Abbas Al Qattan

Dr. al Qattan is a renown Kuwaiti businessman with more than thirty years of global investment banking experience in both the private sector and for the Kuwaiti government.

He has been the Special Advisor to the Managing Director of the Kuwait Investment Authority (“KIA”) advising on investment strategy and major investment initiatives and was appointed Advisor to the Kuwait Minister of Finance to assist in formulating economic policy in Kuwait.

He joined the Kuwait Foreign Trade Contracting and Investment Company (“KFTCIC”) in Direct Investments and played a leading role in the development of several projects for KFTCIC, KIA and the Ministry of Finance. He later joined KIA as a Director to establish a Direct Investments department and successfully launched the first PrivateEquity Fund for KIA. He returned to KFTCIC to run the New Business Development department and launched a number of important economic initiatives with KIA, the Central Bank, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Commerce, the Kuwait Fund and other major financial institutions. These initiatives included the offset program, privatization, the Small Business Development Program and the National Technology Enterprise Company.

He co-founded the first Islamic fund in the Gulf region and was instrumental in launching the first two telecom funds in the Gulf region with KIA, the Industrial Bank of Kuwait and the Public Institution of Social Security of Kuwait as major investors. He also initiated the first India fund in the Gulf region. More recently, Dr. al Qattan, as a private investor and investment consultant, assisted in the launch of a number of investment funds in the United States, including three Sycamore managed funds — Princeton Global Fund (private equity in the US and Asia), Princeton Development Fund (public equity in Asia) and AsiaStar IT Fund (private equity in Asia). He has served on the Board of Directors for many of the fund managers and portfolio companies he has advised.

Abbas received his Ph.D in Financial Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, his Masters Degree in Energy Economics from Colorado School of Mines and his BS degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Miami.