The Accountant Interviews Abu-Ghazaleh on Building an Arab Empire
24 Jun 2007Talal Abu-Ghazaleh believes that suffering is a blessing. The businessman, who leads one of the largest independent accountancy firms in the Middle East and has devoted much of his life to developing the Arab profession, is a classic example of how hard work and a positive attitude can overcome adversity.
Following the formation of Israel in 1948, the ten-year-old Palestinian and his affluent family were removed from their home in the port city of Jaffa and deported on a cargo ship to southern Lebanon.
“I had to live on bread and basic vegetables that we had to pick wild on the mountains,” Abu-Ghazaleh recalls. “I had to walk from that village to the school two hours going and two hours back, every day, rain, summer, snow, whatever. It was one of my most beautiful experiences because it was excellent exercise, excellent time to meditate and to review my studies. I call this the blessing of suffering… I think what happened to me equipped me to go into my business and (helped me with) my professional struggle.”
Abu-Ghazaleh achieved top marks at all levels of his education. He won a United Nation (UN) Relief and Work Agency scholarship to attend the American University of Beirut and completed a business degree with honors. In 1960, he was recruited by one of the largest Middle East accountancy firms and became a partner after five years. After 12 years, he said, he was “nominated to be the deputy chair and to take over from the chair”.
Abu-Ghazaleh adds: “I made my acceptance of my appointment conditional on a work program which was turned down and I was asked to leave. So I set up my firm on the same principle they refused. This helped in five years to become the largest and the leading accounting firm in the region.”
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh & Co, now known as Talal Abu-Ghazaleh International (TAGI), began with five offices. Today, the firm focuses on small and medium-sized entities and is part of a pan-Arabian conglomerate of business known as the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization. This group comprises 14 businesses that offer services as accounting and professional services, legal, management consulting, intellectual property, information technology, education, training, translation, recruitment, publication and distribution. The group now has more than 2000 professionals across 60 offices in the Middle East and 150 affiliate offices worldwide. This year the group has recorded 98% growth.
Aside from running a successful business empire, Abu-Ghazaleh has devoted much of his time to improving the profession in the Arab world. In 1984, he formed the Arab Society of Certified Public Accountants, a professional body that qualifies accountants, translates international standards into Arabic and rolls out education programs. Abu-Ghazaleh says the society is somewhat modeled on UK bodies. “We were lucky to have the understanding of the English profession to provide us with their curricula and their examination standards. We tailored our Arab qualification along with same line,” he says.
Abu-Ghazaleh has also been a member of several international boards, including the International Chamber of Commerce, International Federation of Accountants Council, UN Committee of Experts on Global Accounting Standards and the International Accounting Standards Committee. Recently, Abu-Ghazaleh was elected as the vice-chairman of the UN Global Compact – a global corporate social responsibility initiative led by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Abu-Ghazaleh says the Arab profession is developing in the right direction: “We are having great demand and great development in the field of professional competence in the Arab world. We are moving very positively on all fronts and all countries.”
However, he believes there is a lack of expertise in government departments, which means government, have been “lagging behind in the capabilities of their accountants and accounting system”. The situation is improving, through, according to Abu-Ghazaleh, “Now the governments are able to apportion the funds needed for capacity building in the government sector. That is why we are developing this accountancy technician program and also we are conducting training programs for staff on accounting for governmental organizations,” he says.
The technical program will be run in Arabic and Abu-Ghazaleh believes it will appeal to “those in industry and government who do not want a very highly qualified degree or qualification to become public accountants”. He says it will be “offered to improve the standards in the accounting profession”.
Abu-Ghazaleh tells TA that his mission is to help the region develop professionally in spite of political instability: “let us ignore the chaos, that’s not our problem and it’s not our business. We are in the business of developing capabilities and making this part of the world equal to any part of the world and in full harmony with any part of the world.”
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