SAMI NABULSI, CFA Director of Private Equity at Qatar First Bank, Qatar Sami, when and how did you realize finance was a field you wanted to work in? What attracted you to it? When I first entered university, I was undecided on which field I wanted to specialize in. I had many options in the management sphere. When I decided to take my first finance course, I was immediately hooked. I knew right then that this area was my intended path, both in university and beyond. I loved the concepts and the practicality of the topics. What made it more interesting and relevant was the fact that it was during the period of the stock market boom. Once you realized you were interested in finance as a profession, how did you prepare for entering the field? Once I established that finance was the field I wanted to venture into, I chose it as one of my majors in university. But I did not stop there. I started to plan my path during my time in university and post-graduation. Given my competitive nature, I decided to enroll in the challenging CFA Program so that I would be studying for it during and right after graduation, when the information from university was still fresh in my mind. That decision proved to be a fruitful one because I completed all the CFA exams at a relatively young age, and thus, I had the right tools to give my career a boost early on. In terms of coming out of school and getting a job, was that hard? Was it challenging, or was it straightforward? Having graduated and completed the CFA Level I exam simultaneously gave me an edge over other graduates. However, finding the right job for me in Canada was challenging as it was during the burst of the dot-com bubble. So, I decided to go back to my home country (Jordan), where I did not have any problem finding a good job. Given my strong academic background, I applied to the top investment firm in my hometown, which immediately accepted me at a salary above the market average back then. Sami Nabulsi, CFA, brings with him over 14 years of private equity, investment banking, and asset management experience with leading institutions in the Middle East. Sami has a bachelor of commerce degree from McGill University and an MBA from NYIT. He is also a CFA charterholder and has served as the president of CFA Society Qatar. CAREER SUCCESS: NAVIGATING THE NEW WORK ENVIRONMENT 2015 CFA INSTITUTE 177
How has your career progressed since then? What intermediate roles have you had? What are you working on now? I personally believe that, since the start of my career, each year I progress and take long strides professionally compared with the year before. I have been blessed to have worked in every pillar of investment banking. I started with research and then went into asset management, then to corporate finance, and then finally now into private equity, which basically encompasses everything that I have studied for. So, I feel that this progression uses all of my accumulation of knowledge, both academically and professionally. I was privileged to have had several senior roles during my career as well as sitting on the board of a number of private and public shareholding companies. It sounds like you have given your career some forethought. Would you go so far as to say you have planned your career at this point? I always try to plan my life and career given my expectations in the coming years, and fate and good fortune has always been on my side. As you know, in our field, there is the buy side and the sell side. At one point in my career, I was on the buy side in asset management because we were managing funds while the stock market in our region was going up. Then I shifted to the sell side in corporate finance, where we provided services for IPOs (initial public offerings) and bonds. The market still had positive breadth between 2001 and 2008. Then came the crash of 2008. At that point, I decided to move back to the buy side by assuming a position in Qatar and take advantage of working in very wealthy country. Do you consider yourself to have a lot of passion for your career and for the finance industry? Yes, I do. That s why all my adult life so far I have studied and worked in finance. I finished finance at university, got the CFA designation, and got an MBA in finance. So, yes, I love finance and the accomplishments that come with it. It is those accomplishments that keep me going, like the pleasure of successfully closing a complex deal or beating the market in a fund you manage. I ve heard you mention a few countries. You were educated in Canada, you went back to your home country Jordan, and then you moved to Qatar. Tell me more about how finance as a global industry has had an impact on your career and opportunities. First, once you have the right techniques and skillsets in terms of academics, you can easily adopt them on a global level. Also, because finance is globally interconnected, the markets in the United States will affect the markets in Europe, which will, in turn, affect the markets in the Middle East and in Asia. Any ripple effect here or there affects other markets. CAREER SUCCESS: NAVIGATING THE NEW WORK ENVIRONMENT 2015 CFA INSTITUTE 178
So you can t look at a single financial market in isolation from the global markets. By virtue of my career, I have had the privilege to work on many international opportunities via acquisitions in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia and across the Middle East and Africa, which provided me with a unique insight into the global finance industry. Are there any particular skillsets that you think have helped you to be very flexible about working globally and being able to transition to and from Canada, Jordan, and Qatar? Are there any skills or maybe psychological attributes that you think help you do that well? Of course, choosing the right university and the right post-graduate program gave me the necessary skillset and credibility across the different lines of work and geographies. For example, I went to Sweden at the beginning of the year and gave my business card to someone. They saw the CFA designation, and automatically, there was a link because the person was a CFA charterholder as well. Having that kind of international background eases the way you do deals with other