MultiBank Group Names Mohammed Al Hakim Vice Chairman and MB.io CEO

MultiBank Group has appointed Emirati executive Mohammed Al Hakim as Vice Chairman, giving him a second role at the same time: chief executive of MB.io, the group's cryptocurrency and digital asset trading platform.

MultiBank Group provides financial derivatives and brokerage services.

Al Hakim will work directly with Naser Taher, the group's founder and chairman. His mandate includes expanding MultiBank Group's international presence and building partnerships with financial institutions, governments and sovereign wealth funds. He will also oversee growth at MB.io and at MultiBank Exchange, whose launch coincides with his appointment, with responsibility for real-world asset tokenisation, institutional trading and cross-border settlement. Part of the brief is introducing MB.io to international markets where it does not yet operate.

Holding both roles puts one executive across the institutional brokerage and the consumer-facing exchange, an overlap the group presents as deliberate rather than as two separate jobs sharing a letterhead.

The hire connects two halves of the business that have run on different clocks. MultiBank Group's brokerage and derivatives operations depend on licences, capital and institutional relationships; its digital asset arm depends on payments infrastructure and consumer adoption. Al Hakim's record sits mostly on the second side, in the UAE. The group says it wants to connect traditional financial markets with digital asset services, a goal that leans on exactly the regulator and bank contacts he has spent recent years accumulating.

MultiBank Group reports a valuation of US$32 billion, or AED117 billion. Its trading volumes have reached US$450 billion, or AED1.65 trillion, and peak daily volumes have hit US$55 billion, or AED202 billion.

Al Hakim joins from Crypto.com, where he was president and general manager. Before that he held a senior leadership role in the UAE federal government, a background that maps onto a job built around sovereign wealth funds and government partnerships. He is a graduate of the Mohammed bin Rashid Leadership Program.

At Crypto.com he led the partnerships with Emirates and Dubai Duty Free that put cryptocurrency payments into aviation and travel retail. In July 2026 the company launched Crypto.com Pay with Emirates, letting eligible UAE customers pay for flights through the airline's website and app. In August 2026 it partnered with Dubai Duty Free, a deal the company said made it the first airport retailer in the Middle East to offer the regulated payment solution across physical stores and online.

He also secured a Stored Value Facilities licence from the Central Bank of the UAE. Crypto.com said it was the first cryptocurrency company to obtain one. Under his leadership, monthly UAE transaction volumes rose 49-fold between January and December 2025, without a dedicated marketing budget. He advanced a digital payments initiative with Dubai's Department of Finance, including its pilot phase, and developed institutional relationships with regulators, banks and international companies.

Naser Taher described the appointment as an important step in the strategy to build a globally integrated financial ecosystem. Al Hakim's understanding of regulatory environments, institutional markets and digital assets, he said, will be instrumental in advancing the group's international ambitions. Taher added that Al Hakim will play a central role in translating the vision into sustainable growth and in strengthening MultiBank Group's position in global financial markets.

Al Hakim said he was honoured to join at what he called a formative stage in the group's development. The convergence of traditional finance and digital assets, he said, is creating significant opportunities to reshape how institutions and investors access global markets.

He said his priority is to turn the group's international ambitions into commercial results and to bring MB.io to new markets. He will build MultiBank Exchange's institutional reach, establish trusted partnerships and advance solutions in tokenisation, digital asset trading and financial infrastructure. Working with Taher and the rest of the leadership, he said, the focus will be on practical, scalable solutions that support institutional adoption and connect financial markets worldwide.

The appointment fits a strategy that spans traditional financial services, digital assets and financial technology, with institutional partnerships and international expansion at its centre. MultiBank Exchange, launched alongside the hire, is the vehicle for the institutional side of that plan.

The open question is scale. A brokerage turning over US$55 billion on its busiest days is now asking institutional clients to follow it into tokenised assets and cross-border settlement, where the rulebooks are younger and the counterparties fewer. Al Hakim's case rests on what he did in the UAE: a payments licence, two airline and retail partnerships, and a 49-fold increase in monthly transaction volumes without a marketing budget.