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Medhat Khalil
Chairman, Raya Holding for Financial Investment
WORK EXPERIENCE
Mr. Medhat Khalil, the Chairman and founder of Raya Holding, has dedicated his career to realizing a vision: Raya Holding. He is an Egyptian businessman who has created a business model that is constantly leading to growth and innovation. Mr. Khalil began his career the Arab Investment as a credit analyst. Afterwards, he joined IBM Egypt for a period of thirteen years, ten of which in senior managerial positions, where he accumulated a wealth of experience in the field of Information Technology. In 1993, Mr. Khalil left IBM and founded his own IT company, Protech, after which he helped co-found Oratech in 1997 along with Orascom Group. In 1999, Protech and Oratech became two of the seven original entities that would merge together and eventually comprise Raya Holding.
Since founding Raya Holding in 1999, Medhat Khalil has been serving as the Chief Executive Of-ficer and Chairman of the company. From 1999 to 2019, Mr. Khalil led Raya’s growth from a company with merely 285 employees and EGP 88 Mn in revenues to an investment conglomerate with nearly 12 thousand employees and more than EGP 8 Bn in revenues.
In 2005, Mr. Khalil oversaw the IPO of Raya Holding on the Egyptian stock exchange. Raya Holding Company now comprises 12 lines of businesses which are underlined by more than 35 Egyptian joint stock companies, including companies that operate across KSA, UAE, Poland, Ni-geria and TanzaniaIn addition, Raya’s investments include a 20% owbership stake in Madova, an F&B company based in Poland.
EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Mr. Khalil graduated from Cairo University in 1977, where he completed a degree in Business Administration from the Faculty of Commerce.
RECOGNITION
Mr. Khalil’s also serves as the Chairman of the Smart Villages Company as well as the membership of the board of the National Sports Council and the National Fund for Financing Sports and Youth activities.
Ahmed Khalil
CEO, Raya Holding for Financial Investment
WORK EXPERIENCE
Mr. Ahmed Khalil currently serves as Raya Holding’s CEO and Managing Director. He brings in nearly 16 years of experience across the fields of sales, marketing and business development. Khalil gained extensive retail experience from running the family business, where he managed and developed a home-grown retail chain of fashion apparel stores.
After an intensive exposure with Microsoft Egypt, Mr. Khalil took the helm across Raya’ s recycling, food & beverage and real estate sectors where he developed the group’s recycling platform and then successfully established Raya F&B platform and expanded its principal chain, Ovio, into becoming one of Egypt’s most recognized dining options. In addition, he spearheaded the development and operation of Raya Smart Buildings and its flagship facility, Galleria 40, into becoming one of Cairo’s premier commercial developments.
EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Mr. Khalil graduated from the American University in Cairo in 2005 with a B.A. in Business Administration with a dual concentration in Finance and Marketing. Furthermore, he attained an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2012 with a focus in Corporate Finance and Real Estate.
RECOGNITION
Mr. Khalil has been serving on the board of Raya Holding since 2008 as well as previous membership of the boards of several leading companies such as Fawry and Rameda Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Khalil continues to serve on the boards of all of the group’s portfolio companies in addition to the Supervisory Board of Makarony Polski, the leading pasta manufacturer listed on Warsaw’s stock exchange.
Malek Sultan
Operations Manager, Watheeqa - Non-Executive Board Member
WORK EXPERIENCE
Mr. Malek Sultan currently serves as a Non-Executive Board Member at Raya Holding. Sultan is Watheeqa’s Operations Manager in Egypt and represents Watheeqa as a Board Member in several of its investments in Egypt. With more than 10 years of experience in investments and IT, Sultan has led the arrangement of several landmark deals in the IT, real estate development and financial sectors for major institutions in Egypt as well as Sudan, Kenya and Uganda. Sultan is well versed in the restructuring process for maximizing the return of private equity deals. His latest deals yielded on the average 3x over an average vintage period of 3 years.
EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Mr. Malek Sultan holds an MBA from Georgia State University with a concentration in Finance and E-business and a BSc in Business Administration from Cairo University.
Amr El Tawil
CEO, Triangle Group - Non-Executive Board Member
WORK EXPERIENCE
Amr El Tawil serves as a Non-Executive Board Member at Raya Holding. El Tawil returned to Egypt from the United States in 1993 with working experience as a construction manager for a real estate developer. Subsequently he applied his knowledge to expand his family’s business, Triangle Holding, into the fields of utilities, oil & gas projects and services, and construction engineering. El Tawil, known to be an innovative entrepreneur, is currently the CEO of Triangle Holding.
