I’m now in my fourth year in Riyadh. I think the training that I received in private practice in Australia and the UK has certainly helped me in terms of the transactional side of things in Saudi Arabia. But I think what really helped enormously were my last few years in the UK working in-house. I began to really hone in on developing my skills within a corporate at a senior level, and I have now been able to deploy best-practice methodologies and principles at a senior level within my role here in Saudi. The thing is, some companies here in the region have very sophisticated legal departments, some don’t, and many have functions that sit in the middle. I think when you come to the Middle East from a mature/sophisticated professional environment, you should be able to add inherent value on an individual basis. However, the key to making your success sustainable will depend on how much you’re able to implement, transfer and embed your best practices within that environment to carry on when you’re gone.
One of the things that I enjoy the most about working in this region is that you have an opportunity to add value at a very senior level, and perhaps in a more effective manner than you might do if you were working in a larger westernised organisation that has multiple layers of bureaucracy. I’m not saying that bureaucracy is a bad thing, as sometimes that’s the only way you can control large organisations. But I think in this region we have a fantastic opportunity to really influence best practice as companies start to mature and institutionalise certain ways of working.
The Vision 2030 document came out in 2016, mapping out the next 14 years. So it’s not an overnight process, it’s a long-term process, and I think, as a consequence, there can be certain frustrations that creep in. I’ve seen people who come here as expats and maybe stay for a year or two and then think, ‘This isn’t moving as quick as I’d hoped’. And I have to say to a lot of them: what did you expect? This isn’t the UK, this isn’t the US: there’s a whole paradigm shift happening here so you need to be here for the long term, you’ve got to evolve with it. I think one of the things this region absolutely values is longevity and loyalty in terms of staying in the region. I see a lot of advisers flying in on a Sunday morning and flying out at the end of the week – and that might work for some, but those who live and breathe the market here will find that that’s where the real value comes from. In terms of enablers, working in the Middle East is a stark contrast to working in other jurisdictions. In prior roles, I’ve experienced situations where some objectives relating to infrastructure were good for the national interest, but those objectives would often get mired in political football. Here, the politics are of course of a different nature, but there is unequivocal support from the top down to improve the country by stating what these foundations and pillars are in Vision 2030. This political will therefore becomes the enabler as Saudi Arabia is constantly changing and challenging the status quo in order to become world’s best practice.
So there is a strong desire and a willingness to make things happen. That is what Saudi Arabia set out in their Vision 2030 publication. The next step is implementation. I think public sector capacity building, public sector privatisation and private sector corporatisation will allow both the public and private sectors to achieve the national goals. Of course that’s going to take a bit of time, but I see progress happening every day. n