Based in Dubai, Rima Assi brings deep experience in advising leading conglomerates on strategic risk management and financial restructuring.
Examples of Rima’s recent work include helping a major developer in the Gulf region restructure its financials—including reviewing its portfolio and identifying levers to create value, ranging from project restructuring to cash management to cost-savings initiatives. She helped another large developer boost its revenue generation by identifying ancillary revenues and tightening facility-management costs.
A major focus of Rima’s work is to help clients anticipate, respond to and manage market turbulence. In the wake of the 2008–09 financial crisis, she helped a leading bank in the Gulf region identify its capital and liquidity requirements, design new monitoring and management tools, define adaptive scenarios, and quantify opportunities to release liquidity and capital. Rima also helped a government institution understand and manage the impact of the crisis on its country’s financial sector and real-estate market. This included detailing a blueprint for a secondary-mortgage market and a bailout package for mortgage providers.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Rima spent 2 years working in the risk control department of Société Générale, in France. She is fluent in English, French, and Arabic.
Published work
“How developing economies can get more out of their infrastructure budgets,” McKinsey & Company, October 2018
“How governments can be more effective by reallocating their resources,” McKinsey & Company, March 2018
“The power of gender parity,” Newsweek Middle East, March 2016
“Wearing varifocals: A new perspective on risk organization effectiveness and efficiency,” McKinsey & Company, March 2012 (PDF–1.46 MB)
Education
HEC Paris, Graduate School of Management
MiM, economics