MANAGEMENT TEAM

In January 2008, Steve joined Gulf Finance as Chief Executive Officer with a mandate to transform the 10-year-old firm into a boutique finance company focused on small and medium sized enterprises. Since then, Gulf Finance enjoyed its most profitable year ever in 2008 and was well positioned to face the more challenging business climate that began in the second half of that year.

Steve joined Gulf Finance from Lloyds TSB in Dubai, where he was Chief Operating Officer and a member of the Board. He also was a member of the bank’s ‘Executive Development Scheme’. Originally he moved to Dubai with Lloyds TSB in August 2004 as Head of Commercial and Retail Banking.

During his four years with Lloyds TSB in Dubai, Steve grew the consumer banking business in the Middle East from a single office to a multi-branch operation that is a highly profitable, well-respected component of the Lloyds TSB Group.

With more than two decades of leadership and hands-on experience in business banking, branch banking, customer segmentation, product development and customer treatment strategies, Steve knows his industry and his clients. He joined the Lloyds TSB Group in 1989 and, in his last UK posting with the bank before making the move to Dubai, helped develop the customer-treatment strategy for the bank’s corporate business.

Active in the British Business Group, Steve is a former Director of Business Development for the association. He also is a Director for a Dubai-based venture capital firm and recently studied finance and accounting at the Executive Education department of the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California.

Steve’s passion for his profession is matched only by his passion for sports, which include running, scuba diving and golf.

Tom is the Managing Director of Commercial Finance at Gulf Finance. He is responsible for managing sales teams, sourcing new business and launching new products and contributes to senior management decisions on the direction of the firm.

For more than 10 years, Tom has worked in roles of increasing responsibility in retail, commercial and corporate banking, and in areas as diverse as small and medium-size enterprises and inter-bank markets. Before taking up his current responsibilities here at Gulf Finance, he worked at a leading UK bank, where, among other roles, he established both a property finance team and a hedge fund specialism.

Outside of Gulf Finance, Tom is an avid football fan as well as an active golfer.

As Chief Operating Officer at Gulf Finance, Layla is responsible for the strategic development of the company’s IT and Operations capabilities and sits as a member of the executive management committee. What’s more, she also oversees all aspects of the rapidly growing Consumer Finance business.

In fact, Layla joined Gulf Finance with a mandate to establish a Consumer Finance operation that would focus on the needs of underserved segments of the UAE finance market. She swiftly set up a successful business that offers a Marine Finance capability, as well as a variety of secured and unsecured personal loan products to professionals in specialist fields such as banking, accounting and law.

Life before Gulf Finance included several sales and management roles in consumer and retail banking with Lloyds TSB in Dubai - including setting up and running two of its customer service centres and being involved in a number of key strategic change initiatives.

Her 8 year banking career started with Barclays Bank in the UK.

Ravi is Chief Financial Officer at Gulf Finance. He is responsible for the Treasury, Finance, Accounting and Reporting functions and also manages our bank relationships to ensure optimal liquidity to fund our growth.

Before joining Gulf Finance, Ravi was Group Financial Controller with the Electronics division of the Dubai-based Al Aqili Group, responsible for Treasury, Finance, Accounting, Reporting and Logistics, as well as advisory to top management. Before that he was Audit Manager for the Oman Trading Establishment in Oman.

One of our most broadly experienced colleagues, Ravi has worked for more than 20 years in general management, finance, accounting, auditing and consulting with large local and multinational companies in a wide range of industries – from trading and manufacturing to financial services, in both India and the Middle East.

Edward is Director of Strategy & Credit at Gulf Finance. He is responsible for formulating and executing the company's strategies, developing and implementing credit policy and portfolio management, and for embedding the risk management culture of the business.

An eight-year veteran of the UK banking and insurance industries, Edward joined the Gulf Finance team from Barclays Bank plc, where he was Head of Strategy & Planning for the institution’s UK secured lending unit, a business with assets of £4 billion. Before that, he worked at Lloyds Banking Group in the UK, the largest provider of UK home insurance, where he held several positions, including Head of Strategy & Planning in the General Insurance unit and Market Development Manager in the Wholesale Banking division.

Edward earned a Master of Engineering degree, with a specialism in Manufacturing and Management, from the University of Durham in the UK, where he won the Procter & Gamble Prize for his thesis on catastrophe theory and its application to manufacturing strategies.