Samir Assaf is currently Chairman of the Board for HSBC Middle East Holdings (HMEH) and a Board Member of HSBC Bank Middle East (HBME). He also serves as a Senior Advisor for HSBC Group. Additionally, Assaf remains a Board Member of the Saudi Awwal Bank (SAB), formerly known as the Saudi Arabia British Bank (SABB).
At HSBC, Assaf held several prominent roles, including serving as CEO of Global Banking and Markets for 10 years until 2020 and as Chairman of HSBC Continental Europe’s Board for 10 years until 2021. Prior to that, he was CEO of Global Markets for three years.
In 2021, Samir Assaf joined General Atlantic (GA), where he currently serves as Chairman for the MENA region, and as a Senior Advisor. He is also on the Advisory Board for BeyondNetZero, GA’s climate fund.
Assaf is a member of the ‘Task Force on Promoting and Branding Hong Kong’, led by the Financial Secretary of the Government of the Hong Kong SAR. He serves as a Board Member of Alfanar, the Arab region’s first venture philanthropy organization, and is President of the Board of Directors of Fondation USJ. Assaf is also an Ambassador for the Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art Department at the Louvre Museum (Paris). Until 2023, he served as Co-Chair of the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI).
He began his career in finance at Total in 1987 before joining Crédit Commercial de France (CCF) in 1994. In 2000, following HSBC’s acquisition of CCF, he became part of the HSBC team.
Samir holds an MBA in Economics and International Finance from La Sorbonne University in Paris and a BSc degree in Finance from L’Institut d ’Etudes Politiques in Paris.