Zouhair A. Khaliq has stepped down as Board Member of Wateen Telecom, Pakistan after completing a 3 year-tenure that led to the restructuring and reorganization of Wateen, said official statement issued by the company.
It may be recalled that Zouhair was appointed by Sheikh Nahayan bin Mubarak Al Nahayan, to the Board of Wateen and Warid in December 2010. However, later on he resigned from Warid Board while continued to remain the board member of Wateen Telecom.
Naeem Zamindar was appointed CEO at the same time and together this team brought in key new members to strengthen the management team and address the challenges at the Company.
Zouhair led the restructuring effort as Chairman of the Board Executive Committee.
Working with the CEO and shareholders Zouhair played a key role in strengthening Board Governance bringing in additional independent members to the Board, and reorganizing the operational team, including the appointment of a Restructuring firm to successfully negotiate new financial terms with its lenders.
Zouhair’s leadership consolidated and refocused Wateen’s businesses leading the effort in carving out the WiMax business and planning a merger with QuBee.
The Company went private by de-listing from the Stock Exchanges, strengthened the LDI business and charted a new strategy for its fibre business.
His contribution enabled Wateen to emerge from a loss making entity to one which is generating positive EBITDA and is now viewed as a stable organization set to build on these successes.
Zouhair is currently based in the UK and continues to work in an advisory capacity in the Telecom and Technology sector where he has had a successful and productive career over the last 22 years.
The result of this successful restructuring of wateen resulted laying off hundreds of employees, shutdown of customer centres and shrink business,,, lol
Members of top management including ex-CEO quit after taking their lions share and started their own business.
Inhi ki waja se wateen going back day by day,
Let’s not sugar coat the Wateen story & Zouhair’s role as it’s Director. Wateen’s WiMAX business was a failure, forcing the company to abandon and handover its customers to Augere. Only reason Wateen has a positive EBITDA is due to its LDI business. Like Warid, Wateen is a fiends & family outfit and Naeem Zamindar is not CEO material. With Zouhair out, Naeem will be soon out as well.
Another FnF in Wateen/Warid culture newly arrived CTO of Wateen where Naeem Z clearly show his inability to run the business….
This is unfair criticism. Wateen’s Wimax problems pre-dated Zohair and Naeems induction. This is common knowledge in the industry. Both these professionals tried very hard to turn around a failing Wimax business on a technology that was doomed – and for which upgrade to LTE is the only solution.
Augere and Wateen Wimax merger was the only logical path forward. They get combined spectrum of 60+ Mhz and sharing of tower infrastructure.
There is no such thing as Wateen’s WiMAX
problems. It is just a WiMAX problem. Zohair and Naeem had experience of the
WiMAX industry from their Infinity days and they realized early on that WiMAX
is a failed product. Why do you think they never expanded in other cities even
though they had the basic infrastructure in cities like Lahore and Islamabad. Both
Mobilink and Warid realized that it is a cancer that had to be amputated. Qubee
and Wi-Tribe do not have that luxury since this is their only venture.
Well aamir surely has vivid imagination, turning positive into negative and negative to positive or making a story out of nothing, like in case of Telenor these days, i can understand propakistani runs on conventional/unconventional mode of earnings but if this site has to survive it need to show some level of impartiality not influenced by the fact who gives most ads to it. i understand this post might not get approved but i am sure the message gets across.
Couldn’t agree more. Well said!!
Friends, pls don’t forget Zohair’s role at Mobilink as well viz equally dark. For Wateen as the news says, he was appointed by the Sheikh, so merit is out of question.
@Shehzad, would love to hear your views on Zouhair’s equally dark role at Mobilink. Lemme guess, you’re a disgruntled old Mobilink employee?
Actually No, people still remember Zohair’s time, It is Rashid Khan’s time that people hate, panic everywhere and numbers dropping. During Zohair’s time employees were happy and wanted to work, now the attitude is save-your-ass.
Zouhair sb time was a time of growth not because of Zouhair’s sb much input but cellular companies every where in the world were growing. You just had to be an idiot or the owners of Telecard/Instaphone to not know how to benefit from this. People infact give the credit to Ufone that lowered prices that caused growth.
Zouhair sb was just at the right place at the right time. Rashid Khan is here at a time where growth has slowed down not because of his fault but because mobile penetration has peaked. So lets cut him some slack here.
There is slow revenue growth in a period of inflation so perks won’t grow as fast or will need to be cut. That’s just the nature of business everywhere. Welcome to the real world Current Employee, the old days are gone. Live with it. Tough.
To some extent I agree, but we wish Rashid could have done a better job in building the employees confidence. For example, if the growth was slowed down then why every VP was given a new Mercedes when their BMW were still almost new, and during that same month security staff was laid-off due to slow growth. Similarly the ex deputy CTO position was made redundant 1 year ago, yet he was carried on for full one year with all full perks including a BMW. Similarly can you point out what exactly is job of chief strategy officer, he is also a VP and enjoying same perks yet just runs project office to screw other employees. Why it is always low level crowd who are impacted by slow growth and big shots still carry on.
Really a bunch of nonsense I’m sorry. ‘Merit is out of the question’. The Sheikh owns the company. The old management ripped him off and so he brought in new management which included Zouhair who was a well known and trusted person in the industry.
What merit are you talking about?
I don’t love Zouhair and like I’ve commented below he was just at the right place at right time. But merit out of the question doesn’t even arise here? And if it did, why don’t we start complaining about all the Middle Eastern countries we love visiting any opportunity we get where Princes (the Rulers’ sons) are placed in every powerful position imaginable.
Give me a break. Prehistoric thinking. Welcome to the real world. Adjust.
@wolverine
You’re wrong dude.
I’ve never been to Mobilink but yes an insider.
:)
Let me guess too. You were hired and elevated or benefited in some way by Zohair, right?