Muhammad Farid Alam, FCA

Chartered Accountant & Investment Banker

I currently serve as CEO at AKD Securities Limited, which is a proud winner of the Best Equity Brokerage House by the CFA Association of Pakistan for the last two years.

"My moto in life is first deserve then desire"

{{--

"My moto in life is first deserve then desire"

--}}

"KEEP YOUR DREAMS ALIVE. UNDERSTAND, TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING REQUIRES FAITH AND BELIEF IN YOURSELF, VISION, HARD WORK, DETERMINATION, AND DEDICATION. REMEMBER ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE" (DEVERS). THIS IS ESSENTIALLY ALL THE ATTRIBUTES I HAVE BANKED UPON TO ACCOMPLISH MY GOALS. IN THE MOST TRYING HOURS OF MY LIFE I HAVE CLING ON TO THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF HOPE TO RUN, WALK OR INCH UP TOWARDS MY GOALS."

{{-- --}} {{--

Interviews

Interview from Business TV channels and New Channels.

{{--

@foreach (array_chunk($interviews, 3) as $index => $chunk) @endforeach

@foreach (array_chunk($interviews, 3) as $index => $chunk)

@foreach ($chunk as $key => $value) @php $queries = []; parse_str($value, $queries); $code = $queries['https://www_youtube_com/watch?v']; @endphp

@endforeach

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

--}}

Welcome to mfaridalam.com

Welcome to my website. I intend to introduce myself to you through this website so as to have a medium to discuss issues of common interest. In this regard, I feel it is appropriate to give you my introduction. By profession, I am a Chartered Accountant and by occupation, I am an investment Banker. I currently serve as CEO at AKD Securities Limited, which is proud winner of the Best Equity Brokerage House by the CFA Association of Pakistan for the last two years.

I have had a wonderful experience so far both in the private and public sector – although I could not bear the public sector for more than a year and a half.

{{--

Learn more

--}}

Childhood Memories

My childhood memories are from Model Town, Lahore where I was a student at Divisional Public School. I was a good student till class 8 but after that I really shined. I remember how great feeling it used to be when my Parents visited School for parent – teacher meetings and every teacher had to tell good things about me.

I recall that I was good at every subject especially languages but bad at mathematics. In sports I was School champ of Badminton and I was a Prefect.

I did not do well at Forman Christian College (F C College) from where I did F. SC. As mentioned earlier I was an excellent sportsman so I got admission in B. SC with double maths & physics as the subjects at the famous Government College, Lahore.

Switching from science to commerce after about six months in session was a U turn in my academic career and leaving Government College was also a bold step I took. I must share with readers here that although commerce as a subject was new to me but my father had been teaching me and my younger brother how to do business since we were lad.

How can I forget my first day at college where on reaching my Classroom at B.Com, I came to know that it was an assessment day and I was asked to appear in the test. I remember the test was about Journal entries of which I knew nothing and secured zero marks. To my utmost surprise the teacher while announcing the results asked me to come forward and receive the answer sheet and ridiculed me generously in front of all students including my female classmates which added insult to injury. As I missed out half of the academic session and knew nothing about commerce I could not do well in part I, but the final year was my year not only I enjoyed the subjects but also cleared the first year deficit and topped the Punjab university in the subject of Auditing while securing overall 3rd position at the college.

Education really kept me pre-occupied and whatever time I could muster got consummated giving on extra-curricular. So as they say “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Gets Going”, never say die attitude and the blind faith and conviction in my idea spurred me on and made sure that I stayed focused and achieve the ultimate goal.

{{--

Find out what it takes

--}}

My Professional Journey

My Professional Background and how it started

I am a fellow Chartered Accountant with over 2 decades of first-hand experience in financial markets. The love of Auditing, as a subject, lured me to this profession. In my B.Com examinations I aced Punjab University in the subject. My best friend was doing internship from a Chartered firm and challenged me to join that very firm. I joined it for an internship of three months but as luck would have it, stayed there and did my C A. I was doing fine as the youngest CFO of Pakistan’s first investment bank, when I was denied hefty bonus on the premise that I was not in the earning department of the bank. Accounts /audit and compliance and risk management were considered overheads. I switched from CFO to first Corporate Finance and then to equity department as equity strategist. For this position I had to migrate to Karachi which is the financial hub of the country. The lust of the capital markets has not allowed me to move on.

Passing the CA exams really re-enforced my belief that there are no short cuts in life and everything can be achieved through hard work.

My father was my first mentor who has shaped my personality. Realizing that I was disturbed he gave me a booster by proposing the name of my chartered firm as “HANRIF” and allocating space in his office at The Mall for my proposed chartered firm. He took first alphabets from our family name and coined this name. This gave me the required motivation to work even harder to achieve my goal.

As a philosopher once said probably to his beloved I changed the character and said it to the ICAP (The institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan):

O my friend you knew it well how painful it is to be in love yet you loved me and let me love you so passionately.

My First Job & Next and Next…

I joined CresBank – Pakistan’s first investment bank as an internal auditor. I must share with you especially if you are young and starting your careers that one should start his/ her carrier from internal audit but must not and I repeat must not end up as an internal auditor. I joined before I qualified as a Chartered Accountant and I could not go back to profession on one pretext or other after qualifying as I got used to regular cash flows and the fact that I was youngest CIA, CFO, Equity Strategist and Treasurer probably at any bank in Pakistan.

I left CresBank to join CIRC Ministry of Finance Government of Pakistan. The organization had the then strongest and most talented board comprising of the following members:

Governor SBP Dr. Ishrat Hussain, Minister for Privatization Mr. Altaf Saleem Minister for commerce Mr. Razzaque Dawood Secretary General Finance Mr. Mueen Afzal Private sector notables representing chambers with Mr Shaukat Aziz as Chairman

I joined PICIC to head the mutual fund division which had acquired 14 closed ended mutual funds from Investment Corporation of Pakistan. I did exceptionally well not by my own standards but also by the standards of a very demanding and experienced board. My performance was second to none especially viz z viz a group which had also acquired 13 funds from ICP and had an already established asset management company and was in the business for long.

I was lucky in the sense that the organization headed by Mr. Mohammad Ali Khoja had its best time 2003-2006 when I was there and I contributed to its glory and that I sensed that post-merger things will not be the same for PICIC and its staff. So I left the organization. I feel pride in stating that exactly the same happened.

I had always aspired to work for World Bank/ Asian Development Bank and by the grace of God it did come my way when I acted as a Domestic Consultant for ADB. I can tell you that after doing the assignment I have stopped narrating all the jokes which I used to crack about consultants as I realized it was no joke to be a Consultant!

I was migrating to Geneva to join Merrill Lynch where my old friend was doing exceptionally well in the private banking group that I was called by legend Aqeel Karim Dhedhi (AKD) who convinced me to join AKD Group where I subsequently took over as CEO AKD Securities. I enjoy the work and enduring ups and down of the economy and the capital markets.

The lust of the capital markets has not allowed me to move on

{{--

Learn more

--}}