Forbes Middle East - August 2023 - English by Forbes Middle East

BERNARD ARNAULT’S INVESTMENTS SHIFTING PRIVATE WEALTH MIGRATION

5 RICHEST BILLIONAIRE FAMILIES

20 SMARTEST CITIES IN THE WORLD GLOBAL BUSINESSES FOUNDED BY FAMILIES

AUGUST 2023 ISSUE 131

TAREK HOSNI

CEO of Jamjoom Pharma

“RAISING MONEY WAS NOT EVEN 20-30% OF OUR OBJECTIVE. THE KEY WAS GOVERNANCE AND SUSTAINABILITY.”

4TH ANNUAL

AUGUST 2023 ISSUE 131

TOP 100 ARAB FAMILY BUSINESSES

LEGACY BUSINESSES ARE STILL THRIVING THROUGH GENERATIONS, AND INCREASINGLY HITTING THE STOCK MARKETS. MEET THE LEADERS EMBRACING A NEW ERA IN SUCCESSION.

Stay connected with our latest business news. UAE......................................................... AED 15 SAUDI ARABIA.....................................SAR 15 BAHRAIN............................................ BHD 1.5 KUWAIT............................................ KWD 1.25 OMAN...................................................OMR 1.5 QATAR....................................................QAR 15 OTHERS..........................................................$4

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AUGUST 2023

6 I Sidelines Succession Continues By Claudine Coletti

LEADERBOARDS

WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

10 I Notable Investments Of Bernard Arnault

1 CONTENTS

At the heart of the world’s second richest family is a prolific investor. Bernard Arnault was the richest person in the world when Forbes released its 2023 list of the World’s Billionaires in April. Here are some of his biggest backings. By Jamila Gandhi

12 I The World’s 5 Richest Billionaire Families From the Walton family to the candy conglomerate Mars Inc., these families have built their fortunes through strategic investments, business acumen, and inheritance. Here are the top five richest billionaire families as of July 12, 2023, according to Forbes.

By Amr Abdelhamid WEALTH

14 I Moving Millionaires: The Shifting Trend In

Private Wealth Migration

More than 122,000 millionaires are estimated to be looking to move countries in 2023, but where are they heading, and why? By Cherry Aisne Trinidad FOUNDERS

16 I Enduring Legacies: 5 Renowned Global

Businesses That Were Founded By Families Family businesses have long been an important part of the global business landscape. Here are five renowned businesses founded by families, rising from humble beginnings to global prestige.

By Malika Kaloo INVESTMENT

18 I In Numbers: Global Asset Allocation Shifts

For Family Offices

As economic conditions and geopolitical landscapes change, family offices are planning their most significant shift in strategic asset allocation in several years to ensure long-term growth and success. By Rawan Hassan SUSTAINABILITY

20 I 20 Smartest Cities In The World Here are the top 20 cities improving energy efficiency, reducing CO2 emissions, and increasing the well-being of citizens, according to the Institute for Management and Development in partnership with the World Smart Sustainable Organization. By Joyce Abaño WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

22 I Musk Vs Zuckerberg: Who’s Winning The

Tech Billionaires’ Brawl?

Whether Musk and Zuckerberg will ever make it to the boxing ring remains to be seen, but their rivalry continues to make headlines. Here are some highlights and key stats. By Joyce Abaño

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

62 CONTRARIAN

24 I Inflection AI, The Year-Old Startup Behind

Chatbot Pi, Raises $1.3 Billion

Backed by Microsoft, Nvidia and billionaires Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, the startup led by ex-DeepMind leader Mustafa Suleyman is valued at $4 billion—and claims to have the world’s best AI hardware setup.. By Alex Konrad

62 I Overclocking AMD LISA SU orchestrated one of the great turnarounds in Silicon Valley history, driving the dying semiconductor maker's stock price up nearly 30-fold in less than a decade. Now, she's preparing for battle in the coming AI revolution—and she expects to keep winning. BY IAIN MARTIN AND RICHARD NIEVA

68 I Thoughts On Legacy AUGUST 2023

CONTENTS

TOP 100 ARAB FAMILY BUSINESSES 2023

32 I Going Strong Hassan Allam Holding’s third-generation leaders, Hassan Allam and Amr Allam, the Co-CEOs of the group, have been overseeing their family business since 2009 and 2010, respectively. They are now focused on expanding the company’s operations, leveraging hitting $5.5 billion in backlog in 2022. By Hagar Omran

38 I Seeding Sustainable Agriculture Morocco’s agribusiness is under mounting pressure amid soaring inflation and climate-driven weather variations. Rita Maria Zniber, Chairman and CEO of agribusiness group Diana Holding, is taking the lead in transitioning to a more sustainable ecosystem. By Samar Khouri

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AUGUST 2023

August 2023

•

4 CONTENTS

Issue 131

COVER STORY

Executing An Evolution

INSIDE •

Tarek Hosni, CEO of family-owned Saudi pharmaceuticals giant Jamjoom Pharma, led the company through an IPO in June 2023—the largest the kingdom has seen so far this year. Now he’s looking at new product growth to make the company an international name. By Jason Lasrado

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AUGUST 2023

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AUGUST 2023

SIDELINES

FORBES MIDDLE EAST

Succession Continues Family businesses have been the lifeblood of Middle East economies for decades, ever since the Arab world first began forming its metropolises in the desert. But today, many of these have evolved well beyond what those early founders could have imagined, handed down through generations, diversified across multiple sectors, expanded across continents, and listed on regional stock exchanges. In the U.A.E. alone, family-owned businesses reportedly account for 60% of the GDP and 80% of the workforce, according to a 2022 report by KPMG. But will they continue to grow? And will new generations continue to be the ones taking the businesses into the next era? PwC’s 2023 family business report forecasts positive results as long as they continue to build and capitalize on consumer trust. According to the report, 65% of the family businesses surveyed in the Middle East reported growth in their most recent financial year, indicating a recovery from the pandemic slump, and 74% believe they will grow further in the next two years. But trust is paramount, and while family businesses are traditionally trusted more by consumers, as the consumer demographic changes and Gen-Z release their spending power, issues such as ESG, diversity, and sustainability are coming to the forefront. In short, a brand’s reputation for good behavior can make or break its future. Changing demographics will also determine whether a family business remains a family affair. According to a 2019 survey from Deloitte, more than 70% of family businesses fail before reaching the third generation. This shows a natural evolution. The founder establishes the nascent business and commits to building their vision, the second generation is born into a growing enterprise and is inspired to take it further, but the third generation is born into a wealthy legacy and seeks their own success. However, handing the batten to one or more of your children is not the only way to grow. Going public and taking a step back can also secure a prosperous future. In our 2023 list of the Top 100 Arab Family Businesses, over 60% are major shareholders in a company listed on a regional stock exchange, with most being the founding shareholders. While family members remain on the boards, the management and operations can be entrusted to senior executives, allowing new generations to follow their own path while keeping a foot in the door of their birthright legacies. The path of succession can deviate for those families willing to broaden company ownership. This month we speak to second and third-generation leaders, as well as one that is safeguarding a listed business on behalf of its family founders. Rita Maria Zniber, Chairman and CEO of Moroccan agribusiness group Diana Holding, is leading the business first established by her late husband, side-byside with their daughter, Diana. Hassan Allam and Amr Allam, the Co-CEOs of Egyptian construction company Hassam Allam Holding, are continuing their grandfather’s vision, heading a family business that has been growing for nearly 90 years. And Tarek Hosni, CEO of Saudi pharmaceuticals giant Jamjoom Pharma, has just led the Jamjoon family’s thriving business through an IPO, the largest on Tadawul this year so far. I hope you enjoy the issue. —Claudine Coletti, Managing Editor

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The First Initiative

to teach

7 FORBES MIDDLE EAST

Children The art of investment

In F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

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INNOVATING SINCE 2010 AUGUST 2023 ISSUE 131

Dr. Nasser Bin Aqeel Al Tayyar President & Publisher nasser@forbesmiddleeast.com

Khuloud Al Omian

FORBES MIDDLE EAST

Editor-in-Chief Forbes Middle East, CEO - Arab Publisher House

khuloud@forbesmiddleeast.com

Editorial

Business Development

Claudine Coletti Managing Editor claudine@forbesmiddleeast.com

Ruth Pulkury Senior Vice President - Business Development

Laurice Constantine Digital Managing Editor laurice@forbesmiddleeast.com

ruth@forbesmiddleeast.com

Fouzia Azzab Deputy Managing Editor fouzia@forbesmiddleeast.com

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Amany Zaher Senior Quality Editor amany@forbesmiddleeast.com

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Jamila Gandhi Senior Editor jamila@forbesmiddleeast.com

Sarine Nemchehirlian sarine@forbesmiddleeast.com

Rawan Hassan Senior Translator rawan@forbesmiddleeast.com Samar Khouri Reporter samar@forbesmiddleeast.com Cherry Aisne Trinidad Senior Online Editor aisne@forbesmiddleeast.com

Sarah Gadallah Hassan sarah.g@forbesmiddleeast.com Upeksha Udayangani Client Relations Executive upeksha@forbesmiddleeast.com Tayyab Riaz Mohammed Financial Controller riaz@forbesmiddleeast.com

Research

Jason Lasrado Head of Research jason@forbesmiddleeast.com Nermeen Abbas Senior Researcher nermeen@forbesmiddleeast.com Elena Hayek Researcher elena@forbesmiddleeast.com Layan Abo Shkier Research Reporter layan@forbesmiddleeast.com Soumer Al Daas Head of Creative soumer@forbesmiddleeast.com Julie Gemini Marquez Brand & Creative Content Executive julie@forbesmiddleeast.com Mohammed Ashkar IT Manager ashkar@forbesmiddleeast.com Muhammad Saim Aziz Web Developer saim@forbesmiddleeast.com Habibullah Qadir Senior Operations Manager habib@forbesmiddleeast.com

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World’s Billionaires

Notable Investments Of Bernard Arnault LEADERBOARD

Pachama Aglaé Ventures invested in Pachama’s $5 million seed round in September 2020 and then again in its $55 million series B in May 2022. The tech company uses satellite imagery, remote sensing, and machine learning to measure and monitor the carbon stored in rainforests and ecosystems globally.

Slack

Bernard Arnault

LVMH’s Bernard Arnault and family stand as one of the world’s wealthiest families, overseeing an empire of 75 fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora. Forbes estimates the 74-year-old’s fortune at $231 billion as of July 12, 2023. Arnault’s five children all work at LVMH. In July 2022, the billionaire proposed a reorganization of his holding company Agache to give them equal stakes. Agache—formerly Groupe Arnault—including its 100%-owned subsidiary Financière Agache, forms the principal investment vehicle of Arnault. The Frenchman’s holding F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

company Agache backs venture capital firm Aglaé Ventures, which primarily executes technologyfocused investments. In the first half of 2023, the venture capital firm backed seven companies. Here’s a look into the notable companies backed by Paris-headquartered global investment platform Aglaé Ventures and Agache, according to Crunchbase.

Airbnb In June 2015, Agache invested in Airbnb’s $1.5 billion Series E funding round. The peer-to-peer apartment rental platform had 6.6 million active global

listings and $180 billion in all-time host earnings as of the end of December 2022. As per Dealroom, the group has now exited Airbnb.

Netflix Among the streaming platform’s investors was Arnault’s holding company which led the $30.3 million Series D round for Netflix in July 1999. The backing made Arnault Netflix’s largest investor at that time just as the company was about to run out of money, according to a statement by Alex Morris, founder of TSOH Investment Research. The group has now exited Netflix.

In April 2015, Arnault’s Agache participated in Slack’s $172.7 million Series E fundraising round. The productivity platform was acquired by CRM leader Salesforce in July 2021. As per Slack, the company has over 200,000 paid customers.

SpaceX In July 2017, Aglaé Ventures invested in the $351 million Series H round for SpaceX. In total, the spacecraft exploration company has executed 245 launches and 206 landings as of July 12, 2023.

viagogo In August 2006, the French holding company invested in viagogo’s $20 million Series B funding round. The entertainment booking platform claims to have nearly five million tickets on its network, with users in over 160 countries. AUGUST 2023

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World’s Billionaires

The World’s 5 Richest Billionaire Families

Members of the Walton family (L-R) Rob, Alice and Jim.

1. The Walton Family Combined net worth: $241.1 billion Source of wealth: Walmart Citizenship: U.S. The Waltons are the richest family in the world thanks to their stake in Walmart, the world’s largest retailer by sales. Nearly half of Walmart’s stock is held by seven heirs of founders Sam Walton, who died in 1992, and his brother James “Bud,” who died in 1995. Heirs include Sam’s three living children—Rob, Jim, and Alice—his daughter-in-law Christy and her son Lukas, in addition to Bud’s two daughters, Ann and Nancy. Walmart’s total revenues reached $611.3 billion in the 2023 fiscal year that ended in January.

2. Bernard Arnault & family Net worth: $231 billion Source of wealth: LVMH Citizenship: France Bernard Arnault is the founder, chairman, and CEO of the LVMH empire—the world’s biggest luxury conglomerate—which owns 75 fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora. In July 2022, Arnault proposed a reorganization of his holding company Agache to give his five children equal stakes. In a historical milestone, in April 2023, LVMH became Europe’s most valuable company ever, F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

with a market value exceeding $500 billion. Arnault and LVMH also own a 40% stake in private equity firm L Catterton, which has $33 billion in assets under management, including investments in Birkenstock and Equinox.

3. The Koch Family Combined net worth: $116 billion Source of wealth: Koch Industries Citizenship: U.S. Charles owns a 42% stake in Koch Industries, as did his brother David, who died in August 2019 aged 79. Julia Koch and her three children inherited her husband David’s stake. Charles became chairman and CEO of Koch Industries in 1967. In 2023, he became co-CEO. While Julia oversees the David H. Koch Foundation, through which she and her late husband have donated approximately $1.8 billion to causes like poverty, addiction-related issues, criminal justice, and education.

3. The Mars Family Combined net worth: $116 billion Source of wealth: Mars Inc. Citizenship: U.S. The Mars family owns Mars Inc., one of the world’s largest candy and pet food companies, which was founded in 1911

From the Walton family to the candy conglomerate Mars Inc., these families have built their fortunes through strategic investments, business acumen, and inheritance. Here are the top five richest billionaire families as of July 12, 2023, according to Forbes. when Frank Mars started selling candy out of his kitchen in Washington. John and his siblings Jacqueline and Forrest Jr., who died in July 2016, inherited stakes in the candy firm Mars when their father died in 1999. John and Jacqueline each own an estimated one-third of the company. His late brother Forrest Jr.’s four daughters own the rest. In July 2023, Marc Inc. signed an agreement to acquire Kevin’s Natural Foods.

5. Carlos Slim Helu & family Net worth: $102.5 billion Source of wealth: Telecom Citizenship: Mexico Mexico’s richest person, Carlos Slim Helu, and his family control América Móvil, Latin America’s biggest mobile telecom firm with operations in at least 15 countries. In 1990, Slim and foreign telecom partners acquired a stake in Telmex, Mexico’s only phone company, which is now part of América Móvil. The self-made businessman also owns stakes in Mexican construction, consumer goods, mining, and real estate companies. Slim and his family also own 79% of Grupo Carso, one of Latin America’s largest conglomerates. In February 2023, he listed his historic Manhattan mansion for $80 million, almost twice what he paid for it in 2010.

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Moving Millionaires: The Shifting Trend In Private Wealth Migration More than 122,000 millionaires are estimated to be looking to move countries in 2023, but where are they heading, and why? Private wealth migration is back to an upward growth trajectory after two years of minimal movement during the pandemic, according to Henley & Partners’ latest Private Wealth Migration Report, which estimates that 122,000 millionaires around the world are looking to relocate in 2023 and another 128,000 in 2024 in pursuit of wealth preservation and protection. The report suggests that the movement of high networth individuals (HNWIs)— defined by Henley & Partners as those with $1 million or more investable wealth— could be an early indication of a country’s economic and

social state. The clear-cut threat of instability brought about by social and political unrest, transatlantic tension between the East and West, and even climate change is one of the underlying motivations for millionaires to find a safer, more secure environment. This was evident in Russia in 2022, when the nation lost the second-highest number of millionaires, or net outflows of 8,500 HNWIs, due to its conflict with Ukraine. This year, that number is expected to hit 3,000 net departures. But no country has seen a steadier or larger exodus of

Top 5 Countries Witnessing An Exodus Of Millionaires Countries

Net HNWI Outflows 2023

Net HNWI Outflows 2022

• China

13,500

10,800

• India

6,500

7,500

• U.K.

3,200

1,600

• Russian Federation

3,000

8,500

• Brazil

1,200

1,800

Top 5 Countries Witnessing An Influx Of Millionaires Net HNWI Inflows 2023

Net HNWI Inflows 2022

• Australia

5,200

3,800

• U.A.E.

4,500

5,200

• Singapore

3,200

2,900

• U.S.

