Director Corporate Strategy

Our client : A leading conglomerate with core focus on real estate, construction, industrial sector and a smattering of other businesses.

The need : Each business doing well, reporting against its own plan, in its own language and on its own cycle. Every unit can post a good on their own terms while the group capital sits in the wrong place. This created the need to build the function- the framework, governance, performance discipline and give the Chairman and Board one lens across businesses that share nothing other than ownership. Challenge performance where it needs challenging. Evaluate growth and investment opportunities on a common return basis. Track whether strategy is actually executing or only reported. The seat carries voice on capital allocation and on the group plan. You help with the decision making process.

What the role requires : You have built or rebuilt a Group Strategy, Corporate Development or Performance function inside a diversified group, holding company, or investment platform. Multi-business, not a single-P&L strategy role scaled up.

Real-asset exposure in your history - real estate or industrial, ideally both. The two don't share a return clock, and building a comparison framework that respects that while still telling the Board something true is the technical core of the job.

GCC operating experience, and a working understanding of how governance functions inside a family-controlled group. It doesn't read the way the textbook says.

Executive Maturity : No line authority. Businesses that have governed themselves for two decades are now being asked for their numbers, and then asked why. The first year is largely conversations, several of them uncomfortable.