Biography
Khaled Bichara is the Group Chief Executive Officer of both Weather Investments S.P.A. and Orascom Telecom Holding S.A.E. (OTH) since November 2009. Mr. Bichara is a board member of OTH since 2003 and sits on the board of Wind Telecomunicazioni S.P.A., smart village and several other telecommunication and IT companies.
Mr. Bichara joined the Group in 2000 as the Chief Internet Strategist. He then headed the fixed line and portal business unit at Wind Telecomunicazioni S.P.A and was appointed Chief Operating Officer of the company in 2005. During his tenure at Wind, Mr. Bichara played a key and instrumental role in restructuring the company’s organization, which led to the successful turnaround of Wind from a continuously loss making company to one of the best performing mobile, fixed line and broadband integrated operators in Europe within a record time span of three years. In April 2009, he was appointed Group Chief Operating Officer and seven months later promoted to Group Chief Executive Officer.
Prior to joining the Group, Mr. Bichara cofounded and was the Chairman and CEO of LINKdotNET (”LDN”), the largest private Internet Service Provider (”ISP”) in the Middle East. LDN was established in 1992 and has quickly grown to become industry leader and one of the largest in the country in terms of volume. LDN has over 2,100 employees in its 7 regional offices.
Mr. Bichara earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the American University in Cairo, where he currently resides as a member of the advisory board for the Computer Science and Engineering department. He is also an active member of the Software Community in the Middle East, a founding member of the Egyptian Software Association, Internet Society of Egypt and the Egyptian Electronic Commerce Committee.