There are moments in one’s professional life that invite more reflection than announcement. My appointment as CEO of NEQSOL Holding is one of them.
I have always believed that leadership is less about arrival than responsibility. A title may change overnight; trust does not. It is built slowly, through decisions, through consistency, and sometimes through silence; which, as anyone who knows me will confirm, I am quite capable of providing.
NEQSOL is a remarkable group. It has been built over many years with patience, courage, and an instinct for opportunity across very different markets and sectors. Today, we operate across telecommunications, energy, infrastructure, construction materials, hi-tech, and mining. We serve more than 25 million customers and employ more than 20,000 people across 11 countries. These numbers are important, but they are not the whole story. Behind them are engineers, operators, managers, technicians, partners, and families. A company of this scale is not an abstraction. It is a living organism.
I am grateful to Yusif Jabbarov for the trust he has placed in me and for the foundation he and the team have built. His move to Chairman of the Board marks not a departure from the story of NEQSOL, but a natural evolution in how the group prepares for its next stage. The challenge now is to take what has been created and make it more integrated, more international, and more institutionally strong.
That word – institutional – can sound cold. I do not mean it that way.
For me, institutional strength is not bureaucracy. It is clarity. It is the discipline to make decisions that survive beyond a quarter, beyond a cycle, beyond a single personality. It is governance that gives confidence to partners. It is transparency that allows talented people to do their best work. It is a culture where ambition is matched by standards.
NEQSOL has the scale to compete internationally. Our task now is to align that scale with a common direction.
This begins with integration. We are a diversified group, and diversity is a strength only when it does not become fragmentation. Across our businesses, we have deep expertise, strong local knowledge, and entrepreneurial energy. But the next phase requires us to work more deliberately as one team: sharing capabilities, simplifying processes, and making the group more than the sum of its parts.
It also requires a serious commitment to digital transformation. This is not a fashionable phrase to be inserted into presentations. In our sectors, digital capability is becoming part of competitiveness itself. From telecommunications infrastructure to energy systems, from operational efficiency to customer experience, technology will increasingly define who moves with speed and who falls behind. We have already begun this journey, but we have only started to understand its full potential.
I am particularly attentive to the role NEQSOL can play in helping connect regions, markets, and people. Projects such as the Digital Silk Way and the Trans-Caspian Fibre-Optic Cable are not simply infrastructure initiatives. They are part of a larger question: how can this region become more deeply connected to the global digital economy? For me, this is both a business question and a question of transmission; of access, knowledge, and opportunity.
Growth will also remain central. But growth must be selective. We are not here to collect flags on a map. New markets, partnerships, and acquisitions must strengthen the group, deepen our capabilities, and fit our long-term view. Europe, Africa, and Asia all present possibilities, but possibility alone is never a strategy. We will be ambitious, and we will be disciplined.
Above all, I want to remain close to the people who make NEQSOL work every day. At our first townhall, I said that success is not a “management thing”; it is a people thing. I meant it. The work ahead will not be done from a boardroom alone. It will be done in offices, plants, networks, sites, and conversations that do not always appear in minutes or press releases.
In the coming period, I will spend time across our businesses, listening carefully. Not ceremonially – I have limited patience for theatre – but practically. I want to understand where we are strong, where we are too complicated, where we are moving too slowly, and where we are underestimating ourselves.
I come to this role with respect for what has been built and with a clear sense that preservation is not enough. Strong companies do not protect their legacy by standing still. They protect it by renewing it.
NEQSOL’s next chapter will require pace, discipline, and a certain calmness under pressure. It will require us to think globally without losing our local intelligence. It will require us to be entrepreneurial without being improvised. It will require us to build institutions without becoming institutional in the worst sense of the word.
This is serious work. It is also energising work.
I am honoured to begin it.