About

With over $3bn in revenue and more than 63,000 employees, Kuwait-headquartered Americana Group is the largest integrated food company in Middle East. It has activities across 13 countries in the MENA region, predominantly in the operation of restaurants, food and beverage outlets, and manufacturing facilities for food products. Americana Group is not only the largest operator of restaurant chains in the MENA region, but also one of the most successful franchise operators in the whole world, encompassing twelve world-leading brands such as: KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee’s, TGI Friday’s, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn, Signor Sassi, Costa Coffee, Krispy Kreme, and The Counter. Shehzaad Sacranie has been general counsel at the group since December 2016, managing its legal challenges from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Since he joined the company it is fair to say that Sacranie has been kept busy. On 7 March 2017 Adeptio AD Investments bought an additional 26.6% stake in Americana Group for $930m – taking the investment fund’s total ownership up to 93.4%. Following this, on 30 March 2017, the Americana Group board announced that it would approve a voluntary delisting of the company from the Boursa Kuwait. This change in ownership has been a challenging time for many at Americana Group, but the transition has been smoothed by the impeccable work of Sacranie and his legal team. Before joining Americana Group, Sacranie was general counsel at Mubadala GE Capital, a joint venture between GC Capital and Mubadala Development Company. Sacranie’s role at Mubadala GE Capital was his first in-house, having previously worked at law firm Allen & Overy for 10 years.