Khalid Omar Al Kaf

Webit Speaker, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Etihad Etisalat (Mobily)

Khalid Omar Al Kaf was appointed chief executive officer and managing director of Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) in July 2005, after spending a little over 12 months as startup project manager, when the company was awarded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s second GSM license and first Saudi 3G mobile license for SAR 12.96 billion.

In 2007, he was instrumental in raising SAR 10.781 billion (USD 2.875 million) of Shariah compliant debt finance for Mobily, eclipsing an earlier 2004 record of SAR 8.8125 billion (US$2.35) in a syndicated Islamic loan and SAR 4.125 billion (US$ 1.1 billion), in an initial public offering that was oversubscribed by 51 times.

Al Kaf, an Emeriti national, holds a bachelor of science degree from George Washington University, Washington D.C., 1986. He returned to his home country and was hired by Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat), the Gulf Cooperation Council states’ leading telecommunications operator.
Al Kaf worked closely with French telecommunication giant, Alcatel, within the software development field and later with Japanese communication infrastructure leader Fujitsu.

In 1987, he moved on to operations with Etisalat as a project engineer for switching development in the Operations and Maintenance division.
Al Kaf’s career path developed and as general manager of Etisalat’s Network Services division, he played a definitive role in building a state-of-the-art third generation mobile network in the United Arab Emirates.

Al Kaf has been featured as a keynote speaker at a multitude of GSM conferences in Europe, the Far East, the Arab world. He is a member of the International Roaming Expert Group.

Among recent awards Al Kaf has been recognized with is the Dale Carnegie Leadership award in March 2009. Al Arabiya, the leading Arabic-language television news station, rated Al Kaf as one of the Top 10 successful CEOs in the Kingdom.