2,100

1,500

• Switzerland

1,800

2,200

Countries

Source: Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2023 Note: 2023 figures are forecast based on year-to-date HNWI movements to June 2023 F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

millionaires each year over the past decade than China. The world’s second-largest economy is projected to witness the highest number of net HNWI departures again in 2023, with 13,500 choosing to leave. The report reveals that China’s future growth plan has been centered around its high-tech sector, and the banning of Huawei 5G by major markets and Beijing’s crackdown on the nation’s biggest tech companies have greatly contributed to deteriorating confidence in the country. Meanwhile, India moved up in the forecast ranks and will see this year’s secondhighest number of HNWI net outflows at 6,500, with prohibitive tax legislation and complex rules for outbound remittances among a few key issues prompting wealth migration. The U.K., which for decades (1980 to 2010) has consistently welcomed affluent families from various regions, continues to witness a depleting number of HNWIs that began in 2017. It stands to lose 3,200 millionaires in 2023. According to the report, the persistent exit could be a result of Brexit’s impact, the country’s high capital gains tax, and the weakening healthcare systems, among other reasons. So, where will the departing millionaires migrate? This year, Australia is expected to steal the top spot as the most attractive destination for the wealthy, with 5,200 net HNWI inflows, beating out the U.A.E., which is forecast to host an additional 4,500 millionaires. Ranking third is Singapore—Asia’s biggest wealth hub—with 3,200, followed by the U.S. (2,100) and Switzerland (1,800). In terms of commonality, the top five countries with the highest net HNWIs inflows offer residency or citizenship

to other nationalities through investment programs. Particularly in the Middle East, investors can gain residency through the U.A.E.’s investment program, with a minimum capital of about $544,588, while Jordan provides citizenship, with the right to live, work and study to those with a minimum capital of $750,000. In 2022, the U.A.E. experienced the largest influx of millionaires, with 5,200 new arrivals. While that number will be slightly decreased this year, the country is still proving to be a safe haven for most migrating millionaires from India, the U.K., Russia, Lebanon, and Pakistan, to name a few. The Arab state’s low tax rates, its first-class healthcare system, and its highly-diversified economy have helped the U.A.E. become one of the world’s wealth magnets. In August 2022, the Dubai International Financial Centre unveiled the world’s first Global Family Business and Private Wealth Centre to provide wealth management solutions, such as investment migration options to family-owned businesses, HNWIs, and ultraHNWIs. What makes a good destination for wealth migration? The report reveals that extremely mobile HNWIs are on the lookout for host countries with clear policies and attractive legislation like low taxation in addition to political stability and personal freedom. Yet, on the back of ongoing global uncertainties, these priorities have now added some intangible influences impacting the wealthy’s children’s prospects, quality of life, and legacies. In short, HNWIs are opting for countries that can guarantee a safe and secure environment for both their riches and their families. AUGUST 2023

BY CHERRY AISNE TRINIDAD

Wealth

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Enduring Legacies: 5 Renowned Global Businesses That Were Founded By Families Family businesses have long been an important part of the global business landscape. Here are five renowned businesses founded by families, rising from humble beginnings to global prestige.

Yoovidhya died in 2012, and today his son Chalerm heads the family’s 51% share in the company, 2% of which is held directly by him. Chalerm Yoovidhya and family ranked second on Forbes Thailand’s 50 Richest list 2023 with a net worth of $33.4 billion. Mark Mateschitz had a net worth of $41.1 billion as of July 12, 2023, according to Forbes.

LG Corp. Founded by: Koo family Headquarters: Korea

John Willard Marriott and his wife Alice Reviewing a Model of the Twin Bridges Motor Hotel, CA (1955)

Marriott International Founded by: Marriott family Headquarters: U.S. In May 1927, armed with just $6,000, John Willard Marriott and his wife Alice opened a nine-stool A&W Root Beer franchise in Washington D.C. As the menu expanded, the business was named Hot Shoppes, and in 1957, J.W. Marriott entered the hotel industry by opening the Twin Bridges Motor Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Today, Marriott International has a presence in 138 countries, with over 8,500 properties, including luxury brands such as Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis. In 2022, Marriott International’s global headquarters opened in Marland, with a cafeteria called The Hot Shoppe. Davis F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

S. Marriott, J.W. Marriott Jr.’s son, is the current chairman of the board.

Red Bull Founded by: Dietrich Mateschitz and Chaleo Yoovidhya Headquarters: Austria Red Bull Energy Drink was launched in Austria in 1987 by former marketing executive Dietrich Mateschitz and energy-drink tycoon Chaleo Yoovidhya. Mateschitz died in October 2022, leaving his 49% stake in Red Bull to his son Mark Mateschitz. Chaleo

Koo In-Hwoi co-founded Lucky Chemical Co. Ltd in 1947. The company produced injection molding machines, plastic combs, soaps, and toothpaste, under different trademarks. Lucky Industry (now LG International) was established in 1953, and the corporation gradually entered the electronics market. Today, its subsidiaries include LG Electronics, LG Sports, LG Energy Solution, LG Chem, and LG CNS. In 1994, the chairman of LG, Koo BonMoo, adopted his nephew Koo Kwang Mo who now serves as the chairman and CEO of LG Corp. Mo had an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion as of July 12, 2023, according to Forbes.

Comcast Founded by: Roberts family Headquarters: U.S. Ralph Roberts bought a community-antenna TV system in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1963 for $500,000 and established American Cable Systems. In 1969, the company was renamed

Comcast Corporation. It began trading on Nasdaq in 1972. As the company marked its 50th anniversary in 2013, Comcast announced its acquisition of GE’s 49% common equity ownership interest in NBCUniversal. Ralph Roberts passed away in 2015, and his son Brian Roberts became the CEO and chairman of Comcast. As of July 12, 2023, Brian Roberts’ net worth was $2 billion, according to Forbes, and he has exclusive voting rights over approximately one-third of the company’s stock.

Hallmark Founded by: Hall family Headquarters: U.S. Joyce C. Hall and his two elder brothers Rollie and William first established the Norfolk Post Card Company before setting up Hall Brothers in 1923. The name of the company was officially changed to Hallmark in 1954. Today, J.C. Hall’s grandsons lead the company’s board of directors, with Donald J. Hall Jr., executive chairman, and David E. Hall, executive vice chairman. The company has since diversified through the Hallmark Hall of Fame, the Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Movies, and Mysteries cable television networks. Today, Hallmark publishes in 30 languages, and its products are available in over 100 countries. AUGUST 2023

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Investment

In Numbers: Global Asset Allocation Shifts For Family Offices As economic conditions and geopolitical landscapes change, family offices are planning their most significant shift in strategic asset allocation in several years to ensure long-term growth and success. The UBS Global Family Office Report 2023 reveals that family offices are refocusing their private market exposure, with potential inflection points in inflation, interest rates, and economic growth. In light of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and the U.S.-China cold trade war, geopolitics overtook inflation as the top concern among family offices globally, followed by a recession and inflation. The report surveyed 230 single-family offices worldwide, with a total net worth of $495.8 billion and individual families’ net worth averaging $2.2 billion. One notable shift in the increased interest in developed market fixed income. After reducing bond investments for three years, nearly 38% of family offices plan to increase their holdings over the next five years. Fixed income is now regarded as a popular source of diversification, with 37% moving to high-quality, shortduration bonds offering potential wealth protection, yield, and capital appreciation. The surveyed family offices anticipate a more significant allocation to risk assets, with 34%

planning to increase their investments in emerging market equities as USD reaches its peak and the Chinese economy reopens. Despite short-term market and geopolitical trends leading to increased liquid, short-term fixed-income exposure, 66% of family offices still believe that illiquidity boosts returns in the long term. Alternative investments are therefore gaining momentum for diversification, reducing direct private equity allocations (from 13% in 2021 to 6% in 2023) while increasing hedge fund allocations (from 4% to 6%), private debt (from 2% to 3%), and infrastructure (0% to 1%) to diversify portfolios. Real estate, which served as a key inflation hedge in 2021 and 2022, is expected to see reduced allocations by family offices in 2023. However, European, Latin American, and U.S. family offices foresee bigger allocations in real estate over the next five years, while fewer Asia-Pacific investors see themselves increasing allocations. Regarding value opportunities, 45% of family offices with private equity investments plan to overallocate their portfolios towards the

• Changes In Asset Allocation In The Next Five Years • Increase

Stay the same

Decrease

Don’t plan on investing

• Fixed income (developed markets)

38%

37%

16%

• Fixed income (emerging markets)

20%

53%

18%

• Equities (developed markets)

44%

43%

12%

• Equities (emerging markets)

34%

42%

16%

• Private equity (direct investments)

41%

39%

13%

• Private equity (funds / funds of funds)

35%

42%

14%

10%

• Private debt

26%

46%

11%

18%

• Hedge funds

21%

48%

17%

13%

• Real estate

33%

48%

11%

• Infrastructure

20%

54%

23%

Source: UBS Global Family Office Report 2023.

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

BY RAWAN HASSAN

LEADERBOARD

secondary private equity market, as they outperformed public markets in 2022, and exits remain challenging to achieve through IPOs. The private equity market, in general, is seeing noticeable growth, with its total assets under management reaching $11.7 trillion as of June 30, 2022. It has grown at an annual rate of 20% since 2017, according to McKinsey’s 2023 Global Private Markets Review. Around 35% of family offices rely more on active management and investment manager selection to enhance diversification. They exhibit confidence in hedge funds’ ability to generate investment returns, with 73% believing they will meet or exceed performance targets in the next 12 months. Overall, 41% plan to raise private equity direct investments over the next five years, noting that 56% of family offices with private equity investments prefer to invest using funds. Although family offices currently allocate nearly half of their assets to North America, more than a quarter of them intend to increase their investments in Western Europe within the next five years. Nearly a third of these offices plan to expand and diversify their allocations in the broader Asia-Pacific region. Family offices remain on the fence for digital assets, staying cryptocurious rather than crypto-committed since 2022, despite 56% of the family offices investing in cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technologies in 2023, 38% invested less than 1% of portfolio assets.

SUSTAINABILITY

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SUMMIT

UNITE INNOVATE SUSTAIN Driving Economic Growth For A Greener World

NOVEMBER 1ST, 2ND & 3RD, 2023

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forbesmiddleeast.com AUGUST 2023

Sustainability

20 Smartest Cities In The World Here are the top 20 cities improving energy efficiency, reducing CO2 emissions, and increasing the well-being of citizens, according to the Institute for Management and Development in partnership with the World Smart Sustainable Organization. 1

Zurich

Helsinki

Zurich has embraced a circular economy, introduced eco-friendly waste management, and digitized its infrastructure. Zurich Airport has reduced its CO2 emissions by about 50% over the last 25 years, and it plans to be net zero by 2040. The Swiss Federal Railway runs on 90% hydropower and plans to be powered by 100% renewable energy sources by 2025. 2

Canberra

Canberra has a sustainable network of public transport options and is the first Australian city to encourage ride-sharing services so people can travel as groups and cut back on solo driving. Canberra is powered by 100% renewable electricity generated by wind and photovoltaic power. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Helsinki

According to the city’s pocket statistics, the emissions of greenhouse gases have been cut down by 33% since 1990. The city has 3,470 city bikes with 347 bike stations. Air quality was good or satisfactory 95% of the time in the city in 2022.

Oslo

The capital of Norway has a strong innovation culture. The city promotes ecodesign and architecture and is also highly digitalized, from its healthcare to shipping ports. Norway is accelerating its adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). According to data from the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, 2022 was another record for EV sales in the country, which showed 79.3% of all new cars sold during the period were fully electric, up from 64.5% in 2021.

underground car parks, and outdoor green spaces exist to complement the citizen-patient experience. Singapore’s Housing Development Board offers citizens access to affordable, quality homes.

Copenhagen

The Danish capital has invested in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and intelligent traffic management to control traffic and optimize signals in real-time, resulting in more efficient flows of bikes and buses and reduced accidents. According to a Mckinsey & Company report, ITS will help Copenhagen achieve its vision to have 75% of all the trips in the city be by bike, public transport, or on foot by 2025. 5

Lausanne

This Swiss city is working toward being diesel-free by 2030. Hydropower accounts for roughly 57%

of Switzerland’s domestic electricity production, making it the country’s most important domestic source of renewable energy. 6

London

Most sectors in London have seen a significant reduction in emissions over the last few decades, mainly due to the nationwide decarbonization of electricity, government data showed. The city’s CO2 emissions were 28.1 million tonnes in 2020, down from 31.5 million tonnes in 2019. 7

Singapore

Singapore has a master plan for community-focused health where infrastructure like pedestrian walkways,

Geneva

Geneva’s energy policy is designed to be 100% renewable in 2050. The Swiss city has a range of public transportation options taking advantage of its topography, as it offers public excursion boats. It also encourages carpooling and car sharing and provides free-to-use bikes. 10

Stockholm

The Swedish capital launched Openlab, a creative center for solving societal challenges. The city’s leaders believe that in order to continue to grow sustainably and offer high quality in Stockholm’s city operations, new thinking and innovation are needed. The center was established to create the conditions for innovative solutions

AUGUST 2023

BY JOYCE ABAÑO ; MISTERVLAD/ SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

LEADERBOARD

with the aim of raising the quality of life of the city’s residents. 11

Abu Dhabi

Hamburg

One of the strengths of this German city is mobility. It has put importance on smart traffic management and smart parking, as well as offering comprehensive car sharing. The city plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 55% in 2030 compared to 1990 levels and by 95% in 2050 to achieve climate neutrality. 12

SALEH AL TAMIMI/ SHUTTERSTOCK.

LEADERBOARD

Beijing

Beijing’s government subsidizes the cost of public travel to boost the attractiveness of public transport and reduce the number of private trips, according to Statista. Major cities in China are also adopting advanced technologies and innovative approaches to minimize carbon emissions and improve urban living. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the country’s growing energy needs are increasingly met by renewables. 13

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi has increasingly been focusing on digital innovation and sustainability to build a smart economy. The emirate’s Economic Vision 2030 aims to shift the base of its economy from natural resources to knowledge, innovation, and the export of cuttingedge technologies. Masdar City is its first sustainable city. It also houses the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization that supports countries in transitioning to sustainable energy. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Prague

The capital of the Czech Republic has focused on traffic, lighting, and waste management to improve the lives of its citizens, according to PwC. It is aiming to make its transport system smoother, and with the latest technologies, it plans to create a better living space. 15

Amsterdam

Amsterdam combines multiple renewable energy sources, storage technologies, electric vehicles, and energy consumption optimization into a single, innovative smart energy management system. Its intelligent Energy Management System is expected to dramatically lower CO2 emissions and increase renewable energy’s economic value. 16

Seoul

Seoul’s e-governance system is believed to be the world’s most advanced, according to Sustainable, Smart, and Solidary Seoul. This includes expansive online government

services, free access to vast databases, and opportunities for electronic citizen engagement. The city’s Gangnam Resource Recovery Facility transforms waste into energy and helps reduce landfill and power neighborhood heating. 17

Dubai

The Dubai Plan 2021 called for the transformation of about 1,000 government services, implementing initiatives on open and easy access to data, smart transport, optimizing energy resources, smart parks, and beaches, police smartphone apps, and a new master control room. Dubai’s police force has a smart robocop that can find offenders through facial recognition technology. As of 2023, the city’s digitization rate of government services stands at 99.5%, achieving the objective of a paperless government. 18

Sydney

Sydney has implemented a strategy to cultivate vibrant,

livable places with the use of data and technology to help optimize street space allocation and prioritize active transport. Data is used to understand the community’s needs and preferences, providing efficient services to the community. 19

Hong Kong

Hong Kong has established a real-time arrival information system for green minibuses and continues to encourage public transport operators to open up their data. It also plans to set up a $1 billion Smart Traffic Fund to promote research and application of vehicle-related innovation and technology. 20

Munich

Munich introduced a project to promote a sharing economy, the reuse of resources, innovative business models, and the focused, socially compatible use of modern technology, including e-mobility, energyefficient street lighting, and energy consumption. AUGUST 2023

World’s Billionaires

Whether Musk and Zuckerberg will ever make it to the boxing ring remains to be seen, but their rivalry continues to make headlines. Here are some highlights and key stats.

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

While the rivalry between centibillionaire media moguls Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, has recently intensified, the pair have been sniping at each other for years. Highlighting just a few examples, in 2016, an unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida during a test, also destroying a satellite that Facebook had planned to use, leading to Zuckerberg expressing his disappointment in a Facebook post. A year later, Zuckerberg shared his optimism about AI via a live video. Musk, unimpressed, said in a tweet: “I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.” Then, in 2018, Musk joined a campaign that urged users to delete Facebook over privacy concerns. Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla left the site. Their bickering escalated last month when Zuckerberg launched Threads on July 5, a new social media app linked to Meta’s Instagram to rival Twitter. It only took five days for Threads to hit 100 million users, according to online data service Quiver Quantitative, dethroning ChatGPT’s record as the fastest-growing consumer app in history. It took ChatGPT two months to reach 100 million users. AUGUST 2023

BY JOYCE ABAÑO; ELON MUSK; PHOTO BY DIMITRIOS KAIMAGE BY NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP MARK ZUCKERBERG; PHOTO BY JOSH EDELSON / AFP

LEADERBOARD

Musk Vs Zuckerberg: Who’s Winning The Tech Billionaires’ Brawl?

Threads, designed for real-time public conversations, allows users to post comments up to 500 characters long, compared to Twitter’s 280-character threshold. Links can be added to posts that could also include images and videos up to five minutes in length. A user can easily share a Threads post through an Instagram story or share it as a link on other platforms. On the day of the Threads launch, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro sent a letter to Zuckerberg accusing him of poaching former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” platform. In the letter, Spiro accused Zuckerberg of hiring dozens of ex-Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.” Andy Stone, Communications Director at Meta, responded in a post saying, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee— that’s just not a thing.”

Free speech vs hate speech Both billionaire founders have faced criticism outside of their spat. Facebook became the bad guy in 2016 as it was revealed how unprepared the platform was to police fake news. As the year unfurled, the company had to deal with a series of controversies that included the spread of disinformation about candidates in the lead-up to presidential elections, reaching the platform’s then 1.79 billion monthly active users. In 2019, Zuckerberg was called to appear before the US Congress. Zuckerberg told lawmakers he was open to regulation as long as it didn’t impact its business model and users’ ability to communicate freely. In October 2021, former Facebook product manager and whistleblower Frances Haugen alleged that company executives, including Zuckerberg, had misled investors for years and that the platform

had allowed hate speech and misinformation to go unchecked, putting profits before its users. FTC imposed a $5 billion penalty and sweeping new privacy restrictions on Meta in 2019, prompting the social media firm to introduce stricter privacy settings on all its social media platforms—Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Online safety was also emphasized. For businesses, Meta introduced new advertising solutions on Facebook, like AR ads and Facebook stories ads. On July 11, 2023, Musk tweeted on his official account, “you are free to be your true self here.” But while Musk gives importance to free speech, the platform is often accused of allowing hate speech, violence, or harassment, things that Musk says he will not tolerate as owner. Twitter’s rules were highlighted as the billionaire continued in his quest to make the company more profitable. The social media firm stated it will “ensure all

ELON MUSK PHOTO BY JOËL SAGET / AFP, MARK ZUCKERBERG ALAIN JOCARD / AFP

Elon Musk

people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.” In 2022, Twitter reinstated accounts that were previously suspended or banned. Over 60,000 accounts were restored, which included former U.S. President Donald Trump’s. In early December 2022, Musk started releasing internal Twitter communications, which he called “Twitter Files,” claiming that they disclosed the platform’s previous efforts to suppress free speech, especially from conservative voices. He also revamped Twitter’s verification system, introducing the “Twitter Blue” paid premium subscription service, adding a blue checkmark to a user account, a gold checkmark for companies and brands, and a gray checkmark for government and multilateral accounts. In February 2023, Zuckerberg introduced Meta Verified, adding a blue checkmark to profiles or pages confirming authenticity.

