Placed a UAE national President into an industrial pipe manufacturer serving utilities, oil and gas, and infrastructure markets, in 14 weeks.

The mandate

A regional industrial pipe manufacturer serving utilities, oil and gas, water and infrastructure markets engaged us in 2022 to identify and place a UAE national President. The role sat at the intersection of operational leadership and institutional access: the President was being asked to anchor government relations, drive regulatory positioning, lead strategic business development, and open the company’s exposure inside government entities and regulatory frameworks across the UAE and the wider GCC.

The brief was unusually narrow on two dimensions: the candidate had to be a UAE national, and the candidate had to carry credible operating experience in industrial-scale businesses dealing with government clients. The intersection of those two filters is small. The institution had been working on the brief internally for some months without resolution before engaging us.

JOH Partners ran the search on an exclusive retained basis. The thesis on which we accepted was simple: the UAE national executive layer credible at President level inside an industrial business serving government clients is a known set, not an unknown one. The work was less a wide-net market exercise and more a concentrated diligence and persuasion exercise.

Our approach

The mandate ran across four phases.

01. Calibration

Two weeks. Joint calibration with the Chairman and the existing executive team. Output: a single-page brief that explicitly defined the President’s mandate as institutional access first, operational delivery second.

02. Market mapping

Two weeks. The map ran inside the UAE only. Roughly forty UAE nationals were identified at the relevant operating seniority across industrial, infrastructure and government-adjacent commercial businesses.

03. Longlist research

Five weeks. From the mapped market we ran primary research conversations against the role’s institutional-access criterion. Because the candidate set was narrow and well-known, research time was weighted toward credibility verification and indirect referencing rather than wide outreach.

04. Shortlist and assessment

Five weeks. Three candidates were brought to final round. The chosen candidate was a UAE national operating leader with two decades of industrial sector experience and a direct government-engagement track record. The offer was signed by week fourteen.

The outcome

The President took the seat in 2022 and remains in seat at thirty-plus months. The hire has enabled the company to anchor government relations and regulatory engagement at a level previously reliant on external advisory, accelerating strategic development across utilities and oil and gas markets in the UAE and wider GCC.

The team

The mandate was led by the partner heading our Industrials and Infrastructure practice, supported by a research director (full-time across fourteen weeks) and a delivery PM (60% allocation). Total partner hours: approximately 320. Quarterly retention check-ins continue as part of our 24-month standing commitment.

We had been looking for the right UAE national for a year. JOH delivered the right person in fourteen weeks. The work was concentrated diligence, not wide-net search. They knew the right candidate set at the start, and they ran the persuasion well.