Page 11 - Aamir Rehman Gulf Capital and Islamic Finance The Rise of the New Global Players

x Acknowledgments

who masterfully managed the research process for my first book,
Dubai & Co., provided immensely valuable input on this second work
and helped to enforce a strict timeline for producing the manuscript.
Andrew Bartles provided valuable administrative support between
the release of Dubai & Co. and the start of work on Gulf Capital and
Islamic Finance.
I am immensely grateful for the support and love of my family in
producing this book and in countless other ways. My parents, Drs.
Razia and Abdul Rehman, have made sacrifices and provided blessings
that can never be repaid. My wife, Hina Ghory, has borne—with
grace—the burden of tolerating my hectic and travel-filled schedule,
giving from our scarce time together while encouraging me throughout
this effort. I am likewise grateful to my sister, Naheed Abbasi, and to
my extended family and relatives for their inspiring encouragement.
Iqbal Khan, CEO of Fajr Capital Limited and former founding
CEO of HSBC Amanah, has been a close mentor and dear colleague
for over a decade. His values-based leadership and vision remain a
constant inspiration, and I am grateful for his enthusiastic support of
this project. I wish also to recognize my colleagues on the Fajr Capital
management committee—Javed Ahmad, Dato’ Noorazman Aziz,
Kamran Faridi, Rafe Haneef, Saud Hashimi, and Rizwan Kherati—for
their warm collegiality and unwavering support for this effort.
In addition, I am grateful to the Middle East Institute—and, in
particular, Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain, Dr. Michael Ryan, J. F.
Hulston, and Stephanie Swierczek—for the encouragement, resources,
and opportunities it has provided me as an adjunct scholar since 2008.
The Harvard Islamic Finance Project, its staff, and its affiliates—
including Dr. S. Nazim Ali, Prof. Baber Johansen, Prof. Samuel L. Hayes
III, Taha Abdul-Basser, and many others—have provided me with an
invaluable perspective on the Islamic finance sector since 1995.
Additionally, I wish to recognize instructors at leading universities—
and first among them, Prof. Salah Hassan of George Washington
University—for drawing on Dubai & Co. for use in their curricula and
for providing me with direct access to their students. Trevor Lloyd-
Jones of the publication Business Intelligence Middle East is also to be rec-
ognized for his enthusiastic distribution of my commentary.
I thank the research team for Dubai & Co. and all who con-
tributed to its worldwide success. I am further grateful to dear col-
leagues from HSBC Amanah and the Boston Consulting Group,
through whom I was privileged to explore global corporate strategy,
the Gulf region, and Islamic finance. The guidance and observations