Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), Saudi Arabia's number two telecommunications operator, has appointed Kais Ben Hamida as chief financial officer, its parent company Etisalat said on Sunday.

Ben Hamida brings with him more than 20 years of international business and finance experience across the Middle East, North America and European region,said a statement from Mobily.

After his early start in banking, he spent significant part of his career at the Orange Group holding several leadership positions related to merger and acquisitions (M&A), project financing, business development and business monitoring, before taking in 2011 his current role as Mobinil CFO in Egypt, it added.

Ben Hamida started his career at the World Bank where he was in charge of the financing of infrastructure projects and then moved to the structured finance division at Société Générale.

In 1997, he joined the Orange Group (previously France Telecom) as head of project finance at FTMI before moving to Orange SA as a director of financial operations in charge of the Orange Group portfolio in Scandinavia and Middle East.

In 2003, he was appointed director of the group CFO Office and then took the position of deputy head of M&A, playing a leading role in several important M&A transactions including the €10.6 billion ($12 billion) acquisition of Amena in Spain and the €3.3 billion ($3.7 billion) disposal of Pages Jaunes, the directories business in France.

In 2009, he spent two years as a partner with a private equity fund focusing on investments in the infrastructure arena before his appointment in 2011 as chief financial officer of Mobinil.-TradeArabia News Service