Dr Nasser Saidi is executive director of the Hawkamah Institute for Corporate Governance and chief economist of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

Dr Saidi is a former minister of economy and trade and minister of industry of Lebanon (1998-2000) and was the first vice-governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon for two successive mandates. He is co-chair with the OECD of the MENA Corporate Governance Working Group and established the Lebanon Corporate Governance Task Force. He was a Member of the UN Committee for Development Policy (UNCDP) for two mandates.

Dr Saidi has served as economic adviser and director to a number of central banks and financial institutions in the Arab countries, Europe and Central and Latin America. He is the author of "Corporate Governance in the MENA countries: Improving Transparency & Disclosure", and a number of books and publications addressing macroeconomic, capital market development and international economic issues in the MENA region. 

Prior to his public career, Dr. Saidi pursued a career as an academic, as a professor of economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales (Geneva, CH), and the Université de Genève, and was a lecturer at the American University of Beirut and the Université St. Joseph in Beirut.