SICO appoints Shaikh Waleed Khamis Al Hashar as newest board member

Muscat: SICO BSC (c), a leading regional asset manager, broker, and investment bank (licensed as a wholesale bank by the CBB), announced that it has expanded the size of its Board of Directors to 10 members from nine.

Shaikh Waleed Khamis Al Hashar, CEO of Bank Muscat, has been appointed as non-independent Executive Director of the Bank. Bank Muscat, which owns a 10.38 per cent stake in SICO has nominated Shaikh Waleed Khamis Al Hashar as its representative in SICO’s Board after obtaining approval from the regulator. The shareholders resolved in the extraordinary general meeting held on January 26, 2022, to expand the Board to 10 members and to appoint  Shaikh Waleed Khamis Al Hashar as director.

SICO previously acquired a majority stake in the Saudi-based “Muscat Capital”, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank Muscat, which has since been rebranded as “SICO Capital”. The acquisition took place by way of a share swap. As a result of the transaction, SICO owned 72.7 per cent of “SICO Capital” and Bank Muscat owned 9 per cent of SICO. Subsequent to the swap transaction, Bank Muscat acquired an additional 1.38 per cent stake in SICO, which, together with the shares previously acquired, represents a shareholding of 10.38 per cent of SICO’s share capital.

“We are very pleased to welcome Shaikh Waleed as the newest member of our esteemed Board of Directors,” said SICO’s Chairman, Shaikh Abdulla bin Khalifa Al Khalifa. “His regional expertise and decades of experience in the banking and finance sector will be invaluable to SICO as we grow and expand our businesses regionally in the coming years.”

Shaikh Waleed Al Hashar is the Chief Executive Officer of Bank Muscat, a position that he has held since 2019. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Oman Center for Governance and Sustainability, The College of Banking and Financial Studies, and the Oman Banks Association. Al Hashar has over 28 years of experience in banking, as well as the oil and gas sectors, where he held senior positions in a number of firms before joining Bank Muscat. He holds a postgraduate diploma in General Management from Harvard Business School and a BSc and Masters in Business Administration from California State University in Sacramento, USA.

“I look forward to working with my fellow board members and with the Chairman and executive management at SICO as we embark on the bank’s next phase of development,” said Al Hashar. “I am confident that the new partnership between SICO and Bank Muscat will be a fruitful one, as we continue creating value for all our stakeholders.”