Sultan of spin

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"Anything I say you're welcome to print," says the 29 year-old Sheikh Sultan Bin Saud Al Qasimi, "but I'm not sure you'll be able to print all of it," he adds cracking a cheeky smile at me from behind his desk.

"Oh, we'll see," I reply.

Sheikh Sultan's views are notoriously controversial and posted regularly on his blog, however, it isn't often he speaks to the press, mainly as even the media get a bashing. "I'm sorry if I'm being very blunt but there's a lot more tabloid than investigative journalism here and everything in the press is positive, positive, positive.

"I want to see something where you have the power to change people's mindsets, the power to highlight certain defects in the economy that can be changed, but I feel like many people tread a thin line," he adds.

The large majority of Sheikh Sultan's opinions are equally forthright. As managing director of Al Saud Investments, a predominantly construction and real estate company that builds most of its properties in the UAE emirate of Sharjah and that has stakes in some major players across Europe, India, the Gulf and the Middle East, he doesn't need to voice these thoughts. But he tells me feels he has to. "I want to tell people what is going on, the truth isn't often heard."

In one of his most recent blogs, Sheikh Sultan wrote a 722-word piece on his view of a stereotypical, and what he calls, ‘fictional', Gulf company.

He labels them contradictory; says that the large majority operate under a cloud of conflict of interests including hiring (ex) government ministers as well as major businessmen and/or their sons who also serve on the boards of several of their competitors; that CEOs rarely, if ever, tell the truth to the media; and that they don't allow investors access to their financial controller or accounting team as is the case in Europe, Asia and North America. And that's the just the beginning.

"I was so angry that I was forced to write something. It's about every company in the Gulf. There's a degree of truth in every company you look at in the GCC," he explains.

"Insurance companies have portfolios that go into billions of dirhams, companies that have nothing to do with investment start investing themselves, boards are constituted of people on competing company boards. It's a big farce, the biggest joke that happened in the world."

He may over dramatise in some of the words he chooses but there is a clear conflict of interest in some aspects of the Gulf business world.

As Sheikh Sultan explains from his office in Sharjah that contains works from some of the UAE's best known artists, companies that compete with one another should not that have exactly the same board members, many of them ministers, as one another. "They should have self-respect and they should agree to not be appointed to those positions. I understand that in the seventies, eighties and even early nineties there were no measures in place, but business has changed completely and we are aiming to become international players.

"In those days we had to import our ambassadors from Egypt and Palestine, they weren't Gulf nationals.

"I understand that 30 years ago but today it isn't justified and they should take a long, hard look at themselves."

If you examine the boards of several companies in the GCC there tends to be a degree of ‘executive overlap' between businesses. "We all know it exists," claims Sheikh Sultan, but no one does anything about it.

"When you find a good person you shouldn't inundate them with 10 or 20 positions. Everyone knows who these people are and it's no secret. There have been so many times when a top local CEO has been in several conflicting positions and no one has had the guts to say so."

Sheikh Sultan recalls a recent experience whereby a very prominent CEO was leading three companies.

"There was a serious amount of conflict of interest and nobody said anything. He sold part of a company that he was representing to another company that he was managing, that is a complete conflict."

Fortunately there are an emerging breed of pioneers that are adopting international values. The young businessman picks on Kuwait and Oman, claiming that the rest of the Gulf is 15 to 20 years behind.

"I was a member of several non-conflicting Omani companies not so long ago. In Oman no minister is allowed to serve on a company board. It doesn't allow you to serve on competing companies and there are many other restrictions. And this was drafted and implemented 10 years ago.

"The other day Abu Dhabi announced that anybody with more than a 5% holding has to be identified.

"Is it going to take another five years to say that if you serve on two competing companies then you should resign from one of them? Why has it taken them so long to do that? It's not rocket science."

So is this going to change with the flurry of Arab/European and US takeovers that have been signed, sealed and delivered over the past 18 months? Sheikh Sultan rather gloomily suggests that the GCC will take its record of bad corporate governance to Western companies.

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