Al Mutaiwee presents FT Industry Awards

Under the patronage of H.E. Dr. Mohamed Khalfan bin Khirbash, UAE Minister of State for Finance and Industry, more than 300 delegates were gathered to witness, what was the highlight of the 2nd Financial Technology Summit and Exhibition which opened on Sunday, 2nd April.

The organisers of the event, Dubai-based World Development Forum (WDF), received an impressive response from the industry's Chief Information Officers (CIOs), with more than 75 per cent of the region's top Arab banks being represented and delegates coming from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and the GCC countries.

The awards were the result of in-depth research by a panel of judges in Cairo and Dubai in co-operation with the International Who's Who - Historic Society, media organisations and impartial international IT companies. They were tasked with identifying regional industry trailblazers who had initiated or developed unique IT value propositions that had gained their respective organisations, competitive advantage and provided a positive impact on the stakeholders and the bottom line.

The awards were split in to two categories, 'Financial Technology Leaders Awards' and the 'Who's Who of Financial Technology - Middle East Awards'.
Amongst those entering the 'FT Summit Hall of Fame' were Taha Husseini, CIO of Jeddah-based National Commercial Bank, Bob Thompson, Senior Manager IT at The Central Bank of UAE, Hana Razzouqi, CIO, Central Bank of Kuwait, Rady W. Rashed, CIO of Banque du Caire in Egypt, James Brent, Executive Director at Gulf Finance House in Bahrain, Ravi Khanna, Head of IT at Oman's Bank Dhofar and Mohammad Hicham Khatib, Director of Information & Communication Technical Department at the Amman Stock Exchange in Jordan.

Khaled Eid, Managing Director, The World Development Forum, stated, "The FT Summit Awards Ceremony is the culmination of the three-day event. With over 300 industry professionals, 36 expert speakers and with 75 of the top Arab Banks represented, we thought this was the perfect stage to honour regional pioneers in financial technology."

The FT Summit is sponsored by Oracle, STME and FileNet as Gold Sponsors; Knowledge Partner is Cisco Systems; and Silver Sponsors are Novell and Xerox.