Anil Pandey, Shihab Elborai and Sevag Papazian partners at Strategy&

Strategy& has appointed three new partners in the Middle East: Anil Pandey, Shihab Elborai and Sevag Papazian. All three have been promoted from the firm’s internal ranks.

The new partners take the size of the leadership team of Strategy& in the Middle East to 29. The firm, formerly Booz & Company and part of the PwC network, has more than 400 employees in the region serving clients from six regional offices, based in Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Cairo, Doha, Dubai and Riyadh. The team works for clients across a broad range of industries, including consumer and retail; energy, chemicals and utilities; engineered products and services; health; the public sector; private equity; real estate, and telecommunications, media, technology, and digital.

“Our partner class continues to grow not only in number but in its rich and diverse set of capabilities, differentiating us even further in the market and reinforcing our commitment to our clients,” said George Sarraf, Managing Director of Strategy& in the Middle East and a member of the firm’s EMEA Core Leadership team.

The three promotions at Strategy& are part of a wider partner appointment round within PwC Middle East, with a total of 32 admitted into the firm’s partnership, a record for the professional services firm against a backdrop of strong growth for PwC in the region. Last year PwC Middle East, which has around 4,300 professionals, grew its revenues by over 8%, outperforming the firm’s global growth rate (7%).

Anil Pandey

Dubai-based partner Anil Pandey is a member of Strategy&’s Energy, Chemicals, and Utilities practice. He has over 19 years of experience in the oil & gas sector including 10 years in management consulting with a focus on the upstream segment. He specialises in advising major national oil companies (NOCs) in the region on their corporate strategy formulations and execution, performance improvement, and operating model design and implementation. He most recently helped a NOC with launching an integrated downstream subsidiary, a MENA government with the establishment of an R&D center, and a major Middle East NOC with a large restructuring programme.

Pandey holds a Bachelor of Technology in manufacturing science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and a Diploma in corporate finance from London Business School.

Shihab Elborai

Also a partner in Strategy&’s Energy, Chemicals, and Utilities practice, Shihab Elborai serves energy players across the GCC, the Middle East, and North Africa on issues related to strategy, energy policy, sector governance, and regulatory framework design. He also works with large public-sector entities and state-owned enterprises to improve their operating model and organisational structure.

Elborai has been with Strategy& since 2015, prior to which he worked for Dussur in Saudi Arabia and for McKinsey & Company in Dubai as an Engagement Manager. Before that, he spent eight years with the Strategy& legal predecessors Booz & Company and Booz Allen Hamilton, working from the offices in Washington DC and Beirut.

Among the engagements he has recently worked on are: developing a 20-year national energy strategy for one of the largest petroleum-producing countries in the Middle East, overseeing a spin-off strategy for a government-owned utility, designing an electrical power business strategy and partnership model for a national oil company in GCC, and helping a North African electrical utility with building the capabilities of the planning team.

Sevag Papazian

After graduating from the American University of Beirut with a bachelor’s in computer and communications engineering (Sevag Papazian also holds an MBA from France’s prestigious INSEAD) Papazian worked for five years as a digital expert at IT services firm Murex. In 2010, Papazian joined Strategy&, and building on his nearly 14 years of experience and track record in technology and consulting, he has been promoted to partner in the firm’s Telecommunications, Media, Technology, and Digital practices in the Middle East.

Papazian works with clients on digital transformation agendas – he specialises in corporate digital strategies, technology-enabled transformations and technology-led performance improvement. He also works with public sector entities on national digitisation strategies and governance models. In addition to his client work, Papazian has co-authored several Strategy& reports in recent years, including a number of which have been featured on Consultancy-me.com: (‘GCC sharing economy reaches $10 billion mark’) and (‘MENA telecom industry on the verge of M&A wave’).

With the new partners in place, Sarraf said that Strategy& prides itself on “delivering an essential advantage to clients through the diverse range of skills and extensive expertise of our leadership team”. He further added that he is confident that Strategy& will be able to enhance its customers' propositions and further capitalise on the growing demand for its services. The strategic consultancy firm enjoys a particularly strong presence in the region, leveraging its heritage in the Middle East which traces back to 1993.

In 2017, Strategy& Middle East promoted Frederic Ozeir and Marwan Bejjani to partner level.