Mark Zuckerberg

Age

$248.1 billion

Net worth as of July 13, 2023

$111 billion

Rank on Forbes’ billionaires list 2023

24: Musk co-founded online bank X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal.

Years active

19: Zuckerberg cofounded

Musk has co-founded six companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company. He acquired Twitter for $44 billion in April 2022.

Companies

Zuckerberg owns around 13% of Meta Platforms, which owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

Approximate number of platform users as of July 2023

Facebook: 2.99 billion

Twitter: 353.9 million

Source: BankMyCell F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Facebook in 2004.

Meta: 3.81 billion Threads: 105 million Source: Meta AUGUST 2023

23 LEADERBOARD

See you in court

By Alex Konrad

Inflection AI, The Year-Old Startup Behind Chatbot Pi, Raises $1.3 Billion Backed by Microsoft, Nvidia and billionaires Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, the startup led by ex-DeepMind leader MUSTAFA SULEYMAN is valued at $4 billion—and claims to have the world’s best AI hardware setup.

Less than two months after the launch of their first chatbot Pi, artificial intelligence startup Inflection AI and CEO Mustafa Suleyman have raised $1.3 billion in new funding. Microsoft, Nvidia and three of tech’s most influential billionaires led the investment in the Palo Altobased startup launched in early 2022. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt all personally invested, with Nvidia the sole new investor among the group. The new funding values Inflection at $4 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the transaction. Inflection said the company and Suleyman remained majority shareholders and declined further comment. In an interview, Suleyman said that the group of mostly insiders proposed the additional investment after Inflection was “overwhelmed with offers” following the launch of Pi, its conversational chatbot launched in May. “I think people can see that it’s

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

COURTESY OF INFLECTION AI

CONTRARIAN • TECHNOLOGY

“Microsoft has been amazing, they’re turbo-charging us, they are our anchor,” Suleyman said. “And as a result of our collaboration with Nvidia, we’ve been able to tune our cluster to get it to be the absolute best in the world. We can objectively say now that we have the very best hardware in the world.” Microsoft CTO and AI lead Kevin Scott and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared their support for Inflection in statements, with Huang saying that “the world-class team” at Inflection would help usher in “amazing personal digital assistants.” With this latest funding, Inflection plans to continue expanding its computing capabilities further developing Pi, a bot trained to engage in a conversational back-and-forth with users to tease out more valuable questions and answers. That chatbot, which Forbes previewed in early May, is “seeing huge engagement” as it adds new features, according to Suleyman. Inflection declined to provide user numbers to corroborate that claim. The model used for Pi, which Inflection announced earlier in June and said had similar computing capabilities to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is one of the smaller ones it’s had in the works, Suleyman claimed, with much bigger to come. Also in the short-term pipeline: an API for selected partners to train their own conversational AIs. (Inflection doesn’t plan to make that generally available as it focuses on its own consumer products, Suleyman said.) All of that means more funding is imminent — “I expect we will continue to raise at an accelerated rate” — but don’t expect Inflection to raise it from venture capital firms. “Our network and reach isn’t something that regular VCs can help accelerate,” Suleyman said. “What I’m personally looking for as a CEO is just advice, to benefit from the wisdom of their experience.” (The large sums of cash help, too.) For skeptics raising their eyebrows at the dollar amounts involved, both for the cost of training large language models and for the rounds their creators are raising, Suleyman offered a couple of explanations. While the cost of training AI models has decreased over time, Inflection and its rivals’ desire to train ever-bigger ones means that their absolute spend continues to grow, he said. Then there’s the “tidal wave” of investor and consumer interest in such technologies — one that Suleyman is happily “surfing.” “It’s totally nuts,” he admitted. Facing a potentially historic growth opportunity, Suleyman added, Inflection’s best bet is to “blitz-scale” and raise funding voraciously to grow as fast as possible, risks be damned. “There is, you know, ‘small is beautiful,’ we have demonstrated that in under a year,” Suleyman said. “This is the beginning of a journey, really just the starting line.”

Largest AI fundraising rounds*

Argo AI

OpenAI Amount Raised ($) Date

Cruise

Inflection AI

SenseTime

10B

2.6B

1.3B

1/23/23

7/12/19

1/19/21

6/29/23

9/10/18

*Additional rounds per company excluded • Source: Crunchbase F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

25 CONTRARIAN • TECHNOLOGY

just the tip of the iceberg,” Suleyman told Forbes. “There’s so much further to go after [Pi] validates the core thesis, which is that conversation is the new interface.” Some details of Inflection’s new deal with Microsoft and Nvidia are, like Suleyman’s iceberg, still largely out of view. He declined to provide a breakdown of how much of the $1.3 billion raised included cash equivalents (such as computing credits) but said that a “very, very large chunk” was in dollars. “We have all the cash we need to run and operate,” he added. Inflection also declined to comment on how much equity Microsoft and Nvidia now held in the business. But Suleyman said neither company commands ownership-like control over it, or other preferential rights. “In practice, it was a very traditional round,” he said. “There’s no IP movement, and we still are entirely independent and at liberty to do whatever we want on the commercial front, and partner with whomever we want. So there are no real restrictions,” he said. What is clear: the round significantly deepens Inflection’s ties with Microsoft and Nvidia, two key partners in the AI race. Microsoft, also a major investor in OpenAI, is Inflection’s cloud computing partner; Nvidia, meanwhile, has been working closely with Inflection on the deployment of its flagship H100 graphics processing unit (GPU), the current gold standard for AI training and powering large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-3. Nvidia worked closely with Inflection and service provider CoreWeave to co-develop Inflection’s current H100 cluster; Inflection paused its own work for Nvidia to run a recent test that Nvidia announced this week had set records on eight tests of current AI model training benchmarks, completing a benchmark based on GPT-3 in less than 11 minutes. That test, which matched the computational power of training a model that took an estimated three to six months to develop, ran on Inflection’s 3,584 H100 GPUs already in service, Suleyman noted. But in the wake of this funding round and partnership, Inflection’s growing horsepower is about to get a turbo-charge. Nvidia and CoreWeave (which helps physically deploy the GPUs) are now in the process of helping Inflection install many thousands more. Once fully operational, Inflection’s new cluster will run 22,000 H100s. Inflection believes that to be the largest GPU cluster for AI applications in the world, ahead of Meta’s 16,000 GPU cluster announced in May. (Just how many OpenAI is using is currently unknown; Nvidia announced last November it planned to incorporate “tens of thousands” of GPUs into Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.) Against the world’s largest clusters overall, Inflection said it estimated that it would trail only Frontier, the supercomputer maintained by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

• COVER STORY •

JAMJOOM PHARMA

EXECUTING AN EVOLUTION Tarek Hosni, CEO of family-owned Saudi pharmaceuticals giant Jamjoom Pharma, led the company through an IPO in June 2023—the largest the kingdom has seen so far this year. Now he’s looking at new product growth to make the company an international name.

BY JASON LASRADO F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

Tarek Hosni, CEO of family-owned Saudi pharmaceuticals giant Jamjoom Pharma.

IMAGE FROM SOURCE

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

JAMJOOM PHARMA

On June 20, 2023, Jamjoom Pharmaceuticals Factory (Jamjoom Pharma) debuted on the Saudi exchange, selling 21 million shares, or 30% of its issued share capital. With an offer price of $16, on the first day of trading the company’s share price rose by 30%, closing the day at $20.8. As of July 17, the stock was trading at $33.9, making the offering the Saudi exchange’s largest IPO so far this year and one of its most successful debuts ever. It was an understandably proud moment for Tarek Hosni, CEO of Jamjoom Pharma. The company was valued at $2.4 billion as of July 19. When Jamjoom Pharma applied for the IPO in February 2022, the Saudi Markets were booming. In April 2022, the Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) was above 13,700 points, more than doubling in the two years since March 2020. However, between the application and approval of the IPO in December 2022, the Saudi markets reversed sharply, with the TASI falling to just under 10,100 points. The market then trended sideways over the following three months as the world faced a war in Europe, high inflation, and fears of a global recession. All in all, it was not the best time for an IPO, but Hosni brought in the Saudi Economic and Development Holding Company (SEDCO) and the Al Faisaliah Group Holding Company as cornerstone investors. Together, the companies subscribed to 5,166,666 shares at the offer price, representing 24.6% of the offer shares and 7.4% of the company’s issued share capital. In the end, Jamjoon Pharma’s IPO was oversubscribed 88.8 times (excluding the shares that were allocated to cornerstone investors) and received great interest among institutional investors in Saudi Arabia and internationally. “The Jamjoom Pharma IPO was a consequential IPO for the Saudi equity capital markets. The IPO has set many precedents for the Saudi main market, being the largest IPO of 2023 following a six-month drought, the largest IPO of a F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

pharmaceutical company, and the first IPO to include cornerstone investor tranche,” says Amir Riad, Head Of Investment Banking at Saudi Fransi Capital, who advised on the deal. Fadi AlAwami, Financial Advisor and Founder of The Consultation Center, explains that IPOs go a long way in making a country attractive for business. “IPOs are an important factor to measure a country’s economy in terms of creating investment opportunities and to help companies to increase their capital,” he adds. But while Jamjoom Pharma went public to raise capital, the more vital goal was to instill best practices to become a global player. “Raising money was not even 20-30% of our objective. The key was governance,” explains the CEO. Hosni was the right person for the task. Before joining Jamjoon Pharma in 2021, he spent his entire career with two big pharma global players, spending over 30 years working at GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. A pharmacist by training, Hosni started his career with SmithKline & French (now GSK) as a medical representative in Saudi Arabia. He then moved to the U.K. with the company, where he lived for five years and moved into management roles. By 1998, he was head of marketing and commercial for GSK in the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, and Turkey. In 2001, he moved back to his home country of Egypt as the commercial director of Egypt and Sudan until 2004, when he moved to the U.A.E. to become regional head of marketing for Wyeth (now Pfizer).

“You don’t get an opportunity like this to transform, perform, change the structure, go for IPO, and we have done this in a very short time.” In 2006, Hosni moved to Saudi Arabia as general manager of the Jeddah governorate for Wyeth and nearly tripled its revenue from $60 million in 2006 to $170 million in 2009. When Pfizer acquired Wyeth that year, he moved again, this time to the U.A.E. as regional president for nutrition in Africa and the Middle East, where he increased revenues from $150 million in 2009 to $271 million in 2017. By the time Hosni left Pfizer in 2018, he was leading a billion-dollar business, making it the best-performing big pharma company in the region. While heading Pfizer’s middle eastern business, Hosni was looking to strike partnerships and alliances in the two biggest markets in the Middle East and

AUGUST 2023

IMAGE FROM SOURCE

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

began exporting products outside Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. Since then, the company has focused on international expansion and innovation. By 2010, Jamjoom products were available in more than 15 countries. By 2015, the company’s annual manufacturing capacity had reached 90 million units, and the following year it established the largest pharma R&D capacity facility in Saudi Arabia. In 2022, Jamjoon Pharma recorded sales of $244 million, making it a market leader in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, and the U.A.E. Today, its primary operating production facility is a 46,500-square-meter state-ofthe-art manufacturing plant in Jeddah, with a production capacity of 113 million units per year. It has a direct and indirect presence in 36 countries in the Middle East and Africa.

The company’s main markets are poised to grow. With over 500 hospitals and 75,000 beds, Saudi Arabia’s public expenditure on healthcare grew to an estimated $50 billion in 2022. This, combined with mandatory health insurance for all private sector employees and their families, is encouraging growth in consumer expenditure on health products and medical services, which hit $7.2 billion last year. Saudi Arabia currently imports the majority of its pharmaceutical products from the U.S., Europe, China, and India, but as part of its Vision 2030, it aims to achieve 40% of total pharma consumption to come from local

AUGUST 2023

29 JAMJOOM PHARMA

Africa, namely South Africa and Saudi Arabia. It was through this that he first met the Jamjoom family. In 2020, he was contacted about taking the role of CEO at Jamjoom Pharma, but he was initially reluctant to join, having spent over three decades in big pharma. However, once the owners shared their vision for the company, it piqued his interest. “I always admired some of the other examples where domestic companies became strong regional players and then became international,” he explains. Hosni joined Jamjoom Pharma in April 2021. His task right from the beginning was to make changes with the intention of going public. He set about putting the right people and processes in place and increasing transparency, reviewing the strategy of the company in order for it to be more appealing to shareholders. “I really enjoyed every moment, you don’t get an opportunity like this to transform, perform, change the structure, go for IPO, and we have done this in a very short time,” he adds, recalling the journey. Jamjoom Pharma’s history goes back to 1957 when a group of brothers from the Jamjoom family entered the pharmaceutical distribution sector through an acquisition led by Yousuf Mohammed Salah Jamjoom. At that time, the company was known as Jamjoom Medical Store, which evolved into one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical distributors under a holding company called Abdullatif Mohammed Salah Jamjoom and Brothers, with partnerships with pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Allergan. As the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia started to expand in the early 1990s, Yousuf Jamjoom identified an opportunity to localize pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities. Yousuf, together with his son Mahmoud, decided to create a state-of-theart manufacturing facility using the latest technology. This led to the establishment of Jamjoom Pharmaceuticals Factory Company. The company started production and commercial operations in 2000. In 2002, it

JAMJOOM PHARMA

production. The kingdom has been actively facilitating new products approved, with a bioequivalence success technology and research-driven partnerships with rate of 94%. It launched 17 new products in 2021 and global manufacturers such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and has 72 new products in the pipeline, 64% of which an MoU with GlaxoSmithKline. This, combined with have either been submitted for approval to the SFDA portfolio expansion by existing local manufacturers, or are close to submission. New products contributed resulted in the contribution of local products to the 4%, 8%, and 18% to the company’s total revenues in overall pharmaceutical market growing from 30% in 2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively. 2018 to 36% in 2021. This has encouraged companies “Being able to participate in the healthcare like Jamjoom to actively capitalize on the push for revolution that is expanding across the globe is localization in expanding its portfolio in both existing essential for counties that aim to provide top-notch and new product lines. therapies,” emphasizes John D. Philips, Director For example, in 2015 and 2019, it launched two of Research & Innovation at the Abu Dhabi new consumer health products, JP Vitamin D3 and Stem Cells Center. “Capitalizing on this locally Prima D3, after research showed that 80% of Saudi’s gives universities, healthcare organizations, and adult population was suffering from some form of businesses a platform from which to make exciting vitamin D deficiency and over 45% of the market was discoveries that lead to treatments, drugs, and dominated by liquid products, which are less effective devices that will be used globally.” than solid-dose alternatives. The company created Looking ahead, and Hosni now plans to make a formula for an alternative soft-gel product Jamjoon Pharma the leading pharma Stay with a better absorption and stability rate and manufacturer in the Middle East and Africa connected launched a full suite of vitamin D products, by 2026. “Many of the names you define as big with our latest business news. helping it to capture a 40% market share in pharma started off as family businesses; some of this category by 2021. them still are,” he says. “I would like to see this Jamjoom Pharma has over 90 scientists and company evolving in its journey to become a real Ph.D. graduates in its R&D team. Between significant regional player and then evolve to a January 2019 and May 2023, it had over 400 multinational international player.”

Saudi IPOs 2023 While Saudi’s IPO market was not as vibrant in 2023 as global factors dampened investors’ interest, the Saudi exchange has seen a few large IPOs. Here are the top five from the first half of 2023. Company

IPO size

• Jamjoom Pharma

$336 million

Jamjoom Pharma is a manufacturer and marketer of pharmaceutical products in the MENA region. The company has a wide range of products in its portfolio, including generic drugs, over-the-counter medications, and specialized treatments.

• First Mills

$266 million

Founded in 2017, First Mills produces flour, feed, bran, and wheat derivatives. It covers all major regions of Saudi Arabia through four largecapacity mills.

• Morabaha Marina Financing Company (MRNA)

$83.4 million

MRNA is an independent non-bank finance institution, offering a range of flexible Shari’ah-compliant financing solutions to individuals and SMEs. It has 16 branches across 13 cities in Saudi, in addition to its head office in Riyadh.

• AlMawarid Manpower

$76.8 million

Established in 2012, AlMawarid offers a variety of services to provide domestic and other professional staff to both private and public sectors. The company extends professional support services for the accurate management of the human resources recruitment process from all countries.

• Tam Development Company

$20.3 million

Established in 2012 and listed on the Nomu Parallel Market in June 2023, Tam Development Company is a management consultancy firm with digital business solutions. It has partnered with over 50 government entities.

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

The Under 30 Summit serves as a platform to showcase the exceptional talents featured in

the 2023 Forbes Middle East 30 Under 30 list. Attendees can expect thought-provoking discussions, where these budding visionaries engage with industry experts and share their insights on innovation, entrepreneurship, and the future of business.

