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Area of Expertise

Islamic financing; microfinance; sovereign wealth funds; the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries; doing business in the Middle East and North Africa; funding water projects in MENA; public-private partnerships; foreign direct investment; GCC, Yemen, Syria

Additional Information

Ghiyath F. Nakshbendi teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at AU's Kogod School of Business, including Fundamentals of International Business, Global Marketplace, Export-Import Management, Microfinance, and Project Finance. His research focuses on the Middle East and North Africa regions as they relate to the financing of water projects, public-private partnerships, and sovereign wealth funds, and foreign direct investment. He is the founder and president of the Sangamore Group, which serves foreign investors who are seeking a cost-effective and discreet means of managing corporate and personal business activities in the United States. Sangamore Group oversees all aspects of the business venture, including legal, accounting, public relations, and financial management. Nakshbendi has more than 30 years of professional finance and real estate experience. His international business experience covers 19 countries. He was a financial advisor at the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development in Kuwait as well as a financial advisor at the Kuwait Investment Authority, one of the oldest sovereign wealth fund institutions in the world. In other professional roles, Nakshbendi has appraised investment opportunities in hotels, commercial real estate, and undeveloped land. He was active in restructuring hotel management companies and buying, selling, and rehabilitating hotels. He managed a $1 billion boutique real estate portfolio out of Los Angeles. that consisted of 10 hotels (four of them five star), apartment complexes, office buildings (one with 1.9 million square feet), land under development, and a golf course (Seralago in Orlando, Florida). He has also taught at colleges and universities in the eastern United States and overseas. He has gone on speaking engagements for the U.S. Department of State, lectured at the department’s Foreign Service Institute. Also, he is a frequent guest at Alhurra TV, VOA, and several TV and radio stations in the MENA region.