Tabuk Agricultural Development Company (TADCO) has appointed Asim Mohammed Salem Alhattami as an independent member of its board and as a member and chairman of its audit committee. The Saudi listed agricultural producer disclosed the decision in a market filing on 18 October 2026. The appointment took effect in the middle of October and runs to the close of the current board term in the summer of 2028. Alhattami arrives in the seat as a serving finance chief: since last year he has been chief financial officer of sirar by stc, the cybersecurity business of the Kingdom's largest telecommunications group.
The board acted on the recommendation of its nominations and remuneration committee, which reviewed his qualifications and experience and confirmed that he meets the independence requirements set out in Saudi Arabia's corporate governance regulations. The seat had become vacant when the previous audit committee chairman resigned at his own request, citing professional circumstances that required him to give up all of his board and committee positions. One qualification matters for how the appointment should be read: the board's decision is not the final word. TADCO has said the appointment will be put to shareholders at the next general assembly for approval, so until that vote Alhattami sits on the board and chairs the audit committee on the board's authority alone.
Alhattami is a fellow of both the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Saudi Organization for Certified Public Accountants, and he is a former member of SOCPA's auditing standards board. He holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and a master of business administration from the University of Miami. His disclosed record runs to more than sixteen years in financial and strategic planning, governance and institutional oversight. He qualified in audit as a senior auditor at Deloitte and then moved to Lubrief, before taking the accounting director role at Mithaq Investment Holding. He spent the following stretch of his career in insurance at Bupa Arabia, first as senior director of financial operations and later as head of financial control, and then became general manager of financial operations at Solutions by stc. From there he moved to the King Abdullah Financial District as vice president of financial accounting and control, before taking the finance chief's post at sirar by stc.
TADCO was established in 1983 and has traded on the Saudi main market since 1993. It is one of the larger agricultural producers in the Middle East and North Africa, run from a headquarters in Tabuk in the northwest of the country, where it farms more than 35,000 hectares and operates production and processing capacity for fresh fruit and vegetables, grains and olive oil. The company also holds positions in several joint ventures and subsidiary entities, and it reports within the food and beverage sector on the exchange.
The audit committee chair is the most consequential of the board's committee seats for a company in TADCO's position, and the appointment reads as a deliberate match of skill to problem rather than a routine filling of a vacancy. Alhattami's working life has been spent in financial control and reporting inside large regulated Saudi businesses, across insurance, telecommunications and a financial district development, which is precisely the ground audit committee work covers at a listed company: reporting quality, the internal control environment and the relationship with the external auditor. The inference, and it is an inference rather than a disclosed intention, is that the board wanted a sitting chief financial officer in the chair rather than a career non executive. Two things are worth watching. The first is the shareholder vote, because a committee chairman serving on an unratified appointment is in a weaker position than one confirmed by the general assembly, and the committee's work until then carries that qualification. The second is capacity: chairing the audit committee of a listed company while holding a full time finance chief's role elsewhere is a demanding combination, and Alhattami also sits on the board of Wataniya Insurance Company and on the audit committee of Alitmam Consulting Company.