NOVEMBER 23rd , 24th, 25th & 26th

2023 EGYPT EL GOUNA

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

www.forbesmiddleeast.com

For general inquiries: event@forbesmiddleeast.com For sponsorship opportunities: advertising@forbesmiddleeast.com AUGUST 2023

• TOP 100 ARAB FAMILY BUSINESSES •

HASSAN ALLAM HOLDING

GOING STRONG

Hassan Allam Holding’s third-generation leaders, Hassan Allam and Amr Allam, the Co-CEOs of the group, have been overseeing their family business since 2009 and 2010, respectively. They are now focused on expanding the company’s operations, leveraging hitting $5.5 billion in backlog in 2022.

BY HAGAR OMRAN F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

Hassan Allam and Amr Allam, the Co-CEOs of Hassan Allam Holding.

IMAGE FROM SOURCE

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

HASSAN ALLAM HOLDING

While being lucky enough to be born into a thriving family business may seem like a guaranteed path to success, the truth is that there are no guarantees. According to Deloitte, more than 70% of family businesses fail before reaching the third generation. That is not the case for Hassam Allam Holding, an Egyptian construction, engineering, and utilities company. Now under the leadership of two of the founder’s grandchildren, it has been growing at a rapid rate for over 87 years. The group’s backlog has grown over tenfold in the last 13 years alone, from $500 million in 2009 to $5.5 billion in 2022. Hassan Allam and Amr Allam, the group’s Co-CEOs, attribute the success of the family business to institutionalization and sound governance. “Any family business that isn’t institutionalized will be restricted in terms of growth and success,” explains Hassan. “The right governance and organizational structure help businesses succeed and operate as an institution rather than a family affair.” The group’s founder, Hassan Allam, started the family enterprise as Hassan Mohammed Allam & Co. in 1936 after quitting school to join his father’s small shop selling construction materials. The construction of El Kassaseen Hospital on the Cairo-to-Ismailia agricultural road was Hassan Allam’s first major contract. In 1964, the company was fully nationalized and became Nasr General Contracting. However, in 1975, the investment and legislative climate in Egypt changed, allowing the private sector to re-emerge, and the founder established a new entity, which is what is known today as Hassan Allam Holding. Today, the group employs 45,000 people and operates across 18 subsidiaries in several countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Libya, DRC, Algeria, Germany, and Iraq, focusing on engineering, construction, investment, and development. Hassan joined the construction arm of Hassan Allam Holding in 2002 and held several positions in the construction division, including Operations F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Director and Managing Director, before becoming the CEO in 2009. Amr Allam started his career in 2004 by joining the Consolidated Contractors Company as a project engineer. In 2007, he joined Hassan Allam Construction as head of new businesses. He became co-CEO of Hassan Allam Holding in 2010. The brothers divide their responsibilities. While Hassan oversees construction and engineering in addition to supervising strategic plans, business growth, and international expansion, Amr is more engaged in spearheading the evolution of the group’s corporate strategy and expansion through new investments, including launching Hassan Allam Utilities, Hassan Allam Holding’s investment and development arm, in 2017.

“Local blue chips, including Hassan Allam Holding, will benefit from Egypt moving in the right direction.” “The most successful families have struck the right balance for prioritization across the areas of succession, in-house governance, board composition, cyber, and tax, and they have taken action accordingly,” says Scott Whalan, Partner at Deloitte Middle East. “Throughout the ongoing transformation journey many Middle East family enterprises are experiencing, communication remains a core element proven to be essential in helping minimize obstacles along the way. Open and honest communication amongst the family; amongst the board, management and independent directors; and amongst advisors supporting the transformation.” According to Hassan, favorable market conditions in Egypt have also helped Hassan Allam Holding’s growth trajectory as it capitalizes on emerging prospects to enhance its market position. During the 2009-2010 financial year, Egypt’s GDP grew by 5.1%. The International Monetary Fund expects growth of 3.7% for the 2022-2023 financial year, followed by 5% growth in 2023-2024. This is still a slowdown from the 6.6% growth rate achieved in 2021–2022. Hassan Allam Holding has been engaged in a wide range of local and regional diversified projects that have supported its long journey. The group’s current project portfolio includes the first phase of the Cairo Metro Line 4, which the company is undertaking in partnership with Arab Contractors and PETROJET as part of an Egyptian consortium. The Ministry of Transportation

AUGUST 2023

IMAGE FROM SOURCE

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AUGUST 2023

35 HASSAN ALLAM HOLDING

is overseeing the ambitious project, which is being Utilities. The first park, YANMU East Logistics Park, partially funded by the Japan International Cooperation a 270,000 sqm site located on the new Cairo Suez Agency (JICA). The project involves constructing 12 Road, 15 km from Cairo Airport, is 40% complete metro stations by 2027, spanning a total length of 13.70 and expected to be completed in early 2024, with the km, from 6th October City to Al-Haram Street in Giza. YANMU West Logistics Park planned to launch next “JICA has committed to finance the Cairo Metro Line 4 year. Hassan Allam Utilities is looking to expand its by an amount of $1.3 billion (JPY 173.72 billion). Work greenfield logistics parks portfolio to around four parks, is now progressing in the stations after having started in according to Amr, with $500 million of investments set November 2020,” says Kato Ken, Chief Representative of aside. “2022 was a year for logistics. It is a promising the JICA Egypt Office. sector with a lot of opportunities in Egypt and the JICA and Hassan Allam Holding are also cooperating Middle East,” he adds. in another key project—the Grand Egyptian Museum Then, in April 2023, Hassan Allam Utilities jointly (GEM), which Legacy—a Hassan Allam Holding launched a $250 million multifaceted logistics platform subsidiary— is operating. The project is currently for warehousing services in Egypt with Denmark-based in a soft opening phase and is expected to be fully A.P. Moller Capital. This move came after the two operational in 2024. “JICA has been providing companies jointly acquired a 51% stake in Cairo Airport comprehensive support to the GEM since 2006 through two ODA loans of total about $600 million (JPY 84.2 billion) for the museum construction and consulting services. This, besides several technical cooperation projects, including support to the GEM Conservation Center to become a global center of advanced conservation techniques and research in the field of archaeology,” adds Kato. Hassan Allam Holding is having a significant impact on Egypt’s infrastructure through its subsidiaries. In the logistics and transport field, Hassan Allam Roads and Bridges is currently Hassan Allam Holding is cooperating with JICA on the Grand Egyptian Museum, which Legacy—a Hassan Allam Holding subsidiary— is operating. The project is working on the North Luxor axis project currently in a soft opening phase and is expected to be fully operational in 2024. that will connect the Eastern and Western Desert Roads, passing across the Eastern and Western agricultural roads and the Nile River. The Cargo Company for an undisclosed sum earlier in the project includes one main bridge crossing the Nile River year. The partnership aims to attract $200 million and ten other bridges for the intersections, with a total of direct investments into the logistics, freight, and length of 2.5 km, connected through road networks warehouse industries in Egypt. spanning 16 km. This will enhance traffic circulation, The family business is also looking at sustainable improve overall accessibility, and bolster the tourism projects for growth. In November 2022, Hassan Allam sector after it is completed by the end of 2023. Utilities, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company In March 2023, Hassan Allam Utilities agreed to (Masdar), and Infinity Power Holding signed a work with Kuwait-based Agility to establish a joint framework agreement with the Sovereign Fund of Egypt venture, YANMU, to develop, build and operate to develop a two-gigawatt green hydrogen project in the modern logistics parks and warehousing facilities in Suez Canal Economic Zone. The project is expected to Egypt. YANMU Logistics Park is 51% owned by Hassan be operational by 2030, with an output of up to 480,000 Allam Utilities and 49% by Agility. “YANMU facilities tonnes of green hydrogen per year. In June 2023, the are specifically designed to cater to the quality handling three companies also signed an agreement with Egypt’s and close proximity needs of numerous sectors, such New and Renewable Energy Authority to secure land to as e-commerce and FMCG. Looking ahead, our vision build a 10-gigawatt capacity onshore wind farm in Egypt, for 2023 involves investing approximately $100 set to be one of the largest in the world, with a project million into YANMU, with plans for further expansion value of more than $10 billion. Hassan Allam Holding in 2024,” says Dalia Wahba, CEO of Hassan Allam is also developing a 1.1 GW wind project in Egypt at an

HASSAN ALLAM HOLDING

investment value of $1.5 billion in cooperation with ACWA Power. “This project will be the largest wind farm in Africa. The plant will be commercially operational by 2027 at the latest,” says Amr. Toshka, the New Delta Wastewater Treatment Plant, and the Black Sand Minerals Complex are also among the group’s key construction and engineering projects. Outside of Egypt, the group’s Bioworks subsidiary in Germany is engaged in engineering, procurement, and design work. Hassan Allam Holding also signed an MOU with U.K. Export Finance in January 2023 to seek mutual opportunities for cooperation in Africa. And the group is working closely with other international institutions, including the International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). IFC invested $20 million in Hassan Allam Holding in December 2016, and in 2019, Hassan Allam Holding signed a $20 million loan from EBRD to support the construction and utilities sectors and help the group invest in the water space. “EBRD is currently one of our development partners in terms of debt across different sectors. We’re in discussions with them on equity investments,” says Amr. Other international projects include a large sewage line infrastructure project in Jordan and a solar power plant in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hassan Allam Holding’s diverse portfolio of projects is underpinned by the Egyptian government’s continuous efforts to enhance

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the country’s business climate. Egypt attracted $11.4 billion in foreign direct investment in 2022, marking the highest amount since 2017, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. “Despite the challenging global environment, there is a strong interest from international investors in Egypt, alongside local players,” adds Amr. Yet high inflation and price increases in raw materials and commodities are affecting businesses across all sectors, and construction and investment are no different. Egypt’s annual core inflation rate hit 41% in June 2023, from 14.57% a year earlier. “We had to renegotiate prices after the price hikes, and a lot of our clients have been reasonable and understanding,” explains Hassan. “We’ve had a healthy dialogue whereby we mutually agree to revise pricing that allows us to maintain a healthy business.” Looking ahead, the co-CEOs are continuing to explore more diversification and growing the company’s regional footprint. In construction, they aim to boost current businesses rather than adding new subsidiaries, while on the investment and development side, the focus will be on growth through new acquisitions and greenfields. Fitch Solutions expects Egypt’s construction sector to grow by 6.8% in 2023 and by an average annual rate of 7.4% from 2024 to 2027, helped by the government’s privatization efforts. “Local blue chips, including Hassan Allam Holding, will benefit from Egypt moving in the right direction,” says Hassan.

Maintaining Success In its Middle East NextGen Survey 2022, PwC made these recommendations to next-generation leaders of family businesses. 1

Make your voice heard on ESG

Don’t be afraid to take a different path

Hone your leadership skills

Articulate/negotiate a generational contract

The new generation needs to take the lead on ESG, which is becoming vital to business growth.

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

A new generation can offer a new perspective, such as on technology and diversifying portfolios, which is valuable in a changing market.

Following the same style as the leaders that came before you may not be the right approach for the future. Nextgeneration leaders can form their own style.

It’s important for family businesses to consider succession and be clear about what will come next and the new generation’s role in achieving goals.

AUGUST 2023

PRO M OTI O N Scan this QR code to open the website

Beyond Luxury Mahdi Amjad, Founder & Executive Chairman of OMNIYAT, explains how the company is reimagining the residential experience in Dubai. and inspiring structures, including The Opus by OMNIYAT in the Burj Khalifa District and the Sheikh Zayed Bridge.

Mahdi Amjad, Founder & Executive Chairman of OMNIYAT

How has Dubai’s architectural landscape matured over the years? We often forget that Dubai has seen remarkable development in an incredibly short period. While other countries have hundreds of years of architectural history, Dubai has grown into one of the most dynamic cities in the world in a mere 50 years. By blending innovation with a commitment to uniqueness, Dubai continues to captivate individuals who value visually stunning urban environments and the city’s skyline today stands as a reflection of the U.A.E.’s culture, heritage, and aspirations. How does Dubai cultivate design and architectural innovation, and how does this attract renowned global talent? Dubai’s story is rooted in innovation, and this has naturally percolated into the architectural and design spheres. As the city has matured, Dubai has drawn in even more ambitious designers, including world-renowned architects. Zaha Hadid stands out as a perfect example of a visionary finding an artistic home in the region. Her distinctive creations have left an indelible mark on the U.A.E. and residents see her work woven into foundational infrastructure

How is OMNIYAT reimagining the residential experience? OMNIYAT’s architectural ambitions extend beyond luxury. By reimagining the residential experience, the architects and designers OMNIYAT partners with inspire surroundings that transcend the conventional or expected. Our approach also engages with the frontiers of design possibilities, and this is embodied throughout the living masterpieces and destinations we’ve created. For example, AVA at Palm Jumeirah, our residential offering on the Palm Jumeirah Island, reimagines the concept of curated living, representing a vision of unequivocal space and inviting residents explore the limits of living well. Understanding that every client has specific preferences, we also take interior curation to the next level with OMNIYAT Bespoke, our interior design program that ensures each residence truly reflects the client’s lifestyle.

individuals who choose to live there, considering how the built environment can enhance and amplify their wellbeing. Our cities and places of residence play a vital role in shaping our lives, and our commitment aligns with that of Dubai’s, which is to create visually captivating urban landscapes that elevate and inspire.

What is AVA’s Sky Palace and what does it offer a city full of luxury? In a city where architectural evolution is the norm, the introduction of AVA’s Sky Palace marks an extraordinary addition to the skyline. The ground-breaking private residential palace is housed within an awe-inspiring four-storey structure and features an unprecedented corner-to-corner 360-degree infinity pool. Managed by the Dorchester Collection, AVA delivers outstanding residential services, including full exclusivity and beach access in one of the world’s most elite communities. How does OMNIYAT’s architecture influence the daily lives of its residents? Our approach to architecture goes beyond the physical aspect of a structure. It seeks to invigorate the

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www.omniyat.com AUGUST 2023

• TOP 100 ARAB FAMILY BUSINESSES •

DIANA HOLDING

SEEDING SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE Morocco’s agribusiness is under mounting pressure amid soaring inflation and climate-driven weather variations. Rita Maria Zniber, Chairman and CEO of agribusiness group Diana Holding, is taking the lead in transitioning to a more sustainable ecosystem.

BY SAMAR KHOURI F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

Rita Maria Zniber, Chairman and CEO of agribusiness group Diana Holding.

IMAGE FROM SOURCE

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

DIANA HOLDING

Agriculture is a serious business in Morocco. After all, the sector accounts for more than 10% of the North African country’s total economic output and 30% of the workforce. Agricultural produce, such as citrus fruits and market vegetables, are among its top exports. But the country has been facing severe drought and an economic crisis precipitated by global inflation and made worse by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, pressuring its export-led agricultural model. “Drought and climate change have affected us dramatically in these last five years, especially in the oriental part of Morocco where we have our citrus business unit,” says Rita Maria Zniber, Chairman and CEO of agribusiness group Diana Holding. “We have to innovate in irrigation and are looking forward to the building of desalinization plants. We are also still recovering from the Covid crisis and the disruption of logistics chains as well as the Russia-Ukraine war.” The agri-food group directly employed 7,200 people and had a consolidated turnover of $342.4 million amid the Covid-19 crisis in 2020. This rose to $441.7 million in 2022. An IPO may be on the cards in the future. “Why not? We’re looking for that because we have the proper governance for that,” Zniber shares. Diana Holding is in the process of creating a more sustainable and innovative agricultural ecosystem. In November 2021, Domaines Zniber, a subsidiary of Diana Holding, partnered with the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) to continue efforts to industrialize Morocco’s economy in the agriculture industry and boost precision agriculture, with a particular emphasis on water. “Today, customers want to know how the companies they do business with operate, what their values are, and how they demonstrate those values,” says Adnan Zaidi, Entrepreneurial & Private Business Leader at PwC Middle East. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

In March 2022, Diana Holding and Morocco’s Ministry of Industry and Trade signed a $12.1 million investment agreement for Berkane Juice Processing, a subsidiary of Les Domaines Zniber. “The main objective of this was to create value for the subproducts of our main production,” Zniber explains. “We aim to integrate ourselves into a vertical economy, where we try to optimize our production as much as we can. By doing so, we try to value the entire chain of production.” The company plans to use the funds to establish a citrus juicing and processing unit in Berkane with a capacity of 30,000 tons of citrus and a projected annual turnover of over $7.8 million. It will also create at least 240 direct jobs. Diana Holding is also capitalizing on nearly 50 years of bottling experience to develop its knowhow in plastic packaging and distribution. The Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company announced in November 2022 that it was acquiring northern Moroccan Coca-Cola bottler Atlas Bottling Company from majority shareholder Diana Holding through its Moroccan subsidiaries. Diana Holding acquired the Atlas Bottling Company in 1975. “At the same time,

“We are driven by love for the land and its people, which continues to inspire the values we uphold today.” the acquisition came at the right moment because we’re focusing on developing our agro-industrial sector with the aim of creating more sustainable and innovative agriculture,” explains the CEO. Zniber reveals that Diana Holding is planning to announce a partnership with Alpla Morocco in September, a major international player in the plastic industry. The CEO is in a good position to revolutionize the industry—she’s been involved in it for most of her life. Zniber spent her childhood in rural Morocco with her uncles and cousins, who all worked in agriculture. Diana Holding was first established in 1956 by Zniber’s late husband, Brahim Zniber, on the family’s Aït Harzallah estate. Zniber officially joined Diana Holding—which was named after her daughter, who currently serves as a board member and communication director—in 1988. She was appointed CEO and Chairman in 2014. “There is a correlation between the business and the family. The family fuels the business, but the business also fuels the family in

AUGUST 2023

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F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

job creation, and export. “Creating the path for agri players to open up to international markets has been part of the things that the government’s been focusing on quite extensively over the last decade,” he adds. “Of course, there are challenges, but the future looks pretty bright. And we are all very excited actually to be in the driver’s seat and looking at how everything’s going to keep transforming and driving the economy. It’s an exciting moment to be in.” To further support the agricultural undertakings, on June 13, 2023, the Moroccan government committed nearly $1 billion to restore stability within production chains dealing with combat drought-related

The family-owned Diana Holding has 8,300 hectares of land in management and more than 30 subsidiaries.

