Abdullah Akbar

Partner, Head of Private Enterprise and Family Business, and Head of the Board Leadership Centre

Abdullah Akbar is a Partner at KPMG, where he heads Private Enterprise and Family Business and leads the Board Leadership Centre (BLC) for the Middle East. He has more than 24 years of experience across Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Oman, and before KPMG he spent five years with another Big Four firm in its offices in the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. He is responsible for building the BLC and representing the firm among family businesses with a range of audit and advisory services, and he advises clients in financial services, energy and natural resources, infrastructure and transport, and consumer and industrial markets. As an accredited family business advisor, he works with large family-owned conglomerates and their boards on initial public offerings, succession planning, organisation design, governance structures, authority matrices and the roles of board committees, and he is regularly consulted on talent management, internal audit, risk management and compliance. He has led due diligence and valuation engagements for private equity placements, IPOs and privatisation transactions in financial services, energy and aviation, and has advised clients on sukuk and EMTN issuances in global markets. He is an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan, and holds an Executive Master's in Positive Leadership and Transformation from IE Business School in Spain and STEP Advanced Certificates in Advising the Family Business and in Family Business Governance.