Declan Ball

Ex-Global CHRO, FINCA Impact Finance at FINCA Impact Finance

Speaker

Declan trained as a lawyer. After studying Arabic in Syria and Egypt, he transitioned to HR in 1988 and built a career in the Middle East financial services sector. He led most HR functions and was CHRO, and an ExCom member, of several banks. His final executive role before relocating to Europe was as Executive Vice President of a major UAE bank, after which he was based in Washington DC as GCHRO of a global network of 20 fully regulated microfinance institutions and three shared service centres.

He was also internal Middle East HR Director of two “Big 4” professional services firms and had an external portfolio, supporting clients with his expertise in organisation design, Localisation, succession planning and balanced scorecards.

In addition, Declan has significant experience with telecoms, family businesses, asset management and private equity firms, including completing the human capital risk due diligence and designing a 4-year HC strategy for the PE acquisition of a North African joint-venue bank.

Declan now specialises in transformation (e.g., restructuring, regional expansion, new operating models, IPOs, M&As etc), organisation design, C-suite succession planning and workforce planning. He combines best practice HR skills with parallel expertise in operational risk, corporate governance and corporate performance management.

As both an ExCom member and consultant Declan is able to view Human Capital through multiple lenses. He has in-depth experience presenting to and securing Human Capital-related decisions from Boards of Directors and from three Board committees (RemCom / NCHR, Governance and Risk) by combining his strong commercial and strategic capabilities with an ability to analyse Human Capital using operational risk and financial metrics. This provides Board members with unbiased data to enable them to make informed, objective and monetised decisions.

Having been resident in the region (Sudan, Egypt, Syria and GCC) for three decades, and since working internationally (MENA, Latin America, USA, Africa and Asia), Declan has a global mindset and is not ethnocentric. He adapts quickly and respectfully to different national and corporate cultures to implement sustainable solutions based on a sympathetic understanding of local conditions. He is comfortable working in Arabic, English and French.