BrazilProtiviti expands MENA presence with launch of member firm in Egypt
Global consultancy Protiviti has expanded its Middle East and North African presence with the launch of an office in Egypt.
Global professional services firm Protiviti has made its first foray into North Africa with the launch of an office in Egyptian capital Cairo, expanding on its existing MENA footprint which includes bases in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman and Kuwait. Altogether, Protiviti has more than 70 offices in 20-plus countries across Americas, Europe, the Asia Pacific and Middle East, staffed by over 4,500 employees.
Operating according to a member-firm basis in the Middle East region, the new Protiviti branch in Egypt will be led by Managing Director Ashraf Fahmy, a former Deloitte partner in Egypt and with the firm’s enterprise risk practice in Abu Dhabi. Together with 14 years at Deloitte, Fahmy kicked off his career with a six and a half year stint between the Egypt and Kuwait offices of Arthur Andersen – the firm that Protiviti was effectively spun out of.
With the aim of providing clients with expertise in internal audit as well as business and technology consulting, the global human resources consultancy Robert Half formed Protiviti in 2002 with the recruitment of more than 700 Arthur Andersen staffers in the wake of its collapse, including some 50 partners of the firm – such as current President and CEO Joseph Tarantino and Executive Vice President of Global Solutions Cory Gunderson.
Since then, Protiviti has grown its fee take toward the $1 billion mark (2017 revenues were $817 million, while in the third quarter of last year the firm pulled in $253 million, up 21.2 percent year-on-year) with specialty lines in risk, advisory and transactional services. In 2017, the firm launched a digital consulting arm Protiviti Digital, seeking to take advantage of the growing market for digital transformations with bundled expertise in technology and management.
Now, Protiviti’s newest member firm will also be seeking to capitalise on the ever-growing digital market, with a range of service offering in technology, digital, and analytics together with specialised governance and internal audit, forensics and risk management consulting – focused primarily on the financial services, energy, telecommunications and government and public sectors among others. According to a statement, the firm plans to expand its team of qualified local professionals in the coming months.
“Protiviti's expansion of the Member Firm network into Egypt reflects the country's remarkable economic progress over the last three years,” said Protiviti’s, executive vice president of international operations Andrew Clinton, who joined the firm in 2007 after a 20-year career at KPMG. “Egypt is a key northern gate to Africa and having a Member Firm in Cairo further expands our network in the region.”
Recently, Nadim Samna, the founder and managing partner of local management consultancy Stratexis, argued in a piece for Egyptian English-language media outlet Ahram Online that developing the local management consulting sector was a matter of national interest, with a range of public sector benefits including job creation, the maximisation of profits and the building of a knowledge economy.
Related: Risk and wealth advisory Prometeia open office in Cairo to serve the Levant
