Shuaa Capital has again shaken up its senior ranks, this time unveiling Walid Shihabi as CEO for its brokerage business, following the resignation of Mohammed Ali Yasin last week.

As part of our quest to shed a little more light on how senior Gulf-based finance professionals make it to the upper echelons, here’s a little more about the man himself.

1) He was educated in Beirut

Much like a number of high-profile players in the Middle Eastern financial sector, Shibabi has a Lebanese background. He holds a Bachelors degree in Business Administration from the American University of Beirut.

He speaks and writes fluent English, Arabic and Russian.

2) He has spent much of his career at Shuaa Capital

Shihabi started his career at a Kuwait-based private equity firm, which invested in infrastructure and oil exploration, before moving to Dubex Securities International as head of research.

He joined Shuaa Capital in 2001 to found and head its research function, and remained there for eight years before resigning in 2009.

3) He has been working in journalism and financial PR

Officially, according to Shuaa, Shihabi has merely been on sabbatical over the last year. However, it appears he’s actually been attempting to carve out an alternative career path during his time out.

He has been working for financial communications group M:Communications for its Middle East division M:Gulf, as a market and financial strategist.

He’s also been writing a semi-regular column for local newspaper The National. His official title appears to have evolved from ‘private financial and policy consultant’ in October 2009, to ‘freelance consultant and writer’ in December, suggesting that before Shuaa came knocking, more regular journalism work was the aim.

4) He identifies himself as European

Despite heralding from the Gulf region, Shihabi says that he lacks a “rigid definition of national identity” and has chosen “the model of the worldly European who identifies himself publicly as a European”.

This, as he explains in his one and only blog entry, is largely down to the problem he has with labelling the region ‘Middle East’ in the first place.

Shihabi will re-join Shuaa Capital in his new position as CEO of Shuaa Securities in September.