Ooredoo Group has announced that its managing director and Group CEO, Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, was named again in Forbes Middle East ‘Top 100 CEOs in the Middle East 2022’.
Fakhroo, who ranked 41st in 2021, landed number 40 in this year’s report. The rankings recognise the Middle East region’s most pioneering, successful leaders across a wide range of industries and verticals, including telecommunications and ICT.
Since 2011, Fakhroo has been an Ooredoo Group board member and was appointed managing director and CEO of Ooredoo Group in November 2020. He served as Deputy Undersecretary for Budget, Treasury and Financial Affairs at Qatar’s Ministry of Finance from 2014 until 2020, and before that was the co-head of Mergers and Acquisitions at Qatar Investment Authority, where he led some of the sovereign wealth fund’s most high-profile deals. He is also a board member at Accor SA since 2015.
In March 2021, he was appointed as a board member of Katara Hospitality and as a member of the board of trustees of Qatar Museums. In December 2021, he was appointed to the Board of Commissioners of Indosat Ooredoo.
Fakhroo said: “I’m thrilled to have been recognised again amongst my peers in this prestigious report. We have some phenomenal talent in the Middle East region, with many pioneering leaders, and to have my efforts and achievements acknowledged in this way is the highest of praise indeed.”
Fakhroo joined the group in challenging times as the world navigated the pandemic, and steered the company to strong financial performance. He led a transformation throughout the group that resulted in top-line growth of over 4%, an increase in profitability and free cash flow growth of over 30% year-on-year in 2021.
Implementing the group’s recently refined strategy, he began a rebuild of its portfolio to ensure higher value creation, and made several new appointments in its management team to support him in group transformation plans.
He was behind the high-profile merger of Indosat Ooredoo and CK Hutchison, as well as the company’s sale and leaseback agreement for more than 4,200 telecommunications towers in Indonesia – one of the largest deals of its kind in Asia.
Fakhroo added: “It is my great pleasure and pride to lead Ooredoo Group, under our chairman, Sheikh Faisal bin Thani al-Thani, through the challenges of the past couple of years, and I very much look forward to continuing our inspiring progress in the years to come.”