In the vibrant retail sector of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammad Taha Wani stands out as a name synonymous with discipline, foresight, and execution. Known for his ability to align leasing strategy with community relevance, Taha has built a reputation across super regional malls, neighbourhood centres, campus retail, and airport retail. His work reflects one consistent principle — converting plans into steady, real-world performance.
Overview
Mohammad Taha Wani is a retail leasing manager in Sharjah known for disciplined leasing strategy, category planning, and tenant-mix decisions that translate vision into measurable outcomes. Since moving to the UAE in 2012, he has worked across multiple retail formats — from large-scale malls to community and campus assets — applying a consistent focus on commercial predictability, everyday usefulness, and long-term relevance.
Portfolio & Scope
Operating within a multi-asset portfolio, Taha leads the leasing strategy for a diversified mix of properties. His responsibilities include market mapping, category planning, anchor positioning, and pipeline direction. Renewal negotiations also sit under his supervision to maintain alignment with the wider strategy, while on-ground execution is handled by dedicated teams.
His mandate is straightforward: maintain high-quality occupancy, refresh categories as demand shifts, and ensure each retail asset remains relevant, resilient, and responsive to market cycles.
Selected Impact: Campus Retail
Within a major UAE university’s retail zone, Taha guided a comprehensive refresh of the F&B and essential services mix. His approach was rooted in understanding how students and faculty actually use the campus throughout the week.
He prioritized quick-service formats where speed mattered most and introduced study-friendly, all-day options aligned with the academic calendar. The results were tangible — stronger daily traffic, improved operator turnover, and a revitalized campus retail environment that now serves as a functional, lively extension of university life.
Retail at Scale: Super Regional & Neighbourhood
In super regional malls, Taha focuses on balancing anchors and specialty categories to create a dependable yet diverse offer — ensuring visitors reliably find essentials while discovering new experiences.
In neighbourhood centres, his strategy is intentionally grounded: emphasizing practical, everyday retail that supports community routines and repeat visits. Across both formats, he prioritizes relevance over noise, keeping each mix aligned with what catchments value today — not what worked in the last cycle.
Airport Retail (Strategy Contribution)
Taha has also contributed to retail development strategy for a regional airport. His work focused on designing a clear, time-appropriate offer and commercial structure tailored to the passenger journey — emphasizing convenience, turnover efficiency, and balanced dwell-time capture.
Results
Colleagues describe his contribution in clear, practical terms — fewer dead zones, stronger trading corridors, and steadier performance across cycles.
Under Taha’s supervision, outcomes typically include higher occupancy quality, cleaner renewals, and healthier long-term operator bases. His work ensures that retail environments quietly do what they’re meant to: serve communities, sustain trade, and deliver predictable results.
Professional Grounding
Taha holds an MBA from IMI Belgium and brings over a decade of UAE market experience. His professional background spans private and cooperative portfolios, covering anchor negotiations, turnover-rent structures, and the daily cadence of offers, counter-offers, and openings.
He is recognized for his transparent communication, structured processes, and visible deliverables — an approach that builds trust and clarity among owners, operators, and internal teams alike.
Looking Ahead
Taha’s current focus is on refining portfolio leasing strategy across managed malls, university assets, and public-sector projects. He continues to apply cross-format learnings, ensuring each asset remains current, credible, and commercially grounded.
His long-term vision is simple yet powerful: to build retail environments that stand up to real use, deliver dependable performance, and retain their place in people’s everyday routines — retail that works as well in practice as it does on paper.
Do follow him on LinkedIn
Read Next – UAE Employee Absence Laws: 6 Legal Cases Explained
