Interview – Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW) (2017)
ICAEW – 2017 INTERVIEW SPOTLIGHT ON ASHER NOOR
Recipient of the ICAEW Award 2017 for Advancing the Profession in Business
One name that inevitably crops up in conversations relating to accounting and finance in the Middle East is that of Asher Noor, Group CFO and Chief Investment Officer for Saudi family office, AlTouq Group.
Based out of Riyadh for the past 15-pljusyears, and formerly a CFO at Morgan Stanley Saudi Arabia, Asher is a one-man powerhouse who has a solid grounding as a chartered accountant but has also cross-pollinated the qualification in different facets of the regional economy and activities.
Asher sits on the board of various leading companies in the Middle East and beyond, driving their strategy, interacting with regulators on cross-border transactions, implementing ERPs and IFRS, speaking at leading conferences internationally, as well as juggling time as an elected member to institutional bodies in France, the UK and the USA, focusing on family business initiatives.
Asher was born in Karachi to a father who was a central banker and a mother who was the principal of a college and a professor of economics. He said, “Of course, accounting and finance were in my DNA and I think the steer I got from my parents early on has proven to be an invaluable investment that they made by helping me choose the accountancy profession. Today I reap the dividends of that investment.”
Asher is ecstatic on receiving the Award, saying”: “I am simply overwhelmed with pride and gratitude. ICAEW remains unrivalled when it comes to exemplifying the very best of what a professional accountant in business can stand for. For ICAEW and its learned jury to choose me and recognize my contributions in advancing the profession in business is an honour to cherish forever.
“It now also means an enhanced sense of duty to continue my quest of amplifying the role and utility that professional accountants can and do provide in all aspects of business and industry.”
When asked about the role that family offices play in the global world of finance, Asher said” “To those CFOs who make the transition into family offices, they are absolutely stunned to find this is a segment that gets very limited airtime in terms of its relevance, depth and breadth compared to unicorn startups, banking giants of traditional multinationals.
“Family Offices are as pervasive and significant in terms of their clout, as any other players on the global finance stage. Professional accountants will find the quality of exposure one can get at a sophisticated family office, such as the one I serve easily rivals traditional employment sectors.”
According to Asher, companies have always chased growth and accounts have helped to provide the appropriate data set. However, the companies of the future are embracing non-traditional means of transactions, innovative monetary instruments and complex capital structures. The professional accountant of today has to go beyond the data set and be the enable in terms of delivering performance as well.
Explaining further, he says that: “To do just that, professional accountants now need to actively shoulder the work load in other domains such as risk management, cyber security, treasury or risk being called underachievers – and organisations loathe underachievers!”
Originally published in: ICAEW Annual Honours Gala Ceremony 2017 special documentation
