsis), Cascade Microtech, Inc., and Frank Russell Trust Company.

Prior to forming his own consulting firm, Dr Carlson was Vice President, Strategy and Business Development at Honeywell, Inc. in Minneapolis, MN from 1988 to 1991.

Between 1977 and 1988 he was President and CEO of Oregon Graduate Institute where he developed the OGC Science Park and OGC Telecom, a telecommunication company.

Dr Carlson has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington where he was a Professor for 10 years.

Additional graduate studies have been undertaken at the Stanford University Business School, MIT Sloan School and the University of Minnesota Executive Development Programme.

Robert S. Wilcox

has 22 years of international banking experience in Asia,Africa and the Middle East. He was the Chief Executive Officer of The Saudi Investment Bank in Riyadh during the Gulf War, when emergency contingency planning became an additional responsibility beyond that of creating and implementing a business strategy for this affiliate of Chase Manhattan Bank.

Prior to this, Mr..Wilcox was a General Manager of The Gulf Bank of Kuwait with responsibility for banking and investment operations in Singapore, New York, London, the Cayman Islands and all corporate lending and operations functions in the head office.

Prior to this Mr. Wilcox was Citibank’s Regional Senior Officer for West Africa based in the Ivory Coast, where his responsibility was supervising branch operations in six West African countries and cross border lending to another eight non-presence countries.

Representing Citibank he co-managed the Republic of Liberia London Club debt re-scheduling negotiations and participated in these for the Republic of Togo. He was designated a Citibank Senior Credit Officer while managing Citibank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and participated in the transition from Citibank to Saudi American Bank. During his Jeddah assignment, he was a founding member and first Chairman of the American Businessman’s Council.

After five years in the US Navy as a carrier based aviator, Mr. Wilcox finished his graduate work in international finance and marketing at the American Graduate School of International Management before beginning his international career with Citibank.

He is currently Chairman of Zephyr Partners LLC, a Southern California based real estate management company that originates and manages property investments for Middle East based institutional and individual investors. In this capacity, he is a frequent visitor to the Middle East where he maintains many personal and professional relationships.

Michael A Callen

recently, he spent four years, from 1992 to 1996, as Senior Advisor to the Chairman of The National Commercial Bank, the largest bank in the Middle East. Prior to that, Mr. Callen enjoyed a 27 year successful career at Citicorp, where in 1987 he joined the board of directors.

His experience at Citicorp spanned many parts of the world, including New York, Manila, Bombay, Calcutta, Beirut, Karachi, Athens, and Riyadh.

Whilst in Riyadh during the early 80s, Mr. Callen was the first Managing Director and CEO of the Saudi American Bank. In 1987, Mr. Callen took charge of Citicorp’s Investment Bank. At the time of his appointment, Citicorp Investment Bank was represented in 90 countries.

Subsequently, he took charge of all Citicorp corporate business in the developed countries. Mr. Callen’s life-long interest in education prompted the creation of the Institute for Global Finance, a state of the art training facility for Citicorp worldwide.

Currently, Mr. Callen conducts seminars on general management and risk management disciplines, as well as on strategic and marketing skills in the Middle East, Europe and North America.

He has served as a Board and Audit committee member of American Municipal Bond Corporation (AMBAC) and was appointed CEO. He also served as board member of Intervest Bank shares Inc. Mr. Callen is a member of Council on Foreign Relations. He resides in New York.

Richard W. George

is a seasoned executive and educator in the financial services industry. After receiving an MBA from University of California at Berkeley, Mr. George was a McKinsey consultant before joining Citibank.

During a 29-year career with the bank, he served as a Senior Credit Officer and in a variety of senior managerial positions in the US and several international locations.

Mr. George’s accomplishments include: managing the turnaround and sale of a retail bank in the US; effecting a turnaround of Citibank’s Middle East regional loan administration and treasury operations centre; negotiating a sovereign debt restructuring and workout plan for a major developing country; establishing a business development strategy and executing a marketing plan for retail products in east Asia; underwriting numerous commercial real estate projects for national developers; assessing problem resolution strategies for major real estate workouts in the US, Canada and Australia; managing a secured finance and securitisation business; launching global sales financing partnership programmes with major corporate customers.

Throughout his career at Citibank, Mr. George participated as an educator and consultant at the bank’s Institute for Global Finance, focusing on improving the credit and product skills of bank officers.

Since 1999, Mr. George has been an independent consultant and educator. Contracts have included: 1) as CEO, a 16-month engagement to stabilise the operations and divest a Washington, DC-based Internet / Community bank; 2) as a consultant, a continuing engagement to introduce sophisticated corporate finance techniques to the largest commercial bank in Korea; and 3) as an advisor to a New York law firm specialising in bank litigation.

Mr. George is an Adjunct Professor instructing graduate students in global finance at the Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. George lives with his family near Lake Tahoe, California, and in New York City. He travels frequently to Washington, DC, and to Seoul, Korea.

George White

George White has worked for over 30 years as an IT professional in the banking sector.

Currently resident in UK, he is Group Managing Director of Integral Business Solutions (IBS), a company he founded in 1994 to develop and implement business process management solutions for the banking sector. IBS, through its sister company Integral Technologies Ltd (ITL), has developed and marketed ServicePro, a business process management and workflow system, to customers in 35 countries.

George has participated directly as an IT strategy consultant on a number of ITL assignments.
• Development of an IT migration strategy for Egnatia Bank in Greece.
• Pilot Study and implementation of Document Management and Workflow into Citibank’s emerging market countries. This resulted in the development of the CitiDocs system by ITL, currently used across Citigroup as a document processing standard
• Strategy, including identification and procurement of systems for the mortgage business of Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong.
Armstrong CS Ltd (ACS), another member of the Integral group is active in the recruitment and placement of high calibre IT staff from India into the UK.

Prior to establishing Integral Business Solutions, he spent 20 years in senior IT positions with Citibank, living and working in a number of locations including London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Athens, Tehran, Riyadh, and Dubai.

With Citibank in New York he functioned as Distribution Consultant to the North American Division Head where he was primarily responsible for overseeing IT strategy

In Dubai and Athens, as regional VP in charge of IT for Citibank’s Middle East branches, he was responsible for developing an IT strategy, then building the organisation required to both implement and to support that strategy across the region.

In Riyadh in the early 80’s, while still with Citibank, he took charge of IT for the newly formed Saudi American Bank, developing strategy and building an infrastructure to support a rapidly growing organisation. In early 90’s he returned to Saudi American Bank to again take charge of IT to update both the strategy and the infrastructure.