Orascom Telecom holding – Khalid Bichara

Khalid Bichara is the chief executive officer of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Holding, which has operations in Africa, Europe, Canada and Asia, as well as managing the Lebanese telecom provider Alfa. Bichara sat down with Executive at the Alfa headquarters in Beirut to discuss privatization, market share and why Lebanon still doesn’t have 3G. E  Samer Salemeh, after just a short stint as Alfa’s CEO, recently resigned. He had reportedly complained of political interference. Is this true? As the CEO of the holding, I don’t work day in day out in the business here and I am not really in the right place to comment on that. What I will say is that the business in Lebanon is one in which we are aware of the human capital, and we have a lot of Lebanese employees that have long been involved in the sector — Lebanon in 1994 was the leading