Abdullah Akbar

Abdullah Akbar is a senior director, and serves as Head of Board Leadership Centre (BLC) and Audit Leader for Family Businesses for the firm in Saudi Arabia. He has  over 24 years of experience in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Oman. Prior to KPMG, he has worked for five years in another Big 4 in their offices in United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. He is responsible to establish and develop the BLC and represent the firm among family businesses to provide them with a range of audit and advisory services. He is a subject matter expert for clients in financial services, energy and natural resources, infrastructure and transport, and consumer and industrial markets sectors.

As a leader and accredited family business advisor, Abdullah also works with large family owned conglomerates advising the owners / board of directors to facilitate processes that allows them to co-create effective plans in respect of Initial Public Offering (IPO), succession planning, organization design, governance structures, authority matrices, setting up and defining roles and responsibilities of various board level committees. He has also been regularly consulted on challenges relating to talent management, internal audit, risk management and compliance functions. He has lead number of due diligence and valuation engagements in relation to private equity placements, IPO and privatization transactions including deals in financial services, energy and aviation sectors. Abdullah has also been actively involved in advising clients in respect of their Sukuks and EMTNs issues in the global financial markets.