PwC has appointed strategy and management consultant Bassam Hajhamad as its new Country Senior Partner in Qatar.
With over 20 years of experience in management consulting in the US and Middle East, Hajhamad has been with PwC’s strategy consulting arm Strategy& and its predecessor Booz & Co. since 2011 based out of Dubai, originally joining after six years as the business practice lead for the Greater Boston office of inCode – the strategy consulting division of Swedish telco Ericson.
Prior to serving with inCode, which has a specialty strategy consulting focus on the telecommunications and technology sectors, Hajhamad co-founded the automotive and electronics technology company RBK Automation in Detroit, acting as the firm’s Vice President of Strategy & Business Development for seven years. Earlier, Hajhamad was employed as a software engineer and project manager with Ford.
Currently acting as PwC Middle East’s consulting market leader, Hajhamad, a long-time advocate of digitisation with expertise in corporate strategy and transformations and public sector policy and development, will now lead the Big Four accounting and consulting firm’s Qatar office – in an evolving market challenged by ongoing regional sanctions and the need for strategic business readjustments. As one of 23 regional offices across 12 countries, PwC Middle East’s Qatari branch in Doha together with the firm’s African practice contributed to regional growth of 12 percent over the past year, bringing in revenues of approximately $1.6 billion to help the firm smash the global $40 billion revenue barrier for the first time. Altogether, PwC has a headcount of more than 4,200 in the region, with upwards of 215 partners.
With global growth across each of its service lines last year led by a 10 percent rise in Advisory revenues, and in particular its Strategy, Management and Technology consulting practices, the appointment of the strategy and digital innovation expert Hajhamad will be seen as a means to further drive growth in Qatar. “The market presents great opportunities and we are committed to investing and expanding, to reinforce our confidence in the market,” the new Country Senior partner said of his appointment.
In addition to his professional work with PwC, Hajhamad, who holds an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management along with a Master’s of Science in Computer Information Systems from the University of Detroit, serves on the World Economic Forum’s Digital Policy and Governance Council, and has previously written for Forbes Middle East on digitisation in the MENA telecom sectors.