Saadeh Al Shami

Al Shami hails from a Lebanese Greek Orthodox family.^[1][2] He was born on 14 April 1954.^[3]

From 1987 to 1993 Al Shami was the head of the graduate school of business at the American University of Beirut.^[4] He worked at the Lebanese premiership and the finance ministry as a head of the reform commission between 2005 and 2006.^[4] Then from 2008 to 2013 he worked at the International Monetary Fund in different positions, including the assistant to the director of the Middle East and Central Asia department.^[5] Al Shami also served as the head of Capital Markets Authority in Lebanon between 2013 and 2017.^[5] In 2018 he began to work as the group chief economist at the National Bank of Kuwait.^[4]

He was a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.^[6] In the proposed cabinet by Saad Hariri in July 2021 Al Shami was named as the minister of economy, but the cabinet was not approved by the Lebanese Parliament.^[6] He was appointed deputy prime minister of Lebanon in the cabinet formed by Prime Minister Najib Mikati on 10 September 2021.^[6]

In April 2022 Shami announced that the Banque du Liban, central bank of Lebanon, went bankrupt: "The state has gone bankrupt as did the Banque du Liban, and the loss has occurred, and we will seek to reduce losses for the people."^[7]