Location : Geneva, Switzerland

Expertise : Investment & Corporate Finance

Ali is a seasoned corporate finance professional with nearly 20-years of international leadership experience, Ali is Managing Partner at Swiss Optimizer SA, an investment and advisory firm based in Geneva and a Shareholder at Norman Venture Office (https://www.normanventureoffice.ch/), a Geneva-based company that currently owns 3 accountancy firms UIS SA, OSS Sarl and CS+ Services SA offering audit, accounting and tax services to ca. 150 startups, SMEs and private clients.

Prior to joining Swiss Optimizer SA, he was Senior Advisor and Group Head of Impact Investment at Turtle Management, a Single Family Office based in Zurich. Responsible for investments that deliver blended value, Ali led three of the Company’s strategic investment sectors for Africa: Innovation, Social Projects and Art & Science.

Since joining Turtle Management, Ali has led investment strategy for a range of Greenfield and Brownfield projects across the African continent. With extensive experience in working with start-ups across fast growing sectors (agriculture/agri-business, manufacturing services, environment, energy & water, and health & well- being), his role is to guide African innovators to develop scalable and competitive products and gain faster access to new markets. Actively involved in supporting need- based innovations in Africa, Ali spearheaded five major deals in Algeria, Egypt, Liberia, Senegal, and Togo.
Ali provided strategic leadership in a number of online and offline platforms aimed at strengthening African innovation ecosystems. His main objective was to identify viable opportunities to invest in African innovators and build a portfolio of impact investment companies.

Prior to joining Turtle Management, Ali worked as a Fund Manager for an investment arm of a Chinese family office, a privately held global and diversified shipping company. He has also previously worked as an Investment Project Management for Iron Ore Infrastructures in the Congo and Mauritania, in addition to roles as a Strategic Corporate Auditor, Finance Manager and Business Advisor across 22 African nations.

Ali has extensive experience in deal-making for family-owned businesses, start-ups, private-held and listed companies with a meaningful experience in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has also demonstrated the ability to successfully lead ventures in complex and challenging environments across four continents.

Ali has been running workshops on entrepreneurship and innovation for incubators and foundations. He is also a Guest speaker at IMD and at the University of Bocconi.

Ali has a Masters in Corporate Finance from The Sorbonne in Paris and earned an MBA from IMD in Lausanne.

Ali speaks fluently English, French and Portuguese

Location : Algiers, ALGERIA

Expertise : Commercial & investment banking

Senior Banker with 25 years of General Banking Experience covering primarily Commercial banking , Trade services and FIG . He has been advisor to the Governor then Director of Foreign Debt at the Algerian Central Bank from 1990 to 1995. Then managed the Asia network of for the Crédit Lyonnais Group in Paris from 1995 to 2000. Between 2000 and 2007 he ran several projects for different banks looking to penetrate the Algerian market and became CEO of HSBC Algeria during 2007 and 2013. Today Rachid provides high-level consulting services in the commercial & investment banking sector and still counts as customer some of the most prestigous banks in the world.