Leaf Global Environmental Services Company has appointed Fahad bin Abdullah Alalwani as an independent member of its board of directors, filling the seat left by Mishal bin Ghanem Al-Juhani, who stepped down the previous day. The Jeddah based environmental services firm, which trades on the parallel market of the Saudi Exchange under the code 9597, disclosed both the resignation and the succession on 15 October 2026. The board approved the appointment at a meeting held the day before, and the seat is subject to ratification by shareholders at the next general assembly.
Al-Juhani had sat on the board as an independent member since the middle of 2023 and was relieved of the post at his own request. The company gave no reason beyond the resignation itself, and the handover was presented as an orderly one, with the vacancy filled within a day and announced in the same disclosure.
Alalwani is a lawyer rather than an engineer or an operator, and the brief he brings to the board is a legal and governance one. He has more than ten years in law and legal consulting, spanning corporate governance and compliance, company structuring, commercial contracts, foreign investment, labour law, arbitration and litigation, and liquidation and bankruptcy procedures. He is a lawyer licensed by the Ministry of Justice, a member of the Saudi Bar Association, a licensed bankruptcy trustee and a certified legal expert.
He is a partner and managing director of Almaimouni and Alalwani Law Firm and chief executive of Emtidad Alkheer Real Estate Company, and he sits on the board of Kader Association for Qualification and Training, a non profit body working in qualification and vocational training. He holds a master of laws from Tennessee State University in the United States and a bachelor of laws from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah.
Leaf Global Environmental Services provides environmental monitoring and assessment work to public and private clients in Saudi Arabia, covering air quality measurement, environmental impact studies, hazardous material inspection, marine environmental assessment, noise and vibration monitoring, and water and sediment analysis. It is one of a small group of specialist environmental consultancies to have reached the parallel market, where disclosure obligations are lighter than on the main market but still real.
The choice of a legal and governance specialist over another technical director is the part worth reading. An environmental services business sells compliance: its revenue depends on regulators continuing to require the studies it produces and on clients trusting that those studies will survive scrutiny. For a company of that shape, the governance layer is not an overhead on the business, it is adjacent to the product. A director whose working life is corporate governance, compliance and contract risk is therefore better matched to the board's actual exposure than the appointment looks at first glance, and his insolvency and restructuring credentials are the kind a smaller listed issuer wants present before it needs them rather than after.
The qualification is that the seat is not yet secure. A board filled vacancy on the Saudi parallel market stands only until the next general assembly ratifies it, so the appointment is provisional in a way that a shareholder elected seat is not, and an independent director in that position has limited leverage in his first months. The more telling signal will come at that vote. If shareholders confirm him and the board then routes governance, contracting and compliance matters through him in a defined way, the appointment will have changed how the company is overseen. If he is confirmed and left as a name on a list, it will have been a vacancy filled rather than a capability added.