EDUCATIONAL Background
El Tawil is a graduate of the Texas A&M University, USA in 1993.
Seif Coutry
Chairman, Capital Trust - Non-Executive Board
WORK EXPERIENCE
Seif Coutry currently serves as a non-executive board member at Raya Holding. Mr. Coutry has served an extensive career as a commercial and investment-banking executive with more than 30 years of international and local professional banking experience. He had also served as an Advisor to the Minister of Finance of Egypt for tax administration reform and modernization for 30 months from 2005 till 2007. Coutry is also a former Chairman and Managing Director of United Bank of Egypt, after serving as VP and Director at the Bank of America in London in charge of EMEA Private Banking operations. Currently, Mr. Coutry serves as a board member in several corporations including Fawry for Banking & Technology Payment Services, in which he is Chairman, as well as Helwan Fertilizers Company, Suez Canal Bank, Capital Trust for Consulting and Investment, in addition to representing the Ministry of Finance at the board of Egypt Air.
Ashraf Mahmoud Kheireldin
CEO First for Distribution & Trading – Non- Executive Board Member
WORK EXPERIENCE
Mr. Ashraf Kheireldin currently serves as a non-executive board member at Raya Holding. From 1996 to 1998, he held the position of Sales Manager at Protech. Shortly after, Kheireldin became the owner and general manager of First for Distribution & Trading which is an agent of Vodafone. He is currently the Chairman and CEO of First for Distribution & Trading.
Yasser Hashem
Managing Partner, Zaki Hashem & Partners - Non-Executive Board Member
WORK EXPERIENCE
Yasser Hashem serves as a Non-Executive Board Member at Raya Holding. Hashem is also the Managing Partner of Zaki Hashem & Partners, a leading Egyptian law firm established in 1953. The firm has around 100 lawyers with strong local and international legal background, and manages a large portfolio of multinational, and local clients. Hashem encompasses a wide range of specializations in various areas such as corporate, mergers and acquisitions, capital market and telecommunication.
Samer El Waziri
Financial Advisor of Raya Holding - Non-Executive Board Member
WORK EXPERIENCE
Mr. Samer El Waziri currently serves as a Non-Executive Board Member in addition to serving as a Senior financial advisor of Raya Holding. El Waziri has 29 years of experience in financial management, including the interpretation of financial data relevant to manufacturing and marketing, evaluation and general coordination of corporate investment decisions and strategic planning. Previously, El Waziri served as Chief Executive Officer at Raya FMCG. Prior to that, he had served as Raya Holding’s Chief Financial Officer where he played a key role as part of the management team that achieved significant financial returns and built a company that is nowadays considered as one of the strongest IT and telecommunications companies in the region. Until December 2005, El Waziri held the position of Chief Financial Offcier and Board Member of GlaxoSmithKline.
EDUCATIONAL Background
El Waziri holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Cairo University. Mr. El Waziri is also a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.
Hamed Shamma
Non-Executive Board Member
WORK EXPERIENCE
Professor Hamed M. Shamma is the BP Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Marketing at the School of Business of The American University in Cairo (AUC). Given his practical and theoretical expertise, Dr. Shamma co-authored the first Arabic Edition of Marketing Management, the most widely used marketing book in graduate business schools worldwide. Shamma started his career with extensive corporate experience at Orange, a leading mobile operator in Egypt. Dr. Shamma was professionally involved with corporate performance assessment, analysis, forecasting, and budgeting.
He has also been actively involved in serving the business community wherein he provided consulting and training to various organizations, such as: the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Ministry of Administrative Development, Eva Pharma, Orange Labs, Etisalat Misr, the International Advertising Association (IAA), and Flat 6 Labs.
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
Dr. Shamma received his PhD in Marketing from the George Washington University in 2007 adding to his expertise in corporate marketing and strategic brand management. He holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in Business Administration and an MBA with a double concentration in Marketing and International Business, both attained from the American University in Cairo in 1999 and in 2002 respectively.
RECOGNITION
Dr. Shamma received several international paper awards in several international conferences, including the 9th Annual World Congress of the Academy for Global Business Advancement in 2012 and the Annual Society for Marketing Advances Conference in 2006.
