The Institute For Financial Analysts

KEY ADVISORS

Dr. Assem Safieddine is the chairperson of the Finance, Accounting and Managerial Economics Track, the director of the Corporate Governance Program at AUB and a board member of the Dubai Ethics Resource Center. He is the founding president of the Lebanese CFA Society and the regional director of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) and the president of the Lebanese Risk Management Society. He is a member of the CFA Institute speaker retainer program and has been invited to speak on Corporate Governance and other topics at investment firms worldwide. He has served as an advisor notably on corporate governance for several multinational companies and organizations including IFC, Al Qudra and several others. Dr. Safieddine holds a Ph.D. in finance from Boston College, and has held faculty appointment at Michigan State University for five years and visiting faculty appointment at Harvard University Summer School for more than four years. His research has been published in leading finance journals like the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and his work has been profiled in the Business Week, Harvard Business Review, CFA Digest and the National Bureau of Economic Research along with others.

Mr. Youssef Nizam has 12 years of progressive experience in financial markets, regulatory exposure and research activities in market analysis, Islamic finance and risk management. He is a holder of IFQ “Islamic Financial Qualification”, Chartered Financial Analyst and Financial Risk Manager certificate. He is a Financial attaché at the First Vice Governor Office at the Central Bank of Lebanon and a member of the Islamic Financial Engineering team setting strategy, design and overseeing the implementation. He is a lecturer of Engineering Economy at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Mr. Nizam has won numerous teaching excellence awards at the institute.

Mr. Zein Balhas is a managing partner at the Institute For Financial Analysts. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA). He is a part-owner and manager of an accounting and auditing firm and a part time professor of finance at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Lebanese American University (LAU).

Mr. Ghassan Chammas is a Shari’a Compliant & Islamic Finance Expert, with investment strategies and banking expertise. He is a holder of the IFQ “Islamic Financial Qualification” certificate from the SII London. He is a member of the Islamic Financial Engineering team setting strategy, design and overseeing the implementation. He has 22 years of progressive experience in International management and business development. He served as coordinator of the Venture Capital regulatory and Islamic securitization work group at BDL. He is specialized in design, implementation, analysis, and application of qualitative and quantitative market analysis, in several countries: Latin America, Middle East and Europe. He is currently teaching a graduate course at Balamand University, namely Introduction to Islamic banking and Finance.

Mr. Hady Abdul Khalek is the Assistant Risk Manager at Bank of Kuwait and the Arab World. He is a holder of the Chartered Financial Analysts and Financial Risk Manager certificate; he is also supervising the implementation of and the compliance with Basel II. Hady administered the organizational development of several educational institutions and is currently managing the operations at the Institute for Financial Analysts. He is the treasurer of the Risk Management Society in Lebanon. Equipped with an elite portfolio of academic attainments and professional training competences, Mr. Abdul Khalek is also a lecturer of investment management and valuation methods at the American University of Beirut (AUB), he also teaches graduate Finance courses at the Business & Computer University (BCU).

KEY ADVISORS - CONTINUED

Ms. Hayfaa Tlaiss is a doctoral researcher at Manchester Business School. She lectured at the Lebanese American University (LAU) and was recently lecturing at the School of Economics, University of Manchester. She has participated in several international conferences and has a number of published articles in reputable journals and newspapers. She holds the Financial Risk Management certificate and has passed CFA level I examination in 2007. Ms. Tlaiss has been awarded on numerous occasions for outstanding academic achievements and is the representative of the PMO group within Manchester Business School.

Mr. Khaled Abdel Samad is a Financial Risk Manager (FRM). He hold an MBA with Distinction from the Lebanese American University. For the past year, he has been serving as the Head of the Credit Risk Department and Basel II Project Manager at Lebanon and Gulf Bank. He is also a part time instructor at the Business and Computer University College, where he teaches advanced finance courses.

Mr. Bilal Sbeity has been serving for more than five years as the Deputy Internal Audit manager at the Bank of Kuwait and The Arab World S.A.L. He is a part time instructor teaching financial risk management, and advanced accounting and financial analysis courses. He has an MBA and has served as a consultant for various institutions in developing a risk based approach for different business units. He has been very active in different seminars and training programs related to fraud detection, International accounting standards, banking operations and financial risk management.