Fouad Nicolas Trad is a global banker and seasoned board director with more than 30 years of experience leading and advising banks, financial institutions and sovereigns across the EMEA region. Based in Dubai, he combines deep operating credentials with extensive governance experience, having served on the boards of stock exchanges, private banks, funds, family offices and think tanks for over 20 years. He is a DFSA-authorised director.
The majority of Fouad’s executive career was spent within the Crédit Agricole group, where he held senior leadership positions over more than two decades. He served 22 years as Senior Managing Director at Crédit Agricole, including as Regional Head of the Middle Eastern Financial Institutions Group at Crédit Agricole Corporate Investment Banking (CACIB). He went on to become Chief Executive Officer of Byblos Bank Europe (BBE), the pan-European commercial and trade finance bank headquartered in Brussels with branches in Paris and London, where he was also President of the Management Committee and a member of the Board of Directors. In 2021 he was appointed Global Head of Middle East and DIFC SEO for Indosuez Wealth Management, the global wealth management brand of the Crédit Agricole group.
Earlier in his career, Fouad founded two regulated entities for Crédit Agricole Indosuez in the Middle East — establishing a financial company from scratch in post-war Lebanon, in partnership with former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and upgrading a representative office into a fully licensed DIFC bank in Dubai. He has since served as Special Advisor to the Group Chief Executive Officer of First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) for Africa, designing the group’s multi-business African strategy.
He currently sits as Non-Executive Director and Risk Committee Chair at FFA Private Bank DIFC, and as Independent Director and Remuneration Committee Chair at Investment and Capital Bank (I&C). He is Senior Advisor to the Financial Services Practice Partner at PwC Strategy&, and Chairman of the Belgian-Lebanese Business Council. Fouad served thirteen years as Board Member and Treasurer of the Beirut Stock Exchange, having been nominated to the role by the Lebanese Council of Ministers, and is Non-Executive Vice Chairman and board member of IPEMED, the Paris-based think tank on Euro-Mediterranean integration.
Fouad holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a major in Finance and a minor in Marketing, from Northeastern University. Trilingual in Arabic, French and English, he operates seamlessly across the GCC, the Levant, North Africa and Francophone Europe, covering banks, corporates, HNWIs, sovereigns and funds.
