Director of Origination & Business Development (Middle Markets AD location) – CIBG – Mashreq

Mashreq is hiring a Director of Origination & Business Development for its Corporate & Investment Banking Group, focused on the Middle Market segment from an Abu Dhabi base. The role is about growing Mashreq’s footprint among mid-sized corporate clients, originating new banking relationships and expanding existing ones across lending, trade, and transaction banking products.

This is a senior, client-facing role that requires managing a proposition across cash management, trade products, and collaboration with retail banking, private banking, and SME teams, meaning the director needs to think across the bank’s full product suite rather than a single lending silo. Expect a mix of direct client relationship management and internal coordination to make sure Mashreq’s broader capabilities are properly represented to Middle Market clients.

Mashreq’s growth strategy in this segment depends on directors who can be credible ambassadors for the bank externally while also navigating a fairly complex internal structure to deliver for clients. A strong candidate brings an existing network in the UAE corporate banking market and a track record of closing and growing mid-market relationships.

Middle Market corporate clients represent a significant growth segment for banks in the UAE, large enough to need sophisticated banking products, but often underserved relative to top-tier corporates, which makes origination talent in this segment directly tied to Mashreq's revenue growth. A Director who successfully originates and expands relationships in this space brings in new lending, trade finance, and transaction banking revenue that compounds over the life of each client relationship, not just a single deal. Because the role requires coordination across cash management, trade, retail, and private banking, strong execution here also strengthens cross-selling across the bank's broader product suite, increasing the lifetime value of each client relationship substantially beyond the initial origination. Getting this wrong, slow origination, weak internal coordination, or a poorly represented product offering, means ceding ground to competitor banks actively targeting the same Middle Market clients. There's a reputational dimension too: how well Mashreq's representatives serve mid-market clients shapes word-of-mouth referrals within tightly networked business communities, which matters enormously for future origination. This role is one of the more direct links between individual performance and the bank's measurable growth in a strategically important client segment.

A senior origination and business development role within Mashreq's Corporate & Investment Banking Group offers a clear, visible path toward more senior corporate banking leadership, this kind of client-facing, revenue-accountable role is exactly what banks look for when filling regional or group head positions later on. The breadth required here, coordinating across lending, trade, cash management, and multiple banking segments, builds a genuinely comprehensive view of corporate banking that narrower, single-product roles cannot offer. Success in Middle Market origination also builds a personal network of corporate relationships that carries significant career value well beyond any single employer, strong bankers in this space are recruited specifically for the relationships they bring with them. Mashreq's standing as one of the UAE's established banking groups means this experience carries real credibility across the regional banking market, useful both for internal advancement and for future opportunities elsewhere in GCC corporate banking. The role also sharpens commercial negotiation and cross-functional leadership skills that transfer well into general management or broader financial services leadership over time. For a corporate banker with ambitions toward a regional leadership track, this kind of origination-focused director role is a strong, high-visibility step to take, and the relationships built along the way tend to outlast any single job title.

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business, or a related field; an MBA or relevant postgraduate qualification is an advantage
• Substantial experience in corporate or business banking, with a focus on Middle Market client origination
• Proven track record growing a client portfolio across lending, trade, and transaction banking products
• Strong existing network within the UAE’s mid-market corporate sector
• Ability to coordinate across multiple internal banking segments to deliver a unified client proposition
• Excellent negotiation and relationship management skills
• Comfortable operating with real autonomy against growth targets