Mostafa Mubarak
Non-Executive Board Member
WORK EXPERIENCE
Mr. Mostafa Mubarak currently serves as a non-executive board member at Raya Holding. He began his career as a Software Engineer at IBM and helped the newly established department win the tender to outsourcing a 125 Million dollars project, a first for the department. From 2006 to 2007, Mubarak served as an economic researcher in Ministry of Trade and Industry at the Minister’s Technical Office. From 2007 to 2008, he worked at the Reserve Management Unit at the Central Bank of Egypt. In 2010, he moved to McKinsey & Company Middle East as an Engagement Manager. Mostafa Mubarak established Solera in the late 2013 and currently serves as its. Managing Partner where he has signed projects amounting to more than 600 Million EGP.
EDUCATIONAL Background
Mostafa Mubarak graduated from The American University in Cairo (AUC) in 2005 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics Engineering with a concentration in Communication. He completed a Master’s in Business Administration in Finance and Strategic Management from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010.
Sherif Kamel
Non-Executive Board Member
WORK EXPERIENCE
Sherif Kamel currently serves as a non-executive board member at Raya Holding. Dr. Kamel is the Founding Dean of the School of Business at the American University in Cairo and the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt. With 25 years of experience as an education scholar and advisor in management, Dr. Kamel is an advocate of diversity, empowerment, inclusion and using a bottom-up leadership approach. He had served as director of the Regional IT Institute (1992-2001) and managed the training department of the Cabinet of Egypt Information and Decision Support Center. Dr. Kamel consults with government organizations and corporations, addressing organizational transformation, executive development, IT, management and strategy.
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
Dr. Sherif Kamel holds a PhD in Information Systems from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr. Kamel also holds a Bachelor degree in Business Administration and an MBA from the American University in Cairo.
RECOGNITION
Dr. Sherif Kamel is the recipient of several honors for serving the IT community, including Conf-IRM (Canada), Cabinet of Egypt (2011), and IRMA USA (1999). He is also a member of many associations, including: The AACSB International Middle East Advisory Council, Egypt-US Business Council, Eduniversal International Scientific Committee, a board member of Education for Employment and serves as a non-executive board member of the Commercial International Bank (CIB) Egypt.
Noha El Ghazaly
Independent Board Member
Ms. El-Ghazaly has over fourteen years of experience in the Egyptian financial services industry. She currently serves as the Egypt Country Advisor at Mediterrania Capital Partners; a EUR 450Mn AUM Africa-focused private equity firm with HQ in Barcelona, Spain. She is also an investment committee member at SANAD ESF II, a KfW-initiated, Luxembourg-based, impact investing private equity fund investing in regional MSME-focused financial institutions and fintech startups. She is also an independent board member at Middle East Glass Manufacturing Company; Africa’s second largest container glass manufacturer.
Ms. El-Ghazaly has led and participated in the successful consummation of over 25 M&A, ECM and debt transactions with c. USD 1.4Bn in transaction value; predominantly in Egypt. She was the Managing Director and Head of Investment Banking at Pharos Holding for Financial Investments and the Executive Director at HC Securities and Investment as well as a Board Member at HC Brokerage.
Ms. El-Ghazaly has been recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 100 Power Businesswomen (2020) and Top 100 Most Influential Women (2018) in the Middle East and by Financial News London as one of the Top 50 Women in Middle East Finance in 2019. She holds a Masters of Business Administration from Edinburgh Business School and a Bachelor of Economics from Cairo University.
Reem El Saady
Non-Executive Board Member
Reem El Saady joined EBRD in May 2012 and is currently the Regional Principal Manager for the SMEs Finance and Development (Advisory) Program for Egypt and the Levant. The
program supports the growth of small business with special focus on women and Youth.
Prior to joining EBRD Ms. EL Saady worked as an advisor to the Minister of Investment and had during her work at the Ministry established both “Bedaya Centre for Entrepreneurship
and SMEs Development” as well as “Bedaya Fund for SMEs Development” – one of the first on-shore private equity funds dedicated for financing SMEs and innovative start-ups.
During the period from 2010 to March 2012, she was the board member and CEO of "Bedaya" - Private Equity Fund for SMEs financing.
El Saady was also an appointed member in the Technical Committee established by HE the Minister of Trade and Industry in 2017 to design the organizational structure for the new
National SMEs Development Agency.
Reem El Saady was during the period from 1996 to 2009 the Lead Program Coordinator of the Egyptian Swiss Development Fund – a special fund dedicated to support the socioeconomic development of underserved communities and the empowerment of women.
She holds a BA and MA in economics from the American University in Cairo and is currently a PHD candidate at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science finalizing her thesis on the
Egyptian SMEs in an Era of Reforms.