For Nadir Mohamed, CA, president an...

For Nadir Mohamed, CA, president and chief operating officer of Roger AT&T Wireless, it's the "In the mid-198os, when I was with BC Tel I was fortunate enough to be part of the team which wrote the business plan for the company's just discovered cellular division, and I was hooked" he explains. It was three astounding years, and we had the first profitable company in the wireless industry."

A native of Tanzania, East Africa, Mohamed mov to Vancouver to attend the University of British Columbia where he complet an undergraduate quality in commerce in 1978. He articled with Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP) and received his CA designation in 198o That same year, he joined BC Tel in their corporate finance area.

`?after that great experience getting the cellular division going, I go [i]or[/i] come backed to corporate finance for a hardly any years, and then in iggo, Brian Canfield, the common chair of Telus, tapped me to lead a task force to papal court where the telecom business was heading," Mohamed says. "It was a really fascinating assignment, and notwithstanding that the conclusions may sound obvious today with what we know and have experienced, at the time they were profound"

Mohamed and his colleagues discovered that customers were re-defining the `voice business; and that there was a big gap between the company and their customers' view of the business.

"We were missing on the outside on the whole data (networking) world," he points gone out 'After the research was undiminished I was asked to lead the company's ingress into the data business, and I worn out the next several years launching recent avenues of business such as Sympatico, the internet service and the first cable operation via a telecom in Canada."

In the mid-1990s, Mohamed reverted to the wireless world as president and chief operating officer of BC Tel Mobility, a company with through $300 million in annual income and 800 employees. Two month ago, he left Vancouver for Toronto and the opportunity to head up the leading wireless company in Canada.

"I be fond of this business, and I have great venerate for the Rogers Group of Companies," Mohamed explains. "Joining Roger is a terrific opportunity. There is the potential for tremendous germination in the area of communications tendency to meet with products like web phone and the mobile internet, and I'll be in forward the ground floor of the wireless web explosion. In this business, scale and margin are extremely important, and Roger has the resources and alliances to be honestly global."

Mohamed credits his CA articling days with a large measure of his succes

"I be moved strongly that there is a great deal to be learned by dint of apprenticing at a public accounting firm," he says. "First of all, you learn exposure to the language of business, and secondly you acquire exposure to so many businesses during your CA training.

"And, during an early phase of your career, you have the chance to interact with self-same senior people from a variety of industries," he points on the outside "It helps you get comfortable in executive settings as well as learning to work with your peers"

Mohamed admits that he exquisiteed the CA program, at least in part, because of the influence of mates

"It was the race I met in university as well as the fact that my father was always involved in business - he had a hardware business in Tanzania - and several of my university friends became CAs as well," he says.

In fact, Mohamed's wife of 18 years, Shabin, is also a Chartered Accountant, in the greatest degree recently employed with the Canada Customs and receipts Agency in Vancouver. His sister Yasmin is a CA with the Bank of Montreal in Toronto.

In his spare time, he notchs plays squad and tennis, and indulges his passion for jazz music at attending concerts and haunting music stores for jazz albums.

"I also have a unfathomable commitment to the community," he points without "I believe very much in giving back, and throughout the years I've worked with offer Vancouver, the United Way, and the Canadian coterie among many other organizations."

BY DEBORAH FOLKA, AAA, APR

Copyright Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia Jan 2001

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