Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts announced that Allen Smith, currently CEO of Prudential Real Estate Investors, will become president and CEO of the luxury hotel company.
The announcement follows an extensive global search overseen by the private company’s long-term shareholders, Kingdom Holding Company, Cascade Investment and Triples Holdings. Smith, age 56, will take up his new position on September 23.
Smith has served as CEO of Prudential Real Estate Investors (PREI), one of the world’s largest real estate investment managers, since 2008.
Under his leadership, PREI expanded its global presence, which today consists of 23 offices worldwide and $53 billion in real estate assets under management, including many hotels.
Smith joined Prudential in 1987 as a member of its hotel investment group after earning his master’s degree from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.
Over the course of his career with Prudential, his responsibilities expanded beyond hotel investing to include all commercial property types and all facets of the real estate investment business including strategic planning, organizational development, capital partner relations, portfolio management, corporate finance and business operations.
Four Seasons was founded in 1960 by Isadore Sharp, who built the company into the global icon it is today, with 91 properties in 38 countries complemented by a strong development pipeline.
The company was taken private in 2007 by its long-term shareholders.
With their support, Four Seasons is expanding its leadership position by accelerating execution of its existing growth strategy to further strengthen its iconic brand, while creating new opportunities for its loyal guests, employees, and hotel owner partners worldwide.
Commenting on Sunday’s announcement, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman of Kingdom Holding Company, said: “The success of Four Seasons as the world’s greatest luxury hospitality company has resulted from the incredibly strong and consistent vision that the company has pursued from its inception. We have enjoyed a strong relationship over 20 years as the company has evolved and grown, and we look forward to continuing to work closely with our friends at Cascade and Triples to support Allen as CEO.”
Michael Larson, chief investment officer of Cascade Investment, added: “We see great market opportunities to further expand the Four Seasons brand worldwide.”
Larson added: “Allen is a proven global growth leader and investor who fits well with our strong company culture and understands the value of preserving the quality of the existing brand. We are excited to work closely with our great partners and Allen to execute the established strategic plan for the company.”
Smith commented: “Having led a global real estate investment business, I am convinced there is no greater hotel brand and the market demand for Four Seasons around the world is enormous. This is a remarkable situation for me to leverage the complete range of skills developed over my career and it is an honor to help take one of the world’s most admired companies to even greater heights and more great places.”
Smith said: “The chance to work with this group of owners, management and employees created what is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
Allen Smith appointed CEO of Four Seasons
Allen Smith appointed CEO of Four Seasons
Saudi-built AI takes on financial crime
- Mozn’s FOCAL reflects the Kingdom’s growing fintech ambitions
RIYADH: As financial institutions face increasingly complex threats from fraud and money laundering, technology companies are racing to build systems that can keep pace with evolving risks.
One such effort is FOCAL, an AI-powered compliance and fraud prevention platform developed by Riyadh-based enterprise artificial intelligence company Mozn.
Founded in 2017, Mozn was established with a focus on building AI technology tailored to regional market needs and regulatory environments. Over time, the company has expanded its reach beyond Saudi Arabia, developing advanced AI solutions used by financial institutions in multiple markets. It has also gained international recognition, including being listed among the World’s Top 250 Fintech Companies for the second consecutive year.
In January 2026, Mozn’s flagship product, FOCAL, was named a Category Leader in Chartis Research’s RiskTech Quadrant 2025 for both AML Transaction Monitoring and KYC (Know Your Customer) Data and Solutions, placing it among 10 companies globally to receive this designation.
Malik Alyousef, co-founder of Mozn and chief technology officer of FOCAL, told Arab News that the platform initially focused on core anti-money laundering functions when development began in 2018. These included customer screening, watchlists, and transaction monitoring to support counter-terrorism financing efforts and the detection of suspicious activity.
As financial crime tactics evolved, the platform expanded into fraud prevention. According to Alyousef, this shift introduced a more proactive model, beginning with device risk analysis and later incorporating tools such as device fingerprinting, behavioral biometrics, and transaction fraud detection.
More recently, FOCAL has moved toward platform convergence through its Financial Crime Intelligence layer, a vendor-neutral framework designed to bring together multiple systems into a single interface for investigation and reporting. The approach allows institutions to gain a consolidated view without replacing their existing technology infrastructure.
“Our architecture eliminates blind spots in financial crime detection. It gives institutions a complete view of the user journey, combining transactional and non-transactional behavioral data,” Alyousef said.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Some electronic money institutions using the platform have reported fraud reductions of up to 90 percent.
• The platform combines anti-money laundering and fraud prevention into a single financial crime intelligence system.
• FOCAL integrates with existing banking systems without requiring institutions to replace their technology stack.
Beyond its underlying architecture, Alyousef pointed to several areas where FOCAL aims to differentiate itself in a competitive market. One is its emphasis on proactive fraud prevention, which assesses risk throughout the customer lifecycle — from onboarding and login behavior to ongoing account activity — with the goal of stopping fraud before losses occur.
He described the platform as an “expert-led model,” highlighting the availability of on-the-ground support for system design, tuning, assessments, and continuous optimization throughout its use.
“FOCAL is designed to be extended,” Alyousef added, noting its adaptability and the ability for clients to customize schemas, rules, and data fields to match their business models and risk tolerance. This flexibility, he said, allows institutions to respond more quickly to emerging fraud patterns.
Alyousef also emphasized the importance of local context in the platform’s development.
“The platform incorporates regional regulatory requirements and language considerations. Global tools often struggle with local context, naming conventions and compliance nuances — we are designed specifically with these realities in mind,” he said.
FOCAL is currently used by a range of organizations, including traditional banks, digital banks, fintech firms, electronic money institutions, payment companies, and other financial service providers. Alyousef said results from live deployments have been significant, with some large EMI clients reporting fraud reductions of up to 90 percent.
“Clients benefit not only from reduced fraud losses but also from an improved customer experience, as the system minimizes unnecessary friction and false rejections,” he said. “Beyond financial services, we also work with organizations in e-commerce and telecommunications.”
Looking ahead, Alyousef said the company sees agentic AI as a key direction for the future of financial crime prevention, both in the region and globally. Mozn, he added, is investing heavily in this area to enhance investigative workflows and operational efficiency, building on the capabilities of its Financial Crime Intelligence layer.
“We are pioneers in introducing agentic AI for financial crime investigation and rule-building. Our roadmap increasingly emphasizes automation, advanced machine learning and AI-assisted workflows to improve investigator productivity and reduce false positives.”
As AI tools become more widely available, Alyousef warned that the risk of misuse by criminals is also increasing, raising the bar for defensive technologies.
“Our goal is to stay ahead of that curve and to contribute meaningfully to positioning Saudi Arabia and the region as globally competitive leaders in AI,” he said.
