Beyond Lebanon's Peaks - An Odyssey : From Village School to Harvard and from Banking to a Prince’s Court?

Beyond Lebanon’ s Peaks traces an intriguing life story, from its earliest beginnings in the Lebanese mountain village of Souk El Gharb – an idyllic setting with a loving family. Here, a solid education provided George Kaanan with an excellent grounding in English literature and a lifelong love of the arts. He went on to study the sciences in the US with a Masters in civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and subsequently attended Harvard. With the parallel tragedies of his homeland’ s slide into civil war and the deterioration of his father’ s health, George moved to Athens and later Riyadh, working with the prestigious and demanding Citibank, and in time settled in London, initially with First Chicago and then again with Citibank/Saudi American Bank. From here, he went to work with Saudi Arabia’ s Prince Khalid bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. As chief executive of Makshaff, perhaps the very first Family Office, he travelled constantly between Arabia and the major world capitals. In time, he was to return to banking, and from 2009 he has headed the Arab Bankers'' Association from offices in London.