JV set to offer high-impact advisory services across Middle East, Türkiye, and Africa

Siraj Holding, a leading private investment firm in the UAE, in collaboration with AWR Lloyd Gulf Partners, will bring high-impact advisory services to bluechip corporates, family businesses, private equity and public sector clients across the Middle East, Türkey, and Africa (Meta) region, its senior official says.

Alexander Wood, CEO of AWR Lloyd, said the successful joint venture in Islamic finance and Takaful will offer long term trust-based relationships, on-the-ground support and a customised approach to its customers. Excerpts from the interview: 

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Please provide a brief introduction to AWR Lloyd and Siraj Holding.

AWR Lloyd has a 25-year trackrecord providing strategy consulting and  mergers and acquisitions (M&As) advisory services to bluechip corporates, family businesses, private equity and public sector clients. Last year the Financial Times ranked AWR Lloyd as one of the top-10 fastest growing consulting firms in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Siraj Holding, chaired by Ahmed Khalaf Al Otaiba, is a dynamic UAE-based private investment firm that has grown rapidly since its founding in 2019. With successful ventures in Islamic finance and Takaful, Siraj Holding is now extending its capabilities into strategic consulting through a joint venture with AWR Lloyd (AWR Lloyd Gulf Partners) to bring high-impact advisory services to the Middle East, Türkey, and Africa (Meta) region.

How will AWR Lloyd Gulf Partners be different from other consultancies in the region? 

The mainstream consultancies in the region tend to offer standardised services from a global playbook. But we believe ‘off-the-shelf’ and ‘one-size-fits-all’ consulting does not work. Long term trust-based relationships, on-the-ground support and a customised approach are critical in the Middle East and Asia.

Combining the deeply rooted multi-generational relationships established across the region by the owners of Siraj Holding with AWR Lloyd’s well-established reputation for innovative and bespoke advisory, AWR Lloyd Gulf Partners offers something very different. 

AWR Lloyd Gulf Partners will offer highly customised strategies tailored to each client’s unique context and challenges. Our services are grounded both in global best practice and an in-depth understanding of the region, assisting clients in unlocking long-term value. 

What will key areas of focus be for AWR Lloyd Gulf Partners?

We bring specialist expertise in the areas of Energy Transition, Sustainability Transformation, Smart Infrastructure and regional cross-border investment and M&A (e.g. Asia-GCC, GCC-Asia, Türkey-Africa). 

Importantly AWR Lloyd emphasises that ‘real sustainability’ is about more than just having decarbonisation plans or scoring high on ESG indices. It’s also about having effective crisis resiliency strategies. 

We live in an age of cascading polycrisis: wars, terrorism, climate change, natural disasters, pathogen outbreaks, systemic collapse, mass psycho-social crises and the threat of nuclear conflict. 

Public and private sector organisations must put in place real and effective contingency plans in place now. This is an area of focus for AWR Lloyd. During the pandemic AWR Lloyd worked closely with FHI 360, one of the world’s leading humanitarian emergency NGOs, to provide Crisis Management, Project Continuity and Crisis Recovery services to clients across Asia-Pacific and specifically to multi-billion dollar energy construction projects in the Middle East (Iraq and UAE). 

AWR Lloyd has recently signed an MOU with the Indonesian Industrial Estate Association to provide Catastrophic Crisis Resiliency services to their members. This proprietary service will also now be offered to clients in the Meta region via the new joint venture with Siraj Holding.