The team

HASSAN AIT ALI

Hassan Ait Ali co-founded in 1993 Upline Group, one of the leading investment banks in Morocco. He served as Chairman and Managing Director and was responsible for M&A and corporate advisory activities. During his tenure at Upline Group, Hassan was involved in the execution of several transactions in all areas of privatization, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, debt and equity transactions. His current industry experience covers a wide range of sectors including industrial, retail, agribusiness and financial institutions.

In 2009, Hassan and his partners sold Upline Group to Banque Populaire, Morocco’s largest commercial bank. In 2010, Hassan, founded Cantor, an independent M&A boutique based in Casablanca, which focuses on strategic and financial advisory services for a wide range of clients based in Africa. Since then, he has participated in numerous advisory assignments in the field of M&A, private placement, restructuring and financial advisory for several Moroccan, European, North American and Middle Eastern clients.

Hassan holds a degree in computer science from the Catholic University of Louvain and a bachelor’s degree from the Brussels Business School. Mr. Ait Ali sits on the following boards: Moroccan Student Foundation ( Foundation that supports and finances orphans for their university studies). ONOMO Hotels (Development and management of hotels in Africa).

MOHAMED SEFIANE EL OUADGHIRI

Mohamed Sefiane El Ouadghiri has been an expert in capital transactions for almost 20 years. Within Cantor Capital Group, Mohamed assists corporate and private equity clients in their acquisition or disposal projects as well as all forms of fund raising. He assists Cantor’s clients in particular on the qualification, evaluation and structuring of deals to turn them into real success stories. Mohamed has been an investment banker since 2001 as a manager at PwC France’s TS, C.E.O. of Upline Corporate and Director of MSO Conseil. Among his other experiences, Mohamed was for more than 2 years Project Manager for the CEO of OCP, the world’s leading phosphate group, as part of the project team in charge of setting up a financial services platform dedicated to ‘in-house investment banking’.

Before starting his career in investment banking, Mohamed worked for 2 years as an auditor-consultant at Deloitte France until 2001. Mohamed graduated from EDHEC school of Management in 1999 and obtained the Executive Master in Islamic Finance from UIR in 2019.

LAMIAA BENCHEKROUN

Lamiaa Benchekroun graduated from the institute of Higher Studies of Management (H.E.M) in 2003, having received a multi-skilled training in finance. Cumulating more than 15 years of operational experience in various sectors of activity (banking, professional training and hotel business), Lamiaa has been able to develop a real expertise thanks to several successful projects to its credit.

Today, Lamiaa contributes to the execution of deals at their different stages within Cantor Capital Group.