KBBO Group Announces Appointment of Ziad Kanaan as New CIO

(AETOSWire): The Abu Dhabi Investment Group, KBBO with a substantial stake in NMC Healthcare, is the largest healthcare provider in the region and fifth in the world. The Group currently operates in the UAE and across the Middle East with interests in Health Care, Education, Retail, and Venture Capital as part of its growth strategy.  With the appointment of Mr. Ziad Kanaan as the CIO, a new post within the group, KBBO has demonstrated its ambitious plans to expand into new sectors within the healthcare and education markets.

According to KBBO Group’s CEO, Mr. Yazen Abu Gulal, “We are delighted to have Mr. Kanaan as a member of our management team as we enter this new era of Group’s rapid expansion of services, facilities, and outreach. We recently acquired 800 hospital beds in Egypt, opened two hospitals in Dubai, each with a 100 bed capacity, and we have allocated 500 million dirhams to seek opportunities within the education sector in the region. We are very excited to move forward with all these projects knowing that Mr. Kanaan is our new CIO.”

Mr. Kanaan brings a wealth of experience to the new post, spanning over thirteen plus years of investment banking and asset management experience in the MENA region.

Prior to his appointment as CIO of KBBO Group, Mr. Kanaan led the real estate asset management at SHUAA Capital where he was responsible for overseeing the investment management for five investment funds in the UAE and KSA. During his tenure assets under management grew from about $200 million to $470 million in less than two years. During this period, he also helped raise a total of around $360 million in bank financing for the respective projects in the UAE and KSA.

Preceding to his SHUAA Capital asset management role, Mr. Kanaan was Director of Investment Banking- where he was responsible for the execution of initial public offerings, private placements, M&As and corporate restructuring transactions. Mr. Kanaan was involved with numerous transactions with a value in excess of $7.5 billion, including high profile transactions such as the IPOs for Dubai Parks & Resorts, Emirates REIT, NMC Health Care, Deyaar, and Air Arabia, among others.

Kanaan received his BA in Business Administration, Finance from the American University in Beirut.