The positions are all new and were created as part of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management’s “targeted regional growth strategy”, according to Tamer Rashad, head of the company’s Middle East operations.
The five have all started their new roles with MLWM, and are Sahba Hadipour, Sandip Aggarwal, Zahoor Hussain, Ayad Hachem and Mustapha Sinno.
Hadipour has 27 years of experience in the banking and advisory business, and most recently was a private banker for Barclays Wealth in Dubai, where he worked closely with that bank’s Strategic Solutions Group, which looks after high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals in the UAE.
Aggarwal has 20 years of banking experience, and prior to joining MLWM, he was a senior relationship manager at HSBC Private Bank in Dubai.
Hussain has 30 years of experience in private banking and corporate credit. Before coming to MLWM, he was an investment director with a Dubai-based family office, and before that, worked at BNP Paribas as a senior wealth manager, looking after wealthy non-resident Indian and non-resident Pakistani clients in the GCC.
Hachem is the only one of the new appointees who will not be based in Dubai. Instead, he will work out of Beirut, where he reports to Leila Alameddine, Levant market manager. Before joining MLWM, he was a relationship manager at HSBC Private Bank in Beirut, and prior to that, a global account officer at HSBC Private Bank in Luxembourg, where he looked after clients in the so-called Levant (eastern Mediterranean) region.
Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, an arm of US-based Bank of America Corp., has had a presence in the Middle East for the past 49 years, having opened its first office in 1963. It currently employs more than 17,300 advisers globally, and as at the end of December, was looking after more than $1.5trn in client assets balances.
