Cfo Thought Leader

In the late 1990s, when Stuart Henrickson was CFO for Koch Industries’ Canadian operations, Chase Manhattan made him a job offer unlike any that he had received before. “It was a fork in the road for me. Koch had been consolidating and bringing many of its operations back to their head office in the U.S., and it happened to be at that point in time that Chase brought me the opportunity,” explains Henrickson, who reports that he was asked to spearhead a development bank for Chase in the Middle East. “So, within the course of a week, I had to make a decision regarding whether I went down to the U.S. to be part of a Koch team that was already built or instead started to do something new with a blank sheet of paper,” recalls Henrickson. After 4 years with Chase, he would join the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, where he led investment banking for nearly 5 years before accepting a CEO position with Standard Bank MENA.    In all, Henrickson’s Middle East career chapter would extend across 11 years, a span of time duri