Bassim Haj (Norway) is Senior VP of IT at Yara International, the world’s largest fertilizer company.

Bassim has more than 25 years experience in IT from the Seismic exploration, oil & gas, paper and forest products industry. He worked for GECO Schlumberger and Kvaerner Oil & Gas before moving to Kvaerner Corporate and led Corporate IT. Afterwards, he became Program Director at Equant/Orange (UK).

When joining Norske Skogindustrier, he led the efforts of restructuring the IT function at NSI. He also embarked on major enterprise wide business and Information Technology initiatives and projects, including shared services, IT strategy revision and business alignment. The IT governance structure that was implemented scored high in an Accenture survey (2006).

In 2010 Bassim was appointed as Snr VP, Head of IT & CIO for Yara where he has overall responsibility for Information Technology and Business Process competency. He also has extensive experience in leading IT and business integration efforts during M&A and divestment activities, as well as in setting-up and managing large outsourcing deals in IT and BPO.

Check out our other 2013 Finalists of the European CIO of the Year Award on www.europeancio2013.com