February 2019 31 www.bahrainthismonth.com this month INTERVIEWS View more info online Mutlaq Bin Hamad Al-Morished is one of the most accomplished captains of industry to have emerged from Saudi Arabia having achieved an MBA from Stanford University, a Master’s in nuclear engineering from Princeton and a Bachelor’s in nuclear physics and mathematics from the University of Denver, USA. His specific fields of expertise include finance and engineering as well as company restructuring – he was given the nickname of ‘Butcher’. Here, the selfproclaimed liberal and advocate of progress tells us about his extraordinary education, the secrets of his success and his hopes for his country’s future. “I think I was a typical Bedouin kid, born in the desert, first generation that learned how to read and write. I got to America because of government scholarships back in 1976 with no plan whatsoever,” he says. “I ended up at the University of Denver because I was good in maths and science and not so good at long sentences in English. I graduated in nuclear physics and mathematics and applied to a bunch of colleges, as I wanted to continue in nuclear engineering. I got accepted at Wisconsin and Princeton. When I told my student advisor he said: ‘Anybody who gets accepted at Princeton, who would even look at the rest?’” Mutlaq worked in the nuclear industry but became bored and headed to Texas where he was with Shell Oil for about seven years before completing an MBA in finance at Stanford. Then, at his mother’s insistence, he returned to Saudi. Moving around the Kingdom’s commercial sector for many years, he gained a reputation for company restructuring and turnarounds executed with ruthless efficiency. He says: “The most important thing is to be honest. You cannot hide the fact that restructuring is going to involve unpleasant things. You have to communicate. Say: ‘Yes, we might let some people go but we’re not going to throw them to the wolves, we’re going to take care of them with proper compensation packages and so on’. “I was approached by a journalist some years ago who said: ‘You let go more than one third of the workforce’. I said yes but that’s not the point, you should be looking at the reverse, I saved two thirds of the workforce. So, the name of the game is to save the business and to save the livelihood of the majority of the employees. “You must stick with the plan and do it professionally. And the CEO of a restructured business must lead personally. The biggest mistake I’ve seen in my career is when a consultant is hired and told ‘go and make this business good’. Well, sorry, that does not work in real life because a consultant doesn’t know your business as well as you. In Sabic I Iead the restructuring of Hadeed, Sabic Europe in Holland, Sabic IP in USA and Shared Services in KSA.” After a stint as chief financial officer at Sabic, the Middle East’s largest public company, where he ended up “being able to do it with my eyes closed…I was bored”, Mutlaq took over as CEO of Tasnee, the National Industrialisation Company, which is Saudi Arabia’s second-largest industrial company and one of the world’s largest producers of titanium dioxide. Mutlaq explains: “We’re a conglomerate, we operate RESTRUCTURING AND DISRUPTIVE CHANGE Keep on Trucking, p36 The Future of Hospitality, p34 Mutlaq Bin Hamad Al-Morished Scan the code to view a video of the whole interview.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk0MTkxMQ==