professionals. What do you know now from working in the industry that you wish you had known when you started? A lot of the time, people go into finance or follow their passion in order to succeed both tangibly and intangibly. Tangibly is basically how your net worth is impacted, and intangibly is the sense of accomplishment. Of all the pillars in finance that I have worked in, I believe that private equity was the most rewarding for me on both fronts. First of all, it is financially rewarding, but most importantly, I enjoy working in it immensely. So, in hindsight if I were to choose from the beginning, I would have gone into private equity from the start and into a market that is different from the market I started in. Having said that, maybe I wouldn t have reached where I am now without going through all those pillars and milestones over the years. If you were advising others just starting out in the industry, are there things that you would tell them? Any advice you would give about managing or planning a career? For those who are starting in finance, first they need to know where they will be in five years. They need to do proper planning. It s not enough to say, Okay, I m going to start in this job, and I will take it day by day. No, you need to plan. Second, you need to read a lot. I spent countless hours of reading, reading, reading market news, international news, financial news, local news, regional news. You need to always read because you are like a sponge and you need to grow the knowledge that you have. Third, the most important thing is that if you don t have a degree beyond undergraduate, you should consider getting CAREER SUCCESS: NAVIGATING THE NEW WORK ENVIRONMENT 2015 CFA INSTITUTE 179
one. An undergraduate degree is no longer the minimum market standard. You need to have a strong post-graduate degree to give you that edge in the market. Very tangible advice. Thank you. How do you balance your personal life with friends and family and your professional life, considering that the industry and the jobs are so demanding? That s an issue that most men with families face. It s true that when I started my career, like many others in this field, I never saw the sunlight as I left the office. And often when you get home, the kids are already asleep and you will have only a couple hours before you have to go to bed yourself. So, ultimately your family will suffer because our industry has maddening working hours. I sometimes put in 10 12 hour shifts; I don t even leave for meals, just eat in the office. One thing that I try to do is whenever I have time to go for lunch, I go back home, eat, spend some time with the family, and then go back to the office. If I can t go home at lunchtime, I try to get home in time to at least read a bedtime story to my kids before they go to sleep. I also try to dedicate the weekends fully to the family if work is not needed, in addition to dedicating at least one long vacation during the year. Have you noticed that your work/life balance has changed as you have advanced in your career? Has it gotten better or worse as you changed either the different pillars you work in or your level of seniority? Yes, with seniority. Basically, the more senior you are, the more you can delegate and focus on managing the team and the strategic direction of the division. Hence, your time becomes more flexible and you don t need to be in the office for 12 hours. You are managing a team, and you re managing investments among the team. But when you re starting out and you are very junior, everything is in your hands. The more seniority you gain, the more flexibility you have. Generally speaking, women are a minority in our industry less than 20% of CFA charterholders are women. I m curious what you think of that. How does that show up in how you think about the industry, your career, or organizations around you? It is very evident, especially in our region, that males dominate this industry by a large margin. It is unfortunate, but it is the nature of the business because of the need to put in long hours. Sometimes, for example, I leave at 9:00 p.m., come back in the morning, and my team is still in the office working. They didn t sleep, or they slept at the office. It is difficult for a woman to go through that, not to mention the extensive traveling and other obligations. In my career, I have seen that fewer women tend to stick around in the long term. At the latest job that I had, one woman started with us and then she had to shift jobs because she needed more balance between her work life and her husband and children. It CAREER SUCCESS: NAVIGATING THE NEW WORK ENVIRONMENT 2015 CFA INSTITUTE 180
is unfortunate. Finance should look at the attributes of the person regardless of the gender in terms of academics and career. So, there shouldn t be any prejudice in choosing someone, but the nature of the industry tends to have this outcome. In terms of finding the right role models in the industry, there can be elements of professional life in finance that apply pressure to behave less than ethically or to be motivated by greed. As a finance professional, when you think about mentors or role models, how do you identify the right people to hold up an industry? Although it does not always happen, working with a like-minded role model is always a blessing. In my culture, you would know the person, his or her parents, how he or she was brought up, and whether that person has been ethical most of his or her life or whether there are some bad stories that you hear about the person. For example, in the position where I am now, the person that I report to is like a brother to me. We are very much likeminded. He is a very fair and ethical person. We make a very strong combination together because we have this like-mindedness when we work. If it were someone who was unethical or you see any sort of behavior from him that does not make you comfortable, then it goes back to the individual. I personally would resign. Others might not have another option, so they might stay. So, it is an internal conflict. For me, ethics comes before anything else. If you re not ethical in your work or your life, then you will never prosper. CAREER SUCCESS: NAVIGATING THE NEW WORK ENVIRONMENT 2015 CFA INSTITUTE 181