Advisory Board

IdealRatings is privileged to have a distinguished advisory board providing expert guidance and help with the ongoing development and strategic direction of the company.

The advisory board members are:
Zaher Barakat
Michael Birks
Ghadah Mazi
Michele Mcgovern
Trevor Regan

Zaher Barakat:
Zaher Barakat is a Middle East and Islamic Finance Expert. He is currently the Head of Middle East for Financial Product at RBC Capital Markets, and a visiting lecturer of Finance at Cass, where he teaches Islamic Banking and Finance for the Executive MBA program. Prior to joining RBC Capital Markets at the beginning of 2008, he was at Morgan Stanley in London and prior to that at ABN AMRO where he started his career in 1997. Mr Barakat has been involved in several areas of investment banking including, equity capital markets, project and infrastructure finance, corporate finance, structured products sales and trading. He has been instrumental in setting up and running Middle East regional coverage and in establishing Shariah Compliant platforms at the before mentioned financial institutions.

Mr Barakat received a Bachelors of Arts degree in Business Studies form Westminster Business School, where he graduated with honours, a Masters of Science degree in Investment Management from Cass Business School, and a PhD from the International School of Management in Paris, France. He writes in various publications including the Islamic Finance in Practice, and is active with various aid agencies and non-profit organisations.

Michael Birks:
Mr Birks has worked for over 30 years in the wholesale financial markets in a variety of roles. Following his degree in Politics and Economics at Oxford University, Mr Birks worked as an investment analyst and economist for Norwich Union Investment Management and then the Henley Centre for Forecasting. He then joined stockbrokers Montagu, Loebl, Stanley & Co as Economist and Head of Fixed Income Research and became Fixed Income Partner in 1981. Whilst at Montagu, Loebl, Mr Birks wrote a major study on the London Money and Government Bond Markets. In 1985, Mr Birks joined Bankers Trust Company to expand their European Treasury and Bond trading activities. He set up their Gilt Edged market making operation and bond arbitrage business, dealing in government bonds, short term instruments and foreign exchange. Mr Birks left BT in 1989 and, following 4 years as a sole practitioner consultant, set up Adsatis in 1993. Over the past 16 years, he has built this into a successful and reputable consulting practice with a wide range of (predominantly investment) banking clients. In addition to running the practice, Mr Birks specialises in business strategy and sales management consultancy. He is also the practice lead for Islamic Finance and consulting in the Middle East. He has consulted on, and designed sales credit systems for many of the major banks over the past 12 years, including Barclays Capital, Merrill Lynch, RBS, Bank of America and ABN Amro.

Mr Birks is a Fellow of the Securities and Investment Institute in the UK.

Ghadah Mazi:
Mrs. Mazi is a Senior Analyst, Quantitative Research at HSBC Saudi Arabia Limited. Mrs Mazi joined HSBC in early 2004 as an assistant portfolio manager for the Discretionary Portfolio Management services. In 2007 she was appointed as the Senior Analyst of the Quantitative Research section with the prime responsibility of conducting Performance and Attribution analysis for the Asset Management Department, calculating in-house indices and research work related to Saudi Stocks including risk analysis. Prior to joining HSBC, Mrs Mazi worked for Olayan America Corporation in New York, as an assistant analyst in the Portfolio Department. Mrs Mazi is also a professional software programmer having worked at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre as a Programmer Analyst in the late 90s.

Mrs Mazi holds a MS degree in Computational Finance from Oregon Health & Science University and a BS degree in Computer Sciences from King SaudUniversity.

Michele Mcgovern:
Michele McGovern is a sales-driven CEO with a nearly 15-year track record of building technology start-ups and running rapidly growing software companies. She has closed over $300 million in business transactions for early stage technology companies. Michele is advisor to a number of new technology ventures and is director of Xtiva Financial Systems. Michele was CEO of Iris Financial Solutions, a global financial services software company delivering trading software to top-tier investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Nikko Securities. Michele led the Iris transformation from consulting firm to software products’ company and then sold Iris to MGL, a $250 million publicly-traded technology solutions company based in Delhi, India. Prior to Iris, Michele launched Ferous, the first dedicated provider of sales and marketing services to financial technology companies. Ferous worked with industry leaders such as, Sungard, Linedata, Eze Castle Integration, LatentZero, Cogency Software, and others. Ferous built nearly $50 million in pipeline opportunities and facilitated over $100 million in acquisitions for these companies. Before Ferous, Michele joined TenFold, where she launched and was president and CEO of Argenesis, a subsidiary that delivered enterprise-scale software solutions to leading securities firms such as Barclays Global Investors and JPMorganChase. Michele grew the business and helped take TenFold public, achieving a $1 billion market cap. Michele started her career as a CPA at what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers and went on to launch McGovern Group, a consulting firm that worked with Franklin Templeton, Charles Schwab, and others to implement innovative technology solutions to drive new business opportunities.

Trevor Regan:
Mr Regan is a well known and respected figure in International Banking and Investment. He has held a number of senior roles with major Banks and worked in most developed and emerging markets across all asset classes in public and direct markets, including traditional Equity and Bond markets, Hedge Funds, Real Estate and Private Equity. In Citibank he was Global Director, Capital Markets Investing, working with Institutional Investors such as Central Banks and Government Investment Agencies. In Standard Chartered Bank, he was Chief Investment Officer for more than 50 countries and a diverse client base from Retail to Institutional Investors. In Al Rajhi, he was Global Chief Investment Officer, based in Riyadh, KSA, working with a full range of clients in Islamic Finance and Investment activities.
An accomplished and entertaining public speaker he is a regular contributor to Conferences and the media around the world. He is currently Managing Director of Manageable Economics, a specialist Investment Consultancy.