Mohammad Omran receives Lifetime Achievement Award

The jury of Business Leaders Summit has selected Mohammed Omran, Chairman of Etisalat, as Personality of the Year 2010 for being an excellent role model for other business leaders. The award comes also to recognize his great efforts in developing the telecom sector across the Middle East, Africa and Asia and for his leadership of Etisalat.

The awards took place during the Middle East Business Leaders Summit Ceremony that took place in Dubai, The awards aims to recognize the personalities, companies, as well as local and regional leading organisations that contributed to the development and excellence of the economy.

Mohammed Omran dedicated the award to Etisalat’s management and employees. “The achievements accomplished by Etisalat would not have been possible without a synchronized and experienced team possessing the ability to implement general strategies and policies applied by the management. This has reflected positively on our international expansion so that we are now able to extend our services to more than 2 billion people. Today, we are delighted that we have over 107m customers across our 18 markets,” Omran said.

Mr. Omran has worked for Etisalat over three decades and served in many different positions until he became the Chairman of Etisalat in 2005. From his current position he has overseen many of the company’s major achievements and today is considered as one of the key decision makers in the telecommunications sector in the region. In 2010, Arabian Business named Omran in its Power 100 list of the ‘Most Influential Arabs in the Arab World’.

Through Omran’s strategy which is based on deploying international best practise, thorough market analysis and selecting opportunities based on stringent criteria, the number of Etisalat’s customers increased from only 4 million in 2004 to 107 million customers across 18 markets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. This means that the number has increased 2,500% in just five years, an unprecedented achievement on the international level.

Etisalat has also received the Best Operator in the Middle East Award five times in the past three years, and the Best International Operator Award globally in 2008.