Team

Waseef is a very experienced senior professional who has extensive commercial investment experience across all asset classes, different industry sectors, and geographies. He possesses strong experience in origination and structuring investments, taking into account financial, legal, tax, and Shariah parameters. He was responsible for the first Shariah-compliant Real Estate funds to be created, run, and successfully exited in the UK and France. He has also advised on Real Estate Development, Private Equity, Public Equity, and Venture Capital projects.  

Waseef is currently a Director in a Bahrain-based company which participates in the purchase and sale of steel exclusively with a JV partner and steel trader.

Waseef was recently Executive Director, Head of Investment at Arbah Capital and personally led all International Investments. This has included a shariah compliant £27m mezzanine loan to a prime residential development in central London, which was successfully exited, the £60m acquisition of the Sauchiehall Building in Glasgow, UK, acquisitions in the US in the Senior Living, Medical Campus, and Industrial sectors totaling nearly $260m. During his 5 year tenure, Waseef was responsible for generating over 80% of the revenue for Arbah Capital and was the major factor in the dramatic turnaround of the bank. Arbah, therefore, made a profit in the last 4 years of Waseef’s tenure, after years of losses, and had a strong 2020 and 2021 despite Covid, closing 4 large transactions in 2020 and 3 in 2021. AUMs have also seen exponential growth from SAR 200m to SAR 3bn in the 5 years from when Waseef joined. 

 Prior to Arbah Capital, Waseef exclusively focused his attention on Shems LLP for nine years in the UK, which specialized in Investment Advisory, Origination, Brokerage, and Asset Management to HNW and financial institutions. This provided Waseef invaluable direct experience across a wide and comprehensive investment spectrum.

Amongst other mandates, the firm was responsible for asset managing a $1bn portfolio for a HNW client, which had assets including a school, a luxury hotel, a real estate portfolio, and indirect investments. He helped to create a Wealth Management structure for the client and so is fully cognisant of offshore Trust structures and Inheritance Planning considerations.

Prior to this, Waseef was Executive Director at Gulf Finance House based in London for 6 years, heading structuring for Asset Management. He has also worked for EDS and IBM.

 His key skills include his broad breadth of experience, professionalism, integrity, the ability to take responsibility, being objective, excellent communication skills, undoubted analytical skills, and risk management. Waseef is able to combine his experience in finance, law, shariah, investment management, and investment structures to provide investors with an end-to-end solution.

 He holds an MA from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics and is a qualified CIMA accountant.