Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is hiring bankers from rival firms Citigroup Inc. and HSBC Holdings Plc as the U.S. lender seeks to expand its business in the Middle East amid a surge in deals from the region.
Jassim AlSane, a senior Citigroup banker, will join Goldman Sachs Dubai office in November as executive director and co-head of investment banking operations for the Middle East and North Africa. Also, Omar AlZaim is joining the bank as director of the executive committee and a head of investment banking in Saudi Arabia, according to a spokesman for the bank.
The hirings come as deal activity picks up in the Middle East, fueled by governments and state-owned firms looking for new ways to raise money and diversify their economies after last year's slump in revenues from oil sales.
Mergers and acquisition activity in the Middle East and Africa region has more than doubled this year to about $125 billion according to Bloomberg compiled data boosted by deals like a $12.4 billion stake in Saudi Aramco's oil pipelines.
Goldman Sachs is also beginning to win new business in Abu Dhabi after it was sidelined by some of the emirate's biggest firms about two years ago, following a lawsuit by wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co. to recover losses from its dealings with Malaysia s 1 MDB fund.
Representatives for Citigroup and HSBC declined to comment.
Goldman Sachs is poised to lead the potential public offering of Emirates Global Aluminium in Abu Dhabi, a deal that would value business at more than $15 billion, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News on Thursday. It s also working with Saudi Aramco to advise JPMorgan Chase Co. about the sale of a stake in a subsidiary that controls its natural gas pipelines, people familiar told Bloomberg in July, and was one of the joint bookrunners on Qatar Petroleum's $6 billion bond sale the same month.
AlSane joined Goldman Sachs after more than 13 years at Citigroup, where he was most recently director of the investment banking division. AlZaim will start in the autumn and will be based in Riyadh in his new role. He will replace Eyas AlDossari, who left the bank earlier this year to join the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund.
At Goldman, AlSane will work together with Selma Hassan, who was appointed as the bank s head of the MENA investment bank in 2019, to support the bank s business with sovereign wealth funds and large corporates.
AlSane began as an analyst at Citigroup in 2008, before moving to serve as managing director last year, according to his LinkedIn profile.