Hesham Fayez

Hesham Fayez has over 20 years of experience in Banking & Finance and Intellectual Property.

He started his legal career as a legal researcher in the Egyptian Ministry of Trade. Over  the next four years, he was a member of the Intellectual Property and Telecom departments in Zaki Hashem & Partners. In 2006, he joined Citigroup as in-house Country Counsel providing legal support across Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, and briefly Ireland. Hesham advised the bank on significant legal and regulatory changes impacting corporate and consumer businesses, and diversified banking products including acquisition finance, supply chain finance, asset-based lending, syndications, derivatives, custody, and Islamic finance.

In 2016, he was the lead lawyer on the sale of Citi’s consumer portfolio in Egypt. This transaction is a pioneer in the Egyptian banking market and rated in 2016 by IFLR as Best M&A Deal of the Year in the Middle East. He has also worked for Citibank Europe Plc (CEP) in Dublin as a product development and initiatives relationship counsel for key clients, FX issues and regulatory implementation.

In 2019, Hesham joined Arab Investment Bank as its General Counsel to be a member of a taskforce team responsible for restructuring and upgrading the performance of the bank to prepare it for acquisition. In less than two years, Hesham was able to restructure the legal affairs of the bank and manage from due diligence to closure one of the most complex acquisition deals given the legal nature and the historical ownership of the bank. Hesham has received two recognitions by Legal 500 in the Corporate Counsel 100 Powerlist: Africa (2015) and In-house Legal Team GC Powerlist: Africa Teams (2016).