How Saudi Arabia hired the man behind a $21.9B hospital IPO to run its health system for 33M people
What's the deal? Nasser Al Huqbani, who spent 26 years building Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Medical Group (HMG)Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → into Saudi Arabia's largest private healthcare operator, became chief executive officer of the state-run Health Holding Company (HHC)Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → in January 2023. He now leads a public system serving more than 33 million people.
Who is he? Al Huqbani studied administrative sciences and public administration at King Saud University, graduating in 1992, then earned a master's in office management in 1994. He joined HMG as president and CEO in May 1996, when it was a nascent Riyadh operation.
What he built: By his departure in October 2022, HMG ran over 1,900 beds and more than 14,000 staff, serving over 5.3 million patients a year. In 2017, it opened Saudi Arabia's first fully digital hospital; in 2019, it won a Guinness World Record for the world's largest Tele-ICU command center, monitoring 796 beds across the GCC.
The IPO: Al Huqbani was the operating architect of one of Saudi Arabia's most significant listings. In March 2020, HMG floated 15% of its shares at $13.35 (SAR 50) each — the top of the range — and the offer was oversubscribed roughly 83 times, drawing nearly $57.9 billion in orders. The deal made founder Dr. Sulaiman Abdulaziz Al Habib a billionaire, worth $10.5 billion as of August 2026.
Why it matters: HMG's market capitalization now stands at $21.9 billion, with shares up about 5.2-fold since the 2020 listing. The IPO showed Al Huqbani could impose financial discipline on a complex operation and attract outside capital.
The harder job: In August 2022, the Saudi Cabinet transferred all Ministry of Health assets to the new HHC, which oversees more than 20 million registered beneficiaries across 20 autonomous health clusters. Oxford Business GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → called the restructuring the largest of its kind in the Middle East.
What changes? Al Huqbani inherited a system still run like a government ministry, without the autonomy he had built at HMG. His plan aims to make HHC's clusters administratively and financially independent care organizations.
The results so far: Saudi life expectancy reached 80 years in 2025, beating its Vision 2030 target, while health-service satisfaction topped 85% and coverage hit 97.4%. The kingdom ranked sixth among 193 countries in the 2024 UN E-Government Development Index, helped by HHC platforms including the Sehhaty appDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Seha Virtual HospitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
The signal: Saudi Arabia is applying private-sector operating logic to public healthcare, recruiting a proven listed-company executive to run a state system. Al Huqbani ranks seventh on Forbes Middle East's Top 100 CEOs 2026 list — a marker of how central healthcare reform has become to Vision 2030.
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
