Five minutes with Chakib Zaari

Tell us about yourself

I was born and raised in Tangiers, Morocco. I studied in a French school until I was 18, when I moved to Paris and spent a further five years studying and then seven years working there. I’m multi-lingual; I speak French, English, Spanish and Arabic.

I began my career with Deloitte in the audit department, where I was dedicated to industrial multinational corporations. I started the Baker Tilly Majer practice from scratch in early 2011 without knowing who would be my first client or how I would manage to pay my first employee. It has been such an exciting journey to build this business from inception into a firm that has joined a network like Baker Tilly!

I’m married and have three children aged nine, seven and two. I love to spend my weekends with the family in nature, here in Casablanca, or in the many interesting places to visit in Morocco.

Outside of work, what keeps you busy?

A little bit of tennis and kyte surf, relaxing, socialising with friends and spending time with my kids and family that I don’t have a chance to see as much as I would like during the week.

What is the best advice anyone has given you?

Trying hard is infinitely more important than succeeding.

What does your new normal look like?

In Morocco, most of the companies have re-opened their offices with the application of strict sanitary measures which are certainly part of the new normal and are here to stay for a while. Also, even though physical meetings are still important and continue to take place, E-Meetings are becoming more and more popular because they save time for everyone. These also are becoming part of the New Normal.

What do you value most about working in the Baker Tilly network?

Today, clients are more and more international and working with Baker Tilly allows us to serve these clients in a global way. Because our firm is focused on international clients in Morocco, our integration in the network has been seen by our clients as a very positive move since they thought they could also benefit from the Baker Tilly network's services globally. The first months of our firm within the network proved the above to be true.

I believe that developing close relationships is a prerequisite to making potential synergies become actual.

What are your plans for the future?

In the immediate, the idea is to meet and know my fellow partners in Baker Tilly. I believe that developing close relationships is a prerequisite to making potential synergies become actual. In the medium term, our objective is to develop furthermore our range of services by leveraging the network’s capabilities. I'm thinking in particular about M&A and HR consulting services where I believe we could add value to our clients.

 

Get to know us in five minutes

 

Christine Anderson		Hathaway Spencer