Goldman hires Citigroup, HSBC bankers amidst deal boom in Middle East

Jasim Alsen, a senior banker at Citigroup, will join Goldman Sachs’ Dubai office in November as managing director and co-head of investment banking operations for the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, according to a spokesman for the bank, Omar Alzaim is joining the bank as an executive director and head of investment banking for Saudi Arabia.

The hiring comes as bargaining activity in the Middle East by governments and state-owned firms looking for new ways to raise money and diversify their economies after declining revenues from oil sales last year.

Merger and acquisition activity in the Middle East and Africa region has more than doubled this year to nearly $125 billion, fueled by deals such as a $12.4 billion stake in Saudi Aramco’s oil pipelines, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Goldman Sachs has started winning new business in Abu Dhabi after it was sued by some of the emirate’s biggest firms to recover losses from its deal with Malaysia’s 1MDB Fund nearly two years ago, funding fund Mubadala Investment Co. was sidelined.

Representatives for Citigroup and HSBC declined to comment.

deal pipeline

Goldman Sachs is set to play a major role in a potential initial public offering of Emirates Global Aluminum in Abu Dhabi, a deal that could value the business at more than $15 billion, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News on Thursday. . It is also working with JPMorgan Chase & Co to advise Saudi Aramco on the sale of a stake in a subsidiary controlling its natural gas pipelines, people familiar with it told Bloomberg in July, and Qatar Petroleum. United was one of Bookrunner on $12.5 billion bond sales. same month.

Alsen will join Goldman Sachs after spending more than 13 years at Citigroup, where he was most recently managing director in the investment banking division. Alzaim will debut in the autumn and will be based in Riyadh in his new role. He will replace Iyas Aldosari, who left the bank earlier this year to join the state’s sovereign wealth fund.

At Goldman, Alsen will work closely with Selma Hassan, who was appointed to head the bank in 2019 as MENA Investment Bank, to help boost the bank’s business with sovereign wealth funds and large corporates Can you

According to his LinkedIn profile, Alsen started as an analyst at Citigroup in 2008, before becoming managing director last year.