Ahamed worked at the World Bank in Washington D.C., where he headed the bank's investment division, and at the New York-based partnership of Fischer, Francis Trees and Watts, a fixed-income business and subsidiary of BNP Paribas, where he served as Chief Investment Officer and from 2001 to 2004 as CEO.[citation needed] From October 2007 he has been a director of Aspen Insurance Holdings and in addition advises several hedge funds, including Rock Creek Group and The Rohatyn Group. He is (as of 2010) a member of Board of Trustees at the Brookings Institution and is involved with the New America Foundation.[3][5][6]
Through his production company, Red Wine Pictures, Ahamed was a producer on the 2006 film The Situation, set in Iraq.[6][7]
In June 2012, Ahamed himself drew a similar parallel in a Financial Times column, saying that "during the past few months, as the crisis in Europe has spiralled out of control", he had "begun to fear that the world might in fact be repeating some of th[e] same errors" as those made in the 1920s and 1930s. While the 21st-century central bankers and banks were starkly different from their 19th-century predecessors, Ahamed said that "as they experiment with unconventional monetary tools to get the global economy moving, ironically they may find their years of training less useful than their instincts. ... [S]ome of the same intractable factors that their predecessors of the 1930s had to contend with will overwhelm them once again", today's bankers fear. France, Ahamed pointed out, was the strongest economy and financial system in 1930s Europe, while Germany was reeling. And like Germany seemingly in 2012, France in the 1930s could not find a way to use its strength to help its neighbor. Ahamed in June 2012 concluded with a question: "If, over the next few months, a financial accident takes place in Europe, as is likely, is there any European institution willing and able to act as fast and with such vigour [as the 2008, Lehman-bankruptcy-era US Fed and Treasury] to prevent a disaster?"[10]
Personal life
Ahamed comes from the Nizari Ismaili Shia sect, and he is a non-practising Muslim.[11] His wife, Meenakshi "Meena" Singh, is an Indian freelance journalist who is active with Médecins Sans Frontières and other charitable organizations.[6] Their daughter Tara is married to actor Jonathan Tucker.[12]