issues. “As stakeholders, we’re putting a lot of effort into creating employment, and we reinvest 75% of our income from Diana Holding into our business units,” says Zniber on solving Morocco’s biggest challenges. “We are a main actor in our economy, and we aim to act responsibly.” Africa is one market Zniber says she’d like to tap into in the future. “Our aim is to always be better and improve our different production processes, be it on the field or in our industrial sites, she emphasizes. “We are continuously hoping to renovate ourselves and trying to better ourselves.” Taking sustainability to heart, the company has been part of the UN’s

AUGUST 2023

41 DIANA HOLDING

a sense that the values are co-created and co-shared,” she says. “And that is the case for the majority of the stakeholders.” Today, the family-owned group has 8,300 hectares of land in management and more than 30 subsidiaries and eight business units, including agriculture, olive growing and olive oil production, plastics packaging, beverages, poultry, sea products, distribution, and retail. “We are driven by love for the land and its people, which continues to inspire the values we uphold today,” says Zniber. “We are pulled by the desire to maintain our story and to keep on innovating, to continue creating added value for our company and all of our stakeholders.” For Zniber, it was necessary to produce and export, not just for the local market. Diana Holding currently exports to more than 20 countries, including MENA, France, the U.S., and Canada. The U.K. is its biggest market for oranges and clementines. As a major player, Diana Holding is aligning its sustainability efforts with that of its home country. In 2008, Morocco adopted the Green Morocco Plan, an ambitious scheme to ensure food selfsufficiency. According to Aziz Akhannouch, Prime Minister of Morocco, agricultural production subsequently doubled in value, from $6.6 billion in 2008 to $12.8 billion at the end of 2018. In October 2022, Morocco became the first country to sign a green partnership with the European Union, called the EU-Morocco Green Partnership, aimed at strengthening renewable energy and climate change mitigation capacities. That same month, the European Commission allocated $125.1 million for the “Terre Verte” program to support Morocco’s agricultural and forestry sectors to address climate and biodiversity challenges by 2030. According to Jonathan Le Henry, Partner and Head of Strategy& in the Maghreb region, agriculture is one of Morocco’s top priority sectors in terms of value creation,

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received more than 3,000 orphans, according to Amhaouche. Zniber also has her own personal association, L’Association La Main Tendue (meaning Open Hand Association), which for more than 12 years has aimed to provide preschool education in rural areas as well as healthcare, such as vaccinations, maternity control, and accompaniment during pregnancy, in rural areas in partnership with Morocco’s National Human Development Initiative. “I think it’s the hands of God. I am just a canal,” she muses. In 2019, Zniber was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by French President Emmanuel Macron. “We are a company that highly values human stories because a business is not just revenue; it’s humans and what they bring to the table, how they grow, and the life they make for themselves. “This has been an element that has fuelled us, along the legacy of the business savvy mind of our late founder, which has taught us how to be business efficient, how to be creative, how to understand markets, and how to grow.”

Morocco Stats & Exports According to the World Bank, drought and high commodity prices have negatively impacted Morocco’s GDP in recent years, with real GDP growth dropping from 7.9% to 1.2% between 2021 and 2022. Core inflation rose to 8.5% in February 2023. In 2023, the World Bank approved $250 million in financing for an Education Support Program and $450 million for a third Development Policy Financing in Morocco.

Biggest exports as of 2022 Phosphates and derivatives

27.1% 26.1%

Automotive Agriculture and agri-food

19.1% 10.3%

Textiles and leather

6.7%

Other

Aeronautics

4.4% 1.3%

BYVALET/ SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

DIANA HOLDING

global program, United Nations Global Compact, since 2015. And the group actively participates in Morocco’s social and economic development, notably through the Rita Zniber Foundation, which was officially established in 1992 to help children deprived of family in the Meknes region. “What I saw and found at that time was heartbreaking,” Zniber recalls. The foundation has two centers that provide a home to 350 children until their adoption. Zniber founded the Le NID Center on Mohammed V Hospital’s 5th floor in March 1988 and opened The Annexe du NID in September 2007, welcoming children and adolescents. “The president and founder’s activities started in May 1982 as an active humanitarian and financial collaboration with the maternity wing of the Hospital Mohammed V in Meknes,” says Ouafae Amhaouche, the Rita Foundation’s Head of Kafala and Public Relations. “One of the main objectives of the foundation is to continuously provide its orphans with a healthy, safe, and enjoyable environment.” Since the foundation’s creation, it has

Electronics and electricity Mining

Source: Morocco’s Exchange Office F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AUGUST 2023

PRO M OTI O N Scan this QR code to open the website

A Slice Of Paradise Mohamed Amer, CEO of El Gouna, reveals how it has become a multicultural community and hub for arts, culture, and sports on the Red Sea. the UN-supported Global Green Town award nearly a decade ago. El Gouna’s blend of natural beauty, diverse entertainment, thoughtful development, and convenient location has made it a multicultural community with more than 100 nationalities among our 25,000 residents and 200,000 annual visitors.

Mohamed Amer, CEO of El Gouna

What sets El Gouna apart? El Gouna has emerged as a one-ofa-kind gem with its vibrant seaside lifestyle set by the Red Sea. From the outset more than 30 years ago, it has welcomed residents and visitors looking for laidback luxury and inspiring experiences. We rely on an integrated model that combines residences, hotels, and commercial and leisure amenities. From golf courses, marinas, and sports facilities to retail outlets, restaurants, educational institutions and medical centers, El Gouna has become a prime example of worldclass destination development. Orascom Development has replicated its success with El Gouna in other integrated towns in Egypt, the GCC, and Europe. Spanning 12 km of pristine shoreline and nearly 37 km2, our community has 9,000 residential units consisting of villas, townhouses, apartments, and 2,800 rooms across our 18 hotels. With a longterm commitment to environmental sustainability, El Gouna first received

What drives the appeal of real estate in El Gouna? Orascom Development has built its reputation for delivering integrated towns at an unparalleled scale and quality, which plays a vital role in value creation and price appreciation. Strong demand from international buyers is a substantial factor that drives high returns on investment (ROI) for homeowners. El Gouna is the only Egyptian real estate project that prices residential offerings in U.S. dollars, which is particularly appealing because it shields against currency fluctuations. We also deliver our real estate projects in two years, allowing investors to enjoy a rapid ROI. El Gouna Plus, our full-fledged property management offering, particularly appeals to international homeowners looking for turnkey solutions and peace of mind. What makes El Gouna an attractive destination for individuals and professionals? El Gouna is an ideal place for ambitious entrepreneurs and business professionals, and we are continuing to grow the ways that we can support them. El Gouna Business Park offers a

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dynamic corporate complex and acts as the town’s business district. For freelancers and off-site professionals, G-Space is the perfect co-working space overlooking the Red Sea. We have also initiated G-Valley to offer a comprehensive ecosystem to incubate and grow SMEs and startups with a distinct mix of office space, residential, retail, and conference and meeting facilities. What exciting developments can be expected this year? We have a full calendar. For example, the grand inauguration of the Fanadir Marina is coming up, with a collection of enticing dining outlets, high-end boutiques, and convenient amenities. We also plan to unveil the launch of our most premium, unique real estate project this year. We are gearing up for the 6th edition of El Gouna Film Festival, which attracts local and international celebrities and guests from around the region to celebrate the art of filmmaking. And, of course, we are holding the Forbes Middle East Under 30 Summit in El Gouna following last year’s successful debut.

www.elgouna.com AUGUST 2023

T O P 1 0 0 A R A B F A M I LY B U S I N E S S E S 2 0 2 3

TOP 100 ARAB FAMILY BUSINESSES 2023 M Family Businesses Are Evolving And Unlocking Value

Methodology

ost of the top family-owned businesses in the Middle East either started off as dealers, agents, or distributors for international companies, with the most successful enterprises evolving by adding more services and sectors to their portfolios. However, recently more family businesses seem to be looking to access the region’s stock exchanges for growth. In our 2023 list of the Top 100 Arab Family Businesses, over 60% are major shareholders in a company listed on a regional stock exchange. Most of these listed companies’ family businesses were among the founding shareholders. These listings not only bring in capital but allow family members to unlock value, as well as improve transparency and governance. While there are now female board members in most family businesses in the Middle East, almost all the heads are still men. Only four of the top 100 family businesses have women leaders. Most of the companies on our list have stood the test of time, with six of the entries established in the 1800s. Saudi Arabia dominates with 33 entries and is home to four of the top 10 companies. The U.A.E. comes in close second place with 29 entries, followed by Egypt with nine, and Qatar with eight. Family businesses have also begun investing in startups, with the Mansour and Abdel Latif Jameel families investing in global startups. The Tamer Group acquired Mumzworld, a childcare e-commerce company, in 2021. Family businesses are still playing catchup in terms of sustainability, but as most are reaching the second or third generation, they have begun to change with the times. Many of them are bringing in corporate governance, establishing clear structures, and putting professional managers in place. A few companies have separate family boards and corporate boards, and several have non-family members on their boards. Most have a non-family member in the top management team. On the ESG front, the region’s family businesses are mostly focused on social causes rather than the environment. According to a 2023 PwC study, only 11% of family businesses have set targets around their environmental impact and only 38% regularly communicate how they are performing against non-financial indicators. While many are still focused on traditional business and, to a large extent, have stayed clear of tech, they will need to transform as tech continues to disrupt industries.

Businesses owned or run by Arab families were considered for the list. We collected information from stock exchanges, reports from consulting firms, and other primary sources. We ranked the family businesses based on the following:

• Country Saudi Arabia U.A.E. Egypt Qatar Kuwait

• Year of Establishment 33 29 9 8 6

Oman Bahrain Morocco Jordan Algeria

5 4 3 2 1

1800s

1900-1949

1950-1999

after 2000

• The size and value of the businesses they hold, including listed entities, real estate and hospitality assets, and revenues from other holdings. • Business activity in the last year, including IPOs, new project launches, and new investments. • How diversified the business is in terms of sectors and geographies. • The performance of their key businesses and the sectors in which they operate. • Age and legacy of the company. • Total number of employees.

11 billionaires

on our family business list, with a total net worth

$27.7B

To nominate yourself or someone else for our lists, email: info@forbesmiddleeast.com

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Mansour Group

• Group Chairman: Mohamed Mansour

Country: Egypt Established in: 1952

Al-Futtaim Group • Chairman: Abdulla Al Futtaim 2

Country: U.A.E.

Mohamed Mansour

Established in: 1930 With operations in the automotive, finance, real estate, retail, and healthcare sectors, the Al-Futtaim Group has over 200 brands across 20 countries. It employs 33,000 people. The group owns 100% of Orient Insurance, 83.3% of the Emirates Investment Bank, and 26.3% of the Commercial Bank of Dubai. Abdulla Al-Futtaim and family had a net worth of $2.4 billion as of July 2023. In March 2023, the Al-Futtaim Group launched the Electric Mobility Company in the U.A.E., an e-mobility-focused dealership.

Olayan Financing Company (OFC) • Chair of the Executive 3

Committee and Deputy Chair: Lubna S. Olayan Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1947 OFC is the parent company of the Olayan Group, which was founded in 1947 by Suliman Olayan as the General Contracting Company. Today, the group has a diverse industrial, commercial, and investment portfolio. In June 2023, it supported the Asia Climate Solutions Design Grant in its first round of funding. The Olayan Group has offices in Vaduz, London, New York, Athens, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Riyadh.

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Al Ghurair Investment • Chairman of the Executive 4

Committee: Abdul Aziz Abdulla Al Ghurair Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1960 Established in 1960 as a trading business, Al Ghurair was one of the first pillars of industry in the U.A.E. Today, the group has a diversified portfolio across 50 countries in food and resources, construction, energy, and venture, among other sectors. It employs around 28,000 people. In March 2023, the group’s automotive division signed a partnership with Chinese automobile manufacturer EXEED to be the exclusive distributor of its SUVs in the U.A.E. In April 2023, Al Ghurair Foods signed 50-year land lease agreements worth $272.3 million with Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi. Abdulla Al Ghurair and family had a net worth of $3.2 billion as of July 2023.

Majid Al Futtaim Holding • CEO: Ahmed Galal Ismail 5

Country: U.A.E.

Established in: 1992 Majid Al Futtaim Holding has businesses in retail, entertainment, real estate, F&B,

and lifestyle across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. The company brought the Carrefour brand to the region and owns the right to operate it in 30 countries. It currently operates 458 Carrefour stores, 29 shopping malls in five countries, and 13 hotels (11 in the U.A.E. and two in Bahrain). The group recorded revenues of $9.9 billion in 2022, an increase of more than 12% compared to 2021.

Abdul Latif Jameel • Chairman: Mohammed Abdul 6

Latif Jameel

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1945 Abdul Latif Jameel operates in mobility, energy, finance, and healthcare, among other sectors. It has a presence in 30 countries across six continents and employs over 11,000 people. In January 2023, Abdul Latif Jameel Health signed a distribution agreement with iSono Health. In February 2023, it signed a distribution agreement with MG to begin distributing its vehicles in Morocco, and Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV)—part of Abdul Latif Jameel Energy—entered the German market to provide nearly 800,000 homes with clean energy. In March 2023, FRV opened its first office in the U.K. It aims to reach one gigawatt of installed capacity in Europe by 2025. AUGUST 2023

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The Mansour Group has grown over three generations, from starting in 1952 as a cotton exporter to becoming a global conglomerate. The group has operations in automotive, investment, and foodstuff, among other sectors. Al Mansour Holding Company for Financial Investments is Egypt’s largest distribution group. In May 2023, U.S. Major League Soccer (MLS) awarded a $500 million franchise to a group led by Mohamed Mansour to launch a football club in California by 2025. Yasseen, Mohamed, and Youssef Mansour had a combined net worth of $6.4 billion as of July 2023.

Al Muhaidib Group

• Group Chairman: Sulaiman Al Muhaidib

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1943 Abdulkadir Al Muhaidib founded Al Muhaidib Group in 1943 as a food store. His children—Sulaiman, Emad, and Essam— operate the company. It is an investor in the Saudi stock market, with stakes in the Savola Group. The group’s businesses span 25 countries, with a focus on F&B, industrial and infrastructure, real estate, and financial investment. Group Chairman Sulaiman A.K. Al Muhaidib is also the chairman of the Savola Group and the Rafal Real Estate Development Company.

SEDCO Holding

• Chairman: Saleh Salem Bin

Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani

Country: Saudi Arabia

Established in: 1976

• Chairman: Faisal Bin Qassim

• Executive Chairman:

Country: Qatar

Country: Kuwait

Established in: 1964

Established in: 1890

Al Faisal Holding was established in 1964 as a small company trading in spare automotive parts. Today, the group has over 50 companies operating across eight sectors. The group’s hospitality arm, Al Rayyan Tourism Investment Company (ARTIC), has 35 hotels and projects in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America. In January 2023, ARTIC and JW Marriott announced the completion of the first stage of the transformation of the JW Marriott Hotel Berlin. Al Faisal Holding’s chairman Al Thani had a net worth of $1.7 billion as of July 4, 2023.

Alshaya was founded in 1890 in Kuwait. Today, it is a multinational retail franchise operator of more than 60 global brands, including Mothercare, H&M, Starbucks, Boots, MAC, Harvey Nichols Kuwait, and Tekzone. Their brands have a presence all over the Middle East, North Africa, Türkiye, and Europe. The group employs more than 50,000 people. Alshaya has more than 4,000 stores globally, more than 100 ecommerce sites, and 30 distribution centers globally.

Suhail Bahwan Group • Chairman: Suhail Bahwan

CEO: Moutaz Al Khayyat; Ramez

Mahfouz

SEDCO Holding is a 47-year-old Shariahcompliant, ethical, and sustainable investment firm with diversified interests in financial, real estate, and direct investments. The company mainly invests in asset management, education, healthcare, hospitality, and real estate. It employs more than 3,500 people across the world. In 2022, SEDCO invested $171.5 million in a mixed-use tourism project in Abha, Saudi Arabia. SEDCO Holding also owns 35% of Nahdi Medical Company, one of the largest pharmacy chains in the Middle East. Nahdi raised $1.4 billion in 2022, which was Saudi Arabia’s largest IPO since Aramco’s listing.

Al Ghurair Group

• Group CEO: Iyad Malas

Al Faisal Holding

Al Thani

Country: U.A.E.

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Established in: 1960 Saif Ahmed Al Ghurair founded the Al Ghurair Group in 1960. Nasser Saidi, who is not from the Al Ghurair family, is the nonexecutive chairman of the board, and the rest of the board is comprised of family members. The group has a diversified portfolio in real estate, manufacturing, and finance. The BurJuman Centre in Bur Dubai is the group’s flagship property under its real estate portfolio. Its petrochemical business, Taghleef Industries, is among the largest global manufacturers of biaxially oriented polypropylene film, which is used in food packaging. The group is also involved in manufacturing metal through Al Ghurair Iron and Steel. The group’s investments include large stakes in Mashreq Bank and the National Cement Company. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Country: Oman

Established in: 1965 The Suhail Bahwan Group is a major producer of fertilizers, making over 1.3 million metric tonnes per annum of granular urea through SIUCI. It has 15 businesses and over 100 global brands across many sectors, including lifestyle, energy, IT, telecom, and healthcare. The group owns the Nissan dealership. The group’s chairman Suhail Bahwan had a net worth of $2.1 billion as of July 4, 2023. He also owns 14.75% of the National Bank of Oman’s shares.

Alshaya Group

Mohammed Alshaya

Power International Holding (PIH) • Chairman; Vice Chairman and 13

Al Khayyat Country: Qatar Established in: 1983 PIH is a diversified business group operating in multiple sectors, including contracting, agriculture and food, real estate, and healthcare. It employs 65,000 people. In 2022, PIH supported the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar by launching Al Maha Island and 11 international F&B brands. It also opened a hospital with 240 beds in affiliation with Cedars-Sinai and listed two of its subsidiaries: Baladna and Estithmar Holding. In June 2023, PIH signed an MoU with China International Capital Corporation and Baiterek National in Kazakhstan. The group plans to expand its operations in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Maldives, Antigua, and the Seychelles. AUGUST 2023

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Established by Hussain Ibrahim Alfardan in 1954, the Alfardan Group is one of the leading family conglomerates in Qatar, with a presence in the U.A.E, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Türkiye, and Switzerland. The group’s portfolio includes jewelry, financial services, property, automotive, hospitality, marine, agriculture, and medical services. In October 2022, Alfardan Group announced a partnership with Google Cloud to support the group’s digital transformation. As a participant in the United Nations Global Compact, Alfardan Group adheres to its principlesbased approach to sustainability.

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AW Rostamani Group • Chairman and Group CEO: 18

Khalid Al Rostamani Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1954

AlNahla Group

• Chairman: Abdulrahman Hassan Sharbatly

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1996 AlNahla Group is one of the oldest companies in Saudi Arabia. The group operates in investment, real estate, trading, automotive, and hospitality. Its investments span Saudi Arabia, the GCC, and Egypt. It owns 8.74% of Riyad Bank. In October 2022, the group’s Al Ameen Real Estate Company signed a hotel management agreement with Ennismore Arabia, a joint venture of Accor.

Juffali

• Chairman: Khaled Juffali Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1936 Jeddah-based Juffali is one of Saudi Arabia’s oldest and largest enterprises. Its core sectors include mobility, technology, engineering, and services. It has partnerships with international corporations such as Dow, Ericsson, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, and Siemens, among others. Juffali Commercial Vehicles is the sole agent and distributor of F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Mercedes-Benz trucks and buses in Saudi Arabia.

DAMAC Group

• Founder & Chairman: Hussain Sajwani

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1982 The DAMAC Group was founded by Hussain Sajwani in 1982. It has a diverse portfolio across property, technology, retail and fashion, hospitality, and logistics, among other sectors. DAMAC Properties had delivered 43,700 units, with 30,000 underway as of June 2023. In 2022, DAMAC Group launched D-labs to invest $100 million to build cities in the Metaverse. In February 2023, it announced the launch of a 44-story tower, Canal Heights, and Emirates NBD arranged DAMAC’s unsecured sukuk worth $200 million. Sajwani has a net worth of $4.5 billion as of July 2023, according to Forbes.

Alfardan Group • Chairman: Hussain Ibrahim Alfardan 17

Country: Qatar

Established in: 1954

Alghanim Industries • Executive Chairman: Kutyaba 19

Y. Alghanim

Country: Kuwait Established in: 1932 Alghanim Industries was founded by Yusuf Alghanim in 1932. Today, his son Kutayba Alghanim leads operations in the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia across various sectors, including retail and distribution, F&B, automotive, industrial, and services. The company employs over 13,000 people. It represents 300 global brands with more than 30 diversified businesses. In 2023, its subsidiary, Kirby Building Systems, inaugurated a new Kirby plant in Gujarat, India. In May 2023, the group partnered with Chinese manufacturer JAC Motors and inaugurated a JAC Alghanim showroom. Alghanim Industries also has a partnership with CODED Academy’s “Kuwait Codes” program.

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Hussain Sajwani

Founded in 1954 in Dubai, AWR today employs 4,000 people and has a turnover of over $2 billion. It has a presence in the U.A.E., India, and the U.K. Its subsidiaries work across a diverse range of sectors, including automotive, real estate, retail, lighting solutions, travel, and logistics. Arabian Automobiles, an international business of AWR, is the exclusive distributor of Nissan, Infiniti, and Renault across Dubai and the Northern Emirates. In November 2022, the group expanded its strategic Nissan portfolio by acquiring nine sites of West Way in the U.K.

Founded in 1911, when Jeddah was a small trading and fishing port, the Yousuf M.A. Naghi & Sons Group today operates across the automotive, FMCG, electronics, operation and maintenance, catering, and retail sectors. The group has four main businesses—Mohamed Yousuf Naghi & Brothers Group, Cigalah Group, Arabian Food Supplies, and United Yousef M.Naghi Co.—which are managed by the four sons of the founder: Mohamed, Yaser, Saleh, and Ammar.

The Zubair Corporation • Chairman: Rashad bin 24

Mohammad Al Zubair Country: Oman Established in: 1967

The Zubair Corporation was founded by Mohammad Al Zubair in 1967 as Muscat Trading Company in the old souq in Muscat. Today, the company is led by his son Rashad Mohammad Al Zubair. It is a regional conglomerate with over 60 subsidiary companies spanning energy and natural resources, real estate, hospitality, financial investments, automotive, and IT, among other sectors. The company has partnerships with more than 300 local and global brands.

Dallah Albaraka Holding • Chairman: Abdullah Saleh Kamel 20

Country: Saudi Arabia

a co-shareholder and partner of Aman Resorts Group, and a major shareholder of The Bank of Africa. The organization employs 20,000 people in its many businesses. Othman Benjelloun & family had a net worth of $1.3 billion as of July 2023.

Established in: 1969 Saudi investment group Dallah Albaraka Holding was founded in 1969 in Jeddah. The company has grown into a diversified international conglomerate, operating across Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America and investing billions in over 40 countries. The group has interests in several sectors, including trade, real estate, finance, healthcare, transportation, maintenance, and operations. It also owns 54.7% of Al Baraka Banking Group.

O Capital Group

• Chairman: Othman Benjelloun Country: Morocco

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Established in: 2021 Established by billionaire founder and chairman Othman Benjelloun, O Capital Group has investments in a number of industries - banking, renewable energy, agriculture, logistics, transport, media, real estate, IT, telecoms, insurance, and financial services. The group is a strategic partner with Air Arabia Maroc,

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S.S. Lootah Group

• Chairman: Yahya Bin Saeed Al-Lootah

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1956 Founded more than 67 years ago by Saeed Bin Ahmed Al Lootah, S.S. Lootah operates businesses in construction, real estate, energy, food, hospitality, financial services, education, and healthcare, among other sectors. The group’s international operations fall under S.S. Lootah, with operations in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Yousuf M.A. Naghi & Sons Group • Chairman: Mohammed Yousuf 23

Naghi

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1911

Cevital Group

• Chairman & CEO: Malik Rebrab Country: Algeria

Established in: 1971 The Cevital Group is the largest private company in Algeria. It operates in food processing, mass distribution, domestic appliances, iron and steel, automobile, and media, among other sectors. The group was founded by billionaire Issad Rebrab, who had with his family a net worth of $4.6 billion as of July 2023. His son Malik Rebrab took over in July 2022.

Zahid Group

• Chairman: Waleed Yousuf Zahid Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1943 The Zahid Group was founded in 1943 by Mohamed Mahmoud Zahid to represent General Motors in Saudi Arabia. The group has over 30 companies across 14 sectors in 23 countries. In June 2023, its subsidiary Altaaqa Renewables announced the financial close for the development of a 119 MWp Photovoltaic Independent Power Plant in Wadi ad-Dawasir, along with TotalEnergies and Toyota Tsusho Corporation.

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Waleed Yousuf Zahid

Saud Bahwan Group • Chairman: Mohammed Saud 27

Bahwan

Country: Oman Established in: 1965 In 1965, the Saud Bahwan Group represented Toshiba, Akai, and Seiko in Oman. In the 1970s, it partnered with Toyota. Today, the group works in automotive, heavy vehicles, industrial equipment, and travel and tourism, among other sectors. It also represents brands, including Toyota, Lexus, Hino, Yokohama, Goodyear, Continental, Ford, Lincoln, Kia, Komatsu, Kato, and MAN.

Jarir Marketing Company • Chairman: Muhammad Alagil 28

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1974

Founded in 1974 in Riyadh as a small bookshop, the Jarir Marketing Company sells stationery, office and school supplies, electronics, art supplies, and books in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the U.A.E. In March 2023, Jarir opened a bookstore in Sharjah. In June 2023, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology signed a deal with Jarir for Investment to support one of their training programs in 2023 and 2024.

Mohamed & Obaid Almulla Group • Chairman: Buti Obaid AlMulla 29

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1942 The Mohamed & Obaid Almulla Group has businesses in the healthcare, hospitality, and real estate sectors. Its healthcare businesses include The American Hospital, Unimed, Monrol U.A.E., and Stay Well Pharmacies. Its real estate division built the Almulla Plaza and has a diverse portfolio of related services, including property management, building, and leasing. The group acquired Ishraq Hospitality in 2011 and currently operates six properties in Dubai.

Bait Al-Batterjee Holding • Chairperson: Sobhi Abduljaleel 30

Batterjee

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1988 F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Buti Obaid AlMulla

Bait Al-Batterjee Holding employs over 12,500 people and has more than 25 different companies and subsidiaries that focus on healthcare, education land holdings, private equity, construction, fitness, IT, and pharmaceuticals. It owns Saudi German Health, a publicly-listed company in Saudi Arabia, as well as privately-owned hospitals in the U.A.E., Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, and Pakistan.

Y. K. Almoayyed & Sons Group • Chairman: Farouk Yousuf 31

Almoayyed

Country: Bahrain Established in: 1940 Yousuf Khalil Almoayyed opened his first shop selling everyday essentials in Manama, Bahrain, in 1930. In 1940, he founded Y.K. Almoayyed & Sons. Today, the group represents more than 300 brands and employs over 8,000 people. It has a diversified portfolio across automobiles, electronics, home appliances, heavy equipment, and industrial building systems, among others. The company deals with Nissan,

Ford, Infiniti, Lincoln, Renault, Komatsu, Continental Tires, Sony, Toshiba, and Honeywell. In 2023, the group partnered with major brands, including Panasonic, Hisense CAC, Nikai, Elf Lubricants, BKT Tires, and Krank Batteries, to be their official distributor in Bahrain.

Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group (ESAG) • Chairperson and Managing 32

Director: Raja Easa Al Gurg Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1960

ESAG has been operational for over 60 years and has over 30 companies in its portfolio. Founder Easa Saleh Al Gurg’s daughter, Raja Easa Al Gurg, heads the company. It works with over 370 global brands across retail and lifestyle, building materials, real estate, industrial, consumer, and joint ventures. Some of the companies ESAG represents are Interiors, Chattels & More, Better Life, Scientechnic, Al Gurg Living, and Gulf Metal Foundry. The group has joint ventures with AkzoNobel, Fosroc, Unilever, and Siemens, among others.

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Ajlan & Bros Group • Chairman: Ajlan Bin Abdulaziz 33

Ajlan Bin Abdulaziz Alajlan

Alajlan

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1979 Ajlan & Bros Group was founded by four brothers, Ajlan, Saad, Mohammed, and Fahad, in 1979 as a small textile and fabric shop in Riyadh. Today, the group employs over 15,000 people in more than 25 countries. In line with Saudi Vision 2030, the company has invested in diverse sectors such as real estate development, energy, water, food, technology, logistics, hospitality, and operations. The group’s portfolio includes international brands such as Giorgio Rossi, Bugatti, Iceberg, and Puente Romano. In March 2023, Ajlan & Bros collaborated with Malaysia DNeX to establish a joint-venture company to revolutionize smart cities integration and IT projects in Saudi and across MENA.

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Nesma Group

• President: Faisal Alturki Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1979

The Nesma Group operates through over 50 companies across Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Türkiye, and Egypt, including Nesma Infrastructure & Technology, Nesma United Industries, and Namma Cargo. The group has operations in construction, oil and gas, real estate, hospitality, shipping services, aviation, logistics, and IT, among other sectors. In February 2023, the group signed an MoU with a group of companies from Hong Kong to bring sustainable and zero-emissions public and cargo transportation solutions to Saudi Arabia. The group’s ongoing big projects in Saudi Arabia include the Red Sea Airport Project, South Jeddah Solar Power Project, and Makkah Bus Project.

Al Masaood Group

• Chairman: Masaood Ahmed Al Masaood

Country: U.A.E.

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Established in: 1970 The Al Masaood Group has a diversified portfolio of businesses headquartered in Abu Dhabi. The company operates across 18 different market segments, including automotive, industrial, business services retail, marine, and real estate. Some of the brands it has sole distribution rights for are

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Nissan, INFINITI, Renault, and Bridgestone in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, and the Western Region. It owns the Occidental Sharjah Grand Hotel, represents Truffleers, and is a partner of the Juventus Football Academy Abu Dhabi. In May 2023, the company launched a 100% electric waste truck in the U.A.E. with Renault Trucks Middle East and Tadweer. The company is diversifying into renewable energy with solar, solar charging, emission-less power generators and hydrogen.

Aujan Group Holding (AGH) • Executive Chairman: 36

Abdulla Aujan

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1905 AGH has ongoing operations across the Middle East and Africa in different industries, including FMCG, hospitality, real estate, and packaging materials. AGH, in a joint venture with the Minor Group, owns two island resorts in Mozambique under the Anantara brand. In July 2022, AGH and Minor Hotels

launched the Anantara Downtown Dubai Hotel. The Aujan Coca-Cola Beverages Company is the authorized manufacturer and distributor of Rani and Barbican brands and the licensed manufacturer in the Middle East for Vimto.

Elsewedy Electric

• Group President & CEO: Ahmed Elsewedy

Country: Egypt Established in: 1938 Established by the Elsewedy family in 1938 as a trading business in electrical equipment in Cairo, today Elsewedy Electric is a global energy, digital, and infrastructure solutions provider with a worldwide presence in 110 markets, 48 international offices, and 31 production facilities. The company reported $3 billion in revenues in 2022, up 52.2% compared to 2021. The company is developing a 120,100-square-meter Egyptian Industrial Park in Tanzania at an estimated cost of $50 million. The Elsewedy Family owns 68.1% of the company, which had a market cap of $1.4 billion as of July 4, 2023.

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Obeikan Investment Group (OIG) • Group CEO: Abdallah Obeikan 41

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1982

Established in 1982 as a single commercial print shop, OIG today operates across many sectors, including packaging, digital, diversified investments, education and knowledge, and bookstores. OIG has an annual turnover of $1 billion, $1.6 billion in assets as well as 25 companies and 20 factories and offices in 16 countries. The group owns 43.83% of the Obeikan Glass Company, which recorded $133.9 million in revenues in 2022. In June 2023, OIG and European Lithium created an entity to support Saudi’s Vision 2030 in evolving the mining and the electric vehicles industries.

ALSAYER Holding

• Chairman: Faisal Bader Al-Sayer Country: Kuwait

Established in: 1954

Abdullah bin Saleh Alothaim

Al-Dabbagh Group (ADG) • Chairman and CEO: Amr Al38

Dabbagh

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1962 Founded in 1962 by Abdullah Al-Dabbagh, ADG has grown its operations from a single business into a portfolio of investment businesses, including in food, housing, mobility, packaging and retail, and startup incubation. The group has 84 subsidiaries and operations in 22 countries. It employs over 15,590 people. The group has companies including Dukan, Petromin, and Electromin under its umbrella as well as two listed companies, Tanmiah Food Company and Red Sea International, whose market caps amounted to $655 million and $211.2 million, respectively, as of July 4, 2023.

AlJammaz Group

• Chairman: Ibrahim Abdulaziz AlJammaz

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1975 AlJammaz Group was established in Riyadh and operates in the agriculture and food sectors. The group comprises over 20 businesses operating over 700 branches and outlets, employing over 4,000 people. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

It owns 57.1% of Alamar Foods and owns a dates factory that processes dates from AlJammaz Farms. It also distributes irrigation systems, fertilizers, seeds, and other agriculture-related products. And it is a partner in Derayah, a fintech, and D360, a digital bank. It invests in public and private equity in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, Europe, and the U.S.

Mohammed Ibrahim Alsubeaei & Sons Investment Company (MASIC) • Chairman: Ibrahim Mohammed 40

Alsubeaei Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 2011 Diversified investment company MASIC was established to exclusively manage the assets of the family of the late Mohammed Alsubeaei. It manages a broad range of assets, with a primary focus on public equity, private equity, and real estate. MASIC’s public equity portfolio owns approximately 20% of Bank Albilad. In November 2022, MASIC started construction on Endowment Hotels in Mecca, covering a total built-up area of approximately 92,000 square meters. The project comprises two hotels consisting of 885 units, 570 rooms, and 315 serviced apartments.

ALSAYER Holding began as a foodstuffs business in 1954. A year later, it became Toyota’s representative in the Arab world. Today, the group covers 18 divisions across different sectors, including heavy equipment, transportation, industrial equipment, special vehicles and tools, financing, investment, real estate, insurance, and technology. The group is a distributor for Daewoo, Hino, and Ashok Leyland, among other world-renowned brands.

Abdullah AlOthaim Holding Company • Chairman: Abdullah bin Saleh 43

Alothaim

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1956 Abdullah AlOthaim Holding Company operates in different sectors including commercial, real estate, industrial, and investments. The group has 38 subsidiaries and investments in 17 companies with total investments of $6.5 billion and a workforce of more than 20,000 employees. The group owns 33.66% of Abdullah AlOthaim Markets Co. which has 323 branches throughout Saudi Arabia and 46 branches in Egypt. The group also owns Abdullah AlOthaim Investment Co., which manages 12 shopping malls and 70 entertainment centers in the GCC Countries and Egypt. The company is currently developing 23 integrated and mixed-use projects, including the expansion of six existing commercial complexes. AUGUST 2023

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BoodaiCorp

• Chairman: Jassim Boodai Country: Kuwait

Established in: 1954 Established as a trading company supplying equipment to the oil industry in Kuwait, today BoodaiCorp manages investments in trading, media, public transport, aviation, logistics, engineering, and construction. It employs more than 7,000 people. The group has investments in Jazeera Airways, Alrai Media, Alrai TV, Hilal Cement Company, and Atlas Commercial Company, among others. Jazeera Airways had a market cap of $1.4 billion as of July 4, 2023, and recorded $157 million in revenues in Q1 2023. In March 2023, Jazeera Airways announced that it was establishing a new air transportation company in Saudi Arabia, with plans to expand its fleet to 23 by the end of 2023.

Kanoo

Country: Bahrain Established in: 1890 YBA Kanoo Group has businesses in shipping, logistics, travel, industrial, oil and gas, capital, and real estate and has a presence in the U.A.E., Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. In August 2022, YBA Kanoo signed an agreement with TLScontact to inaugurate visa application centers in Saudi Arabia. Its financial investments arm, Kanoo Capital, was established in 2016 and had more than 30 joint ventures and 40 active investments in over 17 countries. The real estate arm of the group has more than 300 projects across three countries, including 172 residential properties and 277 commercial units in Bahrain.

Khalifa Juma Al Nabooda Group • Chairman: Khalifa Juma Al 46

Nabooda

Country: U.A.E.

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Established in: 1963 The Khalifa Juma Al Nabooda Group is a conglomerate of more than 25 different companies across automobiles, real estate, hospitality, food services management, construction, civil and marine engineering, hotels, education, printing, equipment trading, and facilities management and

F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Ghassan Aboud

consultancy. The group also owns the Dubai Printing Press, which was the first company in their portfolio. Al Nabooda Automobiles is the sole importer of Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi in Dubai and the Northern Emirates. The group has recently added the automotive brand McLaren to its portfolio.

Manaseer Group

• Chairman: Ziad Al Manaseer Country: Jordan

Established in: 1999 Chairman Ziad Al Manaseer established the Manaseer Group as a chemical and fertilizer distribution company in Jordan with 15 employees. Today, the group has operations in various industries, such as building materials, industrial minerals, life sciences, energy, and mobility. In June 2023, the group partnered with CH-AUTO to establish a joint venture to manufacture electric vehicles in Jordan.

ELARABY Group • Chairman: Ibrahim Mahmoud 48

Elaraby

Country: Egypt Established in: 1964 Established in 1964 as a family enterprise,

today the ELARABY Group is one of the largest industrial and commercial conglomerates in the region. The group operates through 19 trading, industrial, medical, and service companies, with a workforce of more than 45,000 people. Its portfolio consists of 17 global brands with more than 4,000 variations. It exports its products to over 60 countries. In September 2022, the group announced a partnership with Taiwanese company Rechi to produce air conditioning compressors, with an investment value of $33 million.

Ghassan Aboud Group (GAG) • Chairman: Ghassan Aboud 49

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1994 GAG is an international organization involved in automotive, retail, FMCG, media, hospitality, logistics, healthcare, facilities management, catering, and the digital marketplace. Headquartered in the U.A.E., the company also has offices in Australia, Belgium, Türkiye, and Jordan. Some of its businesses include Grandiose Catering and supermarkets, Olive Country, and the Crystalbrook Collection of Hotels and Resorts. In 2023, The company joined forces with Halal Quality Control Group and introduced Halal certification solutions for U.A.E. companies producing and exporting Halal goods.

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Yusuf Bin Ahmed Kanoo Group (YBA Kanoo) • Chairman: Khalid Mohamed

MAG Group

• Chairman: Moafaq Ahmed Al Gaddah

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1978 The MAG group operates across different sectors, including real estate, contracting and engineering, industrial and commercial trading, freight services, and hospitality. It employs more than 2,000 people worldwide across more than 50 companies and branches. MAG Property Development is the group’s real estate development arm. With 4,851 completed units and 3,367 under construction, the company’s projects are valued at more than $5 billion. In 2022, the company launched Keturah Reserve, a residential development that aims to immerse residents in nature through bio-living. MAG Property Development recorded $816.7 million in sales during Q1 2023. Hussain AlNowais

AlNowais Investments • Chairman: Hussain AlNowais

• Chairman and CEO: Saad

Established in: 1979

Established in: 1957

AlNowais Investments operates across the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and Africa. It has activities in several sectors, including engineering, construction, healthcare, real estate, hospitality, oil and gas, and chemical industries, among others. Hussain AlNowais owns around 7.6% of Waha Capital Company and is the vice chairman of Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. The family also owns a controlling stake in the Rotana hotel group.

The Alkhorayef Group operates in farming solutions, water and power technologies, marine and diving, and oil and lubricants. The group’s subsidiary, Alkhorayef Petroleum, exports 80% of the products it manufactures. The group distributes global brands, including Volvo, John Deere, Castrol, Linde, Manroland, and Yamaha. In 2022, Alkhorayef Group signed a contract with the Royal Commission Yanbu to develop and operate ALJAR MARINA.

Country: U.A.E.

Mohsin Haider Darwish • Chairperson - ITICS; 51

Chairperson - ACERE: Lujaina & Areej Mohsin Haider Darwish Country: Oman Established in: 1974 Founded by Mohsin Haider Darwish in 1974, today MHD operates through two clusters. MHD ACERE has a diversified portfolio of products and services across the automotive, engineering, education, and renewable energy sectors, and is the sole distributor of Jaguar, Land Rover, McLaren, and Hongqi in Oman. MHDITICS’s brands include Samsung, Toshiba, Akai, and Huawei, with a workforce of over 350 employees in 25 locations across Oman, the U.A.E., and Qatar. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Alkhorayef Group

Alkhorayef

Country: Saudi Arabia

AlOthman Holding • Chairman: Mohammed 55

Abdullah Al Othman

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1967 AlOthman Holding was founded in 1967 by Mohammed Abdullah Al-Othman. It has companies across oil and gas, steel manufacturing, petrochemical, food, IT, construction, engineering, environmental consultancy, and hospitality. Based out of Al Khobar, AlOthman has branches in 27 locations in Saudi and five international branches. It employs more than 5,500 people.

Tiger Group • Chairman: Waleed Mohammad 56

Crescent Group

• Chairman: Hamid Jafar Country: U.A.E.

Established in: 1971 The Crescent Group has two core businesses: Crescent Petroleum and Crescent Enterprises. Crescent Petroleum has been operational for over 52 years and is one of the region’s oldest private oil and gas companies. Crescent Enterprises operates in ports and logistics, power and engineering, aviation, healthcare, real estate and construction, IT commerce, venture capital, and private equity. In 2023, Crescent Petroleum signed three contracts with Iraq’s Ministry of Oil to develop and produce oil and gas fields in Diyala and Basra.

AlZoubi

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1976 Tiger Group operates in various sectors, including real estate, industrial production, contracting, commerce, travel, hotels, and education. Its primary focus is real estate, with over 200 projects totaling 23,000 units delivered. The group operates in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and Türkiye. The group also has 10 affiliations. The group’s major developments include Seslia Tower, Regina Tower, BlueWave Tower, and The Trio 2 Tower, with plans to develop 10 projects in 2023 worth $950 million. In March 2022, the group launched a new project, the Cloud Tower, in Dubai, with an investment value of $109 million. AUGUST 2023

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Abunayyan Holding • Chairman: Mohammad A. 61

Abunayyan

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1950

Hisham Talaat Moustafa

62 57

Darwish Holding

• Chairman & Managing

Director: Bader Al-Darwish Country: Qatar Established in: 1920 Darwish Holding was established as a trading store in the 1920s by brothers Abdullah, Kassem, and Abdulrahman Darwish. Today, the group has various divisions, including malls, retail, real estate, and technology. Its retail division features mono brands and Fifty One East, which offers cosmetics and jewelry from luxury brands such as CHANEL, Givenchy, Amouage, Elizabeth Arden, Lancôme, and Rolex. The group also owns Lagoona Mall. Darwish Tower is the group’s real estate landmark, with an investment value of over $400 million. Darwish Holding’s technology arm offers a portfolio of international brands, including Sony, Bang & Olufsen, Bose, and Yamaha.

Saeed & Mohammed Al Naboodah Holding • Chairman: Abdullah 59

Mohammed Juma Al Naboodah Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1958 Saeed & Mohammed Al Naboodah Holding was founded in 1958 by brothers Saeed and Mohammed Al Naboodah. Today, Saeed & Mohammed Al Naboodah Holding oversees the operation of two main subsidiaries: Al Naboodah Construction Group and Al Naboodah Commercial Group. It works with a number of global brands, including ABB, Air France, Air Canada, Ashok Leyland, Cathay Pacific, Goodyear, Harley-Davidson, and Peugeot.

Bukhamseen Group Holding Company • Vice Chairman & CEO: Emad 60

Al Mulla Group

• CEO: Talal Anwar Al Mulla Country: Kuwait

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Established in: 1938 Founded by the late Abdulla Al Mulla, in 1938 the Al Mulla Group became the sole distributor of Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth automobiles in Kuwait. The group’s portfolio covers multiple sectors, including: automotive, engineering, financial services, trading and manufacturing, rental and leasing, healthcare, education, and real estate. In January 2023, the group extended its strategic partnership with INJAZ-Kuwait to support young Kuwaitis’ education. In July 2023, the group inaugurated the 113th branch of Al Mulla Exchange in Kuwait.

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Jawad Bukhamseen Country: Kuwait Established in: 1957

Bukhamseen Group Holding Company was launched in 1957 by founder Jawad Ahmed Bukhamseen and run by his son Emad. The organization operates in real estate, construction, finance, banking, hospitality, travel, tourism, industrial productions, media and communication, and consultancies for urban planning and civil engineering. The Bukhamseen Group’s real estate division has eight companies.

Sumou Holding

• Chairman: Ayedh Al-Qahtani Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 2008 Sumou Holding has investments in businesses in the real estate, logistics, construction, and investment sectors. In March 2023, the company acquired a 115,000-square-metre plot west of Riyadh valued at $187 million. It owns almost 63% of the Tadawul-listed Sumou Real Estate Company, which had a market cap of $526 million as of July 2023.

Talaat Moustafa Group Holding (TMG Holding) • CEO and Managing Director: 63

Hisham Talaat Moustafa Country: Egypt Established in: 1970s

TMG Holding develops large-scale integrated communities and tourism investment projects. The group has over 74 million square meters spread across Egypt. It developed Madinaty project, Noor City, Celia, and Al Rehab City, among others. The group owns 1,041 hotel rooms across four properties in Cairo, Sharm El Sheikh, and Alexandria, managed by Four Seasons and Kempinski. The group is currently expanding its portfolio, with an additional 940 rooms in three new hotel properties under construction in Madinaty, Luxor, and Marsa Alam. In July 2023, TMG Holding, through its hospitality arm ICON, submitted an offer to acquire a major stake with management rights in a portfolio of seven hotels in Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, and Aswan in a deal valued at $700 million.

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Established in 1950 as an agricultural irrigation company, today, Abunayyan Holding provides multiple solutions for the water, power, and oil and gas industries. Through various business units, Abunayyan Holding also covers the engineering, manufacturing, supply, construction, and service industries across more than a dozen businesses in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Kenya, and Nigeria. In 2019 and 2020, the company established its first industrial plants in Ghana, Angola, and Senegal.

BinDawood Holding Company • Chairman: Abdulrazzaq Dawood 68

BinDawood

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 2011

Mohammad A. Baker

Safari Group

• Chairman: Saleh Al Sagri

including Singapore and Malaysia, over the next three years.

Sayegh Group

Established in: 1984

• Chairman: Micheal Sayegh

GMG

• Deputy Chairman and CEO: Mohammad A. Baker Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1977 GMG began operations in 1977 as a small butchery selling western meat, fish, and cold cuts. Today, the conglomerate has businesses in health, beauty, everyday goods, sports, logistics, and property, with stores across MENA, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. In May 2023, the company opened its first store for its homegrown brand Sun & Sand Sports (SSS) in Singapore. GMG plans to open 11 SSS stores across Southeast Asia,

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Almana Group • Chairman: Hamad Mohammed 69

Country: Saudi Arabia

Established as a travel agency by Saleh Al Sagri, today the Safari Group operates in nine sectors, including facility management, construction, travel and hospitality. It owns 10 businesses and employs more than 10,000 people. The company is currently working on renovating Jazan Airport and constructing King Abdullah Jazan New Airport. In June 2022, the group signed three contracts with King Fahd Causeway Authority for the inspection, maintenance, and cleanliness of sites in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain Through its telecom arm, the group is also authorized to sell Mobily products and runs over 100 Mobily outlets in Saudi Arabia.

The BinDawood Holding Company has two key retail chains, BinDawood and Danube, which together employ over 10,000 people. The first BinDawood superstore was opened in Makkah in 1984 by the BinDawood family, which is the founder and majority shareholder of BinDawood Holding. It has 85 hypermarkets, supermarkets, and express stores across major cities in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. In 2022, it opened its first international store in Bahrain and acquired an 86.53% stake in Ykone, an influencer marketing agency and a subsidiary of TF1 Group, through its subsidiary Future Technology Retail.

Hamad Al Mana

Country: Jordan

Country: Qatar Established in: 1960

Established in: 1932

The Almana Group started as a trading house in 1960 and has since expanded into automotive distribution and services, real estate, investments, retail, F&B, engineering, technology, media, and entertainment. Almana Group’s automotive division represents some of the world’s leading brands, including Ford, Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge.

The Sayegh Group began operations in 1932. Today, the conglomerate has companies and investments across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. The group’s core business covers industrial and logistics, educational, medical, media broadcasting, and banking across over 35 companies.

Hayel Saeed Anam Group (HSA Group) • Chair and CEO: Abdul Gabbar 67

Hayel Saeed

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1938 The HSA Group was founded in 1938 by four brothers from the Saeed Anam family. Today, it employs 35,000 people across 70 companies and 80 markets in South Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The group’s core activities are in manufacturing edible oils, dairy products, biscuits, confectionery, flour milling, sugar refining, cartons, printing and packaging, and cement production. HSA expanded outside its native Yemen and set up manufacturing plants in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Malaysia, Indonesia,

Mouawad

• Co-Guardians: Fred, Alain and Pascal Mouawad Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1890 Founded by the Mouawad family in 1890, today Mouawad operates regionally in Lebanon, Qatar, the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, and internationally in Hong Kong and the U.K. In December 2022, the Miss Universe Organization unveiled “The Crown Number 12: Force for Good,” crafted by Mouawad. The new crown features pear-shaped blue sapphires surrounded by diamonds and is valued at approximately $5.75 million. The company today is led by the fourth-generation co-guardians and brothers Fred, Alain, and Pascal Mouawad. Billionaire Robert Mouawad had a net worth of $1.5 billion as of July 2023, according to Forbes.

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Al Faisaliah Group (AFG) • Group President: Mohammed 71

K.A. Al Faisal

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1971 Founded in 1971, AFG has operations across the Middle East and across different sectors including dairy, electronics, healthcare, and food service. The group has strategic partnerships with local and global firms including Sony, Danone, Philips, and Accenture. Al Safi Danone (ASD) is a joint venture between Al Faisaliah Group Al Safi Dairy Company and Groupe Danone of France. ASD supplies dairy products to more than 32,000 retailers in 12 countries across the region. In 2023, AFG was one of the anchor investors in Jamjoom Pharma’s IPO.

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Hassan Allam Holding • Co-CEOs: Hassan Allam and 72

Amr Allam

Country: Egypt Established in: 1936 Founded in 1936 by Hassan Allam, today Hassan Allam Holding has operations in engineering, construction, investment, and development. The group operates in diverse sectors in Egypt and the MEA region. The group has 18 subsidiaries across eight countries and a backlog worth over $5.5 billion in 2022. The group employs more than 45,000 people and has a portfolio spanning solar power, water, petrochemical facilities, museums, airports, roads, and bridges across the region. In June 2023, Hassan Allam Utilities, in partnership with Masdar and Infinity Power Holding, signed an agreement with Egypt’s New and Renewable Energy Authority to secure land to develop a 10 GW onshore wind farm in Egypt.

Al Qahtani Holding

• Chairman: Abdulaziz Al-Qahtani

Country: Saudi Arabia

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Established in: 1948 Al Qahtani Holding was established in Saudi Arabia in 1948 by the late Sheikh Abdulhadi Abdullah Al Qahtani. The group has since diversified into various sectors, including beverage production and distribution, manufacturing, oil and gas, mining, and real estate. Al Qahtani Holding’s portfolio of brands includes joint ventures with CemServ, Central Mining

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Abdulaziz Al-Qahtani

Holding, PepsiCo Jordan, and Al Qahtani Beverages. In December 2022, Maersk signed an agreement with Al Qahtani Holdings’ Refad Real Estate to operate a new cold storage facility at King Abdulaziz Port in Dammam.

Jamjoom Pharma

• Chairman: Mahmoud Yousuf Salah Jamjoom

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1994 Jamjoom Pharma began its manufacturing and sales operations in 2000. The company’s main operating production facility is a 46,500-squaremeter manufacturing plant in Jeddah with a production capacity of 113 million units per year. In May 2023, the company set the final offer price for its IPO on the Saudi stock exchange at $16 per share to raise $336 million.

Khansaheb

• Chairman: Tariq Khansaheb

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1935 Khansaheb is a construction and facilities management company and

the longest-standing contractor in the country. The company provides sustainable solutions for building and infrastructure projects, creating and maintaining physical assets across construction, infrastructure, interiors, facilities management, architectural and structural metal works, building services, property services, joinery, building products, and wastewater treatment industries. It employs 4,500 operatives and 1,000 staff in its construction division alone.

Abdulla Yousif Fakhro Group • Chairman: Esam Fakhro 76

Country: Bahrain

Established in: 1888 The Abdulla Yousif Fakhro Group began operations in 1888 in Bahrain. Today the organization has businesses across the automotive, industrial products, electronics, telecommunications, insurance, contracting, shipping, and logistics industries. It has partnerships with Dunlop, Mobil, Omia, and McDonald’s. The organization has a presence in Bahrain, the U.A.E., and Qatar.

AUGUST 2023

Memaar Al Morshedy • Founder: Mohamed Morshedy 80

Country: Egypt

Established in: 1983 Founded by Mohamed Morshedy in 1983, Memaar Al Morshedy has built over 1,100 buildings, 156 complexes, 26 malls, 18 nurseries, 14 mosques, 11 schools, six medical clinics, and two hospitals. As of 2022, the company had total assets worth $6 billion in Egypt, consisting of 14 residential, commercial, and administrative mega-projects. In 2022, the company entered the education sector by launching Al Hayah University, which expects to cater to 5,000 students. Other projects include Kattameya Gate, Degla Landmark, Bavaria Town, and One Kattameya.

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Chalhoub Group

• Group President: Patrick Chalhoub

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1955

Zaid S. Al Khayyat

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1971

Oasis Investment Company is the holding company of the Al Shirawi Group. The group began operations in 1971 and today has major companies across the manufacturing, engineering, trading, marketing, distribution, contracting, and service industries. It works with more than 100 multinational groups for technical licensing, distribution, servicing, and trade representation.

MedLab. In 2022, AKI Pharma expanded its portfolio to cover more diverse therapy areas, including gene therapy, biosimilars, oncology, and specialty, as well as rare and ultra-rare diseases. It also expanded BinSina Pharmacy in Oman and relaunched its mobile app. The group partners with patient support providers such as AXIOS and IQVIA.

Alzayani Investments • Chairman: Nawaf Khalid Al 79

Zayani

Country: Bahrain Established in: 1977

Al Khayyat Investments (AKI) • Managing Director: Zaid S. Al 78

Khayyat

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1982 AKI was founded in 1982 by Saad F. Al Khayyat, licensed under Alphamed General Trading. Today, the group operates through three main companies: BinSina Pharmacy, AKI Pharma, and AKI

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Naif Alrajhi Investment Group • Chairman and CEO: Naif Saleh 82

Alzayani Investments was established in 1977 by Hamid Rashid Al Zayani. Its business portfolio spans diverse sectors, including automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, real estate, service businesses, and F&B. The group’s joint venture with Closure Systems International and Gulf Closures is one of the biggest suppliers of Coca-Cola and Pepsi bottle caps in the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. In May 2023, the company’s F&B arm, Zayani Foods, launched its twentieth branch of Costa Coffee in Bahrain.

Alrajhi

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 2012 Naif Al Rajhi Investment is headquartered in Riyadh, with a presence in the U.A.E., the U.K., Italy, and Morocco. The group works with companies in 11 different sectors, including real estate, hospitality, F&B, mining, contracting, interior design solutions, financial markets, marketing, and logistics. In February 2023, Naif Alrajhi Investment launched Ramla Terraza, an upscale destination in Riyadh, in collaboration with the General Entertainment Authority. In May 2023, the group entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Tatweer Misr to develop integrated urban projects and tourist resorts in Saudi Arabia.

AUGUST 2023

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Oasis Investment Company (Al Shirawi Group) • Chairman: Mohamed Al Shirawi 77

Chalhoub Group was established in Syria in 1955. The group moved operations to the U.A.E. in 1990. The luxury retailer has backed its distribution and marketing services with a portfolio of brands in beauty, fashion, watches, eyewear, and jewelry. It has also owned many in-house brands, such as Level Shoes, Tyrano, Faces, Tanagra, Christofle, and Ghawali. In May 2023, the group received an operating license to build and manage a facility at Riyadh Integrated, Saudi Arabia’s first integrated logistics zone, which is set to open in 2025.

Tamer Group

• Group Chairman: Ayman Tamer Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1922 Tamer Group was founded in 1922 in Saudi Arabia by Mohammed Said Tamer as the first pharmacy in Saudi Arabia. Today, it is a leading healthcare and wellness group operating across MENA. The group employs over 4,000 people in different sectors, including healthcare supply, healthcare manufacturing, consumer care, logistics, e-commerce, and IT solutions. In March 2023, Tamer Logistics signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson MedTech to become its thirdparty logistics provider in Saudi Arabia.

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Gargash Group

• Chairman: Samir M. Gargash Country: U.A.E.

Established in: 1918 Having been established in 1918, Gargash Group has holdings in automotive, real estate, and investments. The company has introduced international automotive brands into the U.A.E., such as MercedesBenz, Alfa Romeo, GAC MOTOR, and SIXT Rent a Car, in addition to presenting an industrial line of lubricants, construction equipment, and power systems. The group’s investment sector has been operating since 1998 and provides financial services. In 2022, the group announced a new partnership between Gargash Motors & General Trading and KCP Heavy Industries.

Oriental Weavers Group • Chairwoman: Yasmine and 85

Farida Khamis

Country: Egypt

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Established in: 1979 Founded in 1979 by Mohammed Farid Khamis and listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange since 1997, Oriental Weavers Group is one of the largest producers of machine-woven carpets in the world. The group exports to more than 130 countries. The group’s portfolio includes textile, petrochemicals, education, real estate, and agriculture businesses. In December 2022, Farida and Yasmine transferred their combined 24.61% stake in Oriental Weavers Carpet to London-based FYK Limited, which is fully owned by the two sisters. The company reported $134 million in revenues and total assets of $717 million in Q1 2023. It had a market cap of $318.6 million as of July 4, 2023.

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Ayman Tamer

Alturki Holding

• Chairman: Khalid Ali Alturki Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1975 Alturki Holding’s portfolio covers the construction and building materials, infrastructure, real estate, transportation, oil field tools and services, and information and communication technologies sectors. The company is focusing on economic diversification and societal development, launching the Hemmah Alturki Talent Development Program as a part of its sustainable legacy. In May 2023, Musanadah, a subsidiary of Alturki Holding, opened its new Leading, Education, and Development (LEAD) training centers in Al Khobar and Riyadh.

Holmarcom Group

• Chairman and CEO: Mohamed Hassan Bensalah

Country: Morocco Established in: 1978 Holmarcom Group was founded by Abdelkader Bensalah. With a presence in six African countries, including Morocco,

Senegal, Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Kenya, the group’s businesses cover finance, agro-industry, logistics, and real estate. It has three companies listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange: Les Eaux Minérales d’Oulmès, AtlantaSanad Assurance, and Crédit du Maroc. In December 2022, the group finalized a deal to acquire a 78% stake in Credit Agricole.

GB Corp

• CEO: Nader Ghabbour Country: Egypt

Established in: 1940s Sadek and Kamal Ghabbour began a family-run trading business in the 1940s in Egypt. In January 2023, GB Auto Group rebranded to GB Corp, which provides its services through two main entities: GB Auto and GB Capital. With over 25 brands in its portfolio, the group reported $963 million in sales and a net profit of $341 million in 2022. In 2022, the company signed an agreement with Chimera to sell 45% of GB Lease. In February 2023, the company’s subsidiary, MNT-Halan, announced an equity investment of $200 million from Chimera Abu Dhabi in exchange for over 20% of the company. GB Corp’s market cap was $223 million as of July 4, 2023.

AUGUST 2023

Bin Hamoodah Company • Chairman: Faraj Ali Bin 89

Hamoodah

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1967 The Bin Hamoodah Company is the holding company of the Bin Hamoodah family, with 25 subsidiaries across automotive, oil and gas, contracting, commercial, engineering, property development and management, financial services, agricultural, manufacturing, and IT. Founded in 1967, the group was reorganized in 2008 and today has three companies: Faraj Bin Hamoodah Holding, Hamoodah Sons Holding, and Ghanem Ali Bin Hamoodah & Sons LLC. It employs over 15,000 people. The group is the authorized dealer of Chevrolet and GMC in Abu Dhabi and has partnerships with IBM, ABB, Siemens, Baker Hughes, Weatherford, FMC, and 3M. It has also established its own brands, including Milco (dairy), Lacnor (juices), and Oasis (water).

Alsulaiman Group (ASG) • Chairman: Ghassan Alsulaiman 90

Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1983

ASG was established by Ghassan Ahmed Alsulaiman in 1983 in Saudi Arabia. The group owns, operates, and invests in companies across the retail and logistics sectors. It started with the Swedish home furnishing company IKEA. Today, ASG’s companies include IKEA Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Flow Progressive Logistics, Salasa, Ehteraf Real Estate Development, Livspace, and Cartlow. In January 2023, the group acquired exclusive franchise rights for Circle K convenience stores in Saudi Arabia.

Albwardy Investment • Chairman: Ali Saeed Juma 91

Albwardy

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1976 Albwardy Investment was founded in the mid-1970s in the U.A.E. by Ali Saeed Juma Albwardy. Today, the company has a presence in over 20 countries and a combined workforce of over 10,000 people. It operates across food, distribution and retail, construction, shipyards, hospitality, and hotel ownership. The organization has an annual turnover over $1 billion. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Abdul Hamied Seddiqi

Diana Holding

• Chairman & CEO: Rita Maria Zniber

Country: Morocco Established in: 1956 Established in 1956 by Brahim Zniber as an agro-industrial company, today Diana Holding has 8,300 hectares of land under its management and employs over 7,200 people. Its olive-growing division covers 1,000 hectares with a storage capacity of 3,500 tons. In November 2022, the Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company acquired the Atlas Bottling Company.

Abu Ghazaleh Investments (AGI) • Chairman and Founder: Amir 93

Abu Ghazaleh

Country: U.A.E. Established in: 1970 AGI is a family-owned investment company. It has a diverse global portfolio

with interests in fresh produce, healthcare, sport, aviation, real estate, hospitality, manufacturing, technology, and insurance. The brands represented by AGI in the region include DelMonte, Clemenceau Medical Centre, International Wings Group, CF Tennis Academy, Form Hotel, and Oryx Ventures.

Seddiqi Holding

• Chairman: Abdul Hamied Seddiqi Country: U.A.E.

Established in: 2007 Seddiqi Holding operates a diverse range of businesses, including Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, Swiss Watch Services, Mizzen, and Seddiqi & Sons Investments, which includes Seddiqi Properties. Mizzen focuses on luxury consumer brands in fashion, beauty, eyewear, leather goods, and fashion accessories. Its portfolio includes Aēsop, Orlebar Brown, and Gentle Monster. Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons represent more than 80 luxury watch and jewelry brands across over 50 locations in the U.A.E., including Rolex, TUDOR, Patek Phillipe, Oris, and TAG Heuer.

AUGUST 2023

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Towell Group

• Vice Chairman & Managing Director: Imad Kamal Sultan Country: Oman Established in: 1866 Towell Group was founded by William Jack Towell in Oman to sell U.S.-produced Kerosene and shipping materials. In 1914, Mohamed Fadhel acquired the company. Today, the group focuses on engineering and construction, property and real estate, FMCG, automotive, and services and trade. The group has a presence in Oman, the U.A.E., Qatar, India, and the Netherlands. Towell Auto Centre has been operating since 1972. Today, it has eight showrooms and nine service centers and works with brands, including Mazda, Geely, JAC Motors, and HIGER BUS.

Abu Issa Holding • Chairman and CEO: 96

Ashraf Abu Issa

Country: Qatar Established in: 1981 Abu Issa Holding launched its first concept, Blue Salon, in 1981. Today, the group operates in nine countries and across 11 sectors, including retail, distribution, telecommunications, IT, energy and engineering, construction support services, investment, real estate, and marketing. In 2022, the group opened a flagship store for EX NIHILO PARIS in Qatar.

Ali Bin Ali Holding (ABA Holding) • Chairman & President : 97

Adel Ali Bin Ali

Country: Qatar

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Established in: 1945 ABA Holding started importing international products to Qatar in 1945. Today, it is one of the country’s largest retail and distribution companies, with a presence in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Europe. It employs about 5,000 people and has over 400 brands. The company operates in sectors such as fashion, property management, hospitality, luxury, lifestyle, manufacturing, medical, and IT. The company owns Monoprix, Monop in Qatar, and the 21 High St shopping venue. It also owns a production facility for plastic bottles and operates a water treatment unit and a separate factory for bottling and packaging.

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Ashraf Abu Issa

Tamimi Group

• Chairman: Tariq Al Tamimi Country: Saudi Arabia Established in: 1940 Tamimi Group was founded by the late Ali bin Abdullah Al-Tamimi for pipeline installation, general contracting, and related works. Today, the group has over 30 companies and 10 joint ventures across different sectors, including construction, contracting, trade, industry, catering, maintenance, operations, and retail. Tamimi Markets, the group’s retail chain, operates over 100 stores and five distribution centers in Saudi Arabia. In June 2023, PIF agreed to become a shareholder in Tamimi Markets with 30% ownership.

MM Group for Industry and International Trade (MTI) • CEO : Khaled Mahmoud 99

Country: Egypt

Established in: 1895 MTI is listed on the Egyptian Exchange and is one of Egypt’s largest distribution companies, with access to over

40,000 points of sale. MTI operates in various segments, including consumer electronics, telecommunication, automotive, and tractors, through partnerships with leading global brands, including Samsung, Vodafone, Huawei, Range Rover, Jaguar, Maserati, Bentley, Carrier, and Bosch. Mohamed Mahmoud’s family owns over 69.7% of the company, which had a market cap of over $211 million as of July 19, 2023.

100

Almuftah Group

• Chairman: Abdulrehman Muftah Almuftah

Country: Qatar Established in: 1963 The Almuftah Group started selling gramophone records in 1963, then set up a tire showroom in 1968. Today, it has over 30 companies and employs 6,000 people across engineering and construction, travel, education, industrial equipment, automotive, restaurants and catering, consumer electronics, wellness, and trading, among other sectors. Almuftah Audio Visual is the sole authorized distributor of SHARP products in Qatar. Altadamon Motors and Trading is the authorized sub-dealer of Toyota and Lexus vehicles. The group established the English Modern School in 1991.

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BY IAIN MARTIN AND RICHARD NIEVA • PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES

LISA SU ORCHESTRATED ONE OF THE GREAT TURNAROUNDS IN SILICON VALLEY HISTORY, DRIVING THE DYING SEMICONDUCTOR MAKER'S STOCK PRICE UP NEARLY 30-FOLD IN LESS THAN A DECADE. NOW, SHE'S PREPARING FOR BATTLE IN THE COMING AI REVOLUTION—AND SHE EXPECTS TO KEEP WINNING.

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THE PROFILE • RICHEST SELF-MADE WOMEN

FROM A CONFERENCE ROOM ATOP AMD’S HEADQUARTERS IN SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA, A STRETCH OF HIGHWAY 101 RUNNING OUTSIDE, LISA SU PRESIDES OVER A COMPANY OLDER THAN THE TERM "SILICON VALLEY."

Down the road is a link to the company’s past, an old foundry in Sunnyvale where AMD used to press its chips. But from her window she can see a recent milestone in the company’s fast-evolving present: the offices of arch-nemesis Intel, whose market capitalization ($120.3 billion) AMD’s now eclipses ($153.5 billion). It wasn’t always this way. In 2014, when Su, now 53, took up the CEO reins at AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), the chipmaker was foundering. The company had laid off around a quarter of its staff and its share price hovered around $2. Patrick Moorhead, a former AMD exec, remembers it as “deader than dead.” Then Intel began to stumble, dragged down by manufacturing delays and Apple’s decision not to use its chips in iPhones. Nimble, with a tactician’s eye, Su was able to capitalize on her rival’s missteps, inking deals with laptop makers such as Lenovo and gaming giant Sony, plus Google and Amazon, whose massive data centers generated $6 billion of the chipmaker’s sales last year. At $63 billion, Intel’s annual revenue still dwarfs AMD’s $23.6 billion. But wresting away coveted server chip market share from its Silicon Valley neighbor, as well as scooping up the semiconductor company Xilinx, has spiked AMD’s stock nearly 30-fold in the nine years since Su took over. Now, with the mainstreaming of artificial intelligence stoking demand for the silicon brains behind machine learning, she’s facing a legacy-defining opportunity and a daunting challenge: Can AMD produce a chip powerful enough to break Nvidia’s near-monopoly on the processors that undergird the coming wave of generative AI technology? “If you look out five years,” she says, “you will see AI in every single product at AMD, and it will be the largest growth driver.” Su has been overclocking AMD for the last nine years, much like a gamer who pushes a processor to perform

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beyond its manufacturer-specified limits. Unlike many tech executives, she’s a world-class researcher, with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT. Her unique combination of technical genius, people skills and business savvy has made her among the highest-paid S&P 500 CEOs for the last several years (total 2022 compensation: $30.2 million). Overall, she has amassed a $740 million fortune (largely in AMD stock), landing her in 34th place on our annual ranking of America’s richest businesswomen. “Talk about leaning in and just killing it,” marvels Panos Panay, Microsoft’s chief product officer, who first met Su in 2014 as she began AMD’s turnaround. Unlike Intel, though, whose revenue has seen a 12% decrease to $63.1 billion over three years, Nvidia appears at the top of its game. Beyond rendering stunning imagery in games like Cyberpunk 2077, its GPUs (graphics processing units) have become the engine of choice for artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI, whose ChatGPT chatbot has delighted and disturbed the public by answering questions and commands with surprisingly detailed human-sounding responses. These so-called large language models are really just stunning parlor tricks, but they’re the opening act for an AI transformation that big shots like Bill Gates say will be as significant as the dawn of the internet. Already there is huge demand for the GPUs that power them, and at least one research firm foresees a $400 billion bonanza within the next decade for the companies that make them. But right now there’s really just one. “AI equals Nvidia,” says Glenn O’Donnell, a Forrester analyst. “That’s pretty well-entrenched, and AMD has to really step up its game to overcome that.” Meanwhile, the specter of Intel still looms across Highway 101, even as the O.G. of PCs has faced further manufacturing delays, chip defects and leadership changes. “There are many great things about AMD, but the bad thing is that we have two world-class competitors,” says AMD exec Forrest Norrod, who helped Dell build its approximately $10 billion (2014 revenue) data center business in part on AMD chips and adds that the company never assumes its main rival will let problems linger. “We will always assume that Intel will fix it.” WHEN SU WAS promoted into AMD’s top job in 2014, analysts were calling the company “uninvestable,” with $2.2 billion in debt. Some of its prized assets were already being sold for parts. Its fabrication plant where chips are baked (“fabs,” in industry-speak) was spun off in 2009—a blow to AMD cofounder Jerry Sanders’ infamous boast that “real men have fabs.” It even had to sell and lease back its corporate campus, in Austin, Texas—Su’s current base—in 2013.

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Ask Me Anything

JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES

Su is an avid reader of tweets and Reddit posts about AMD’s products—and will even reply. “Sometimes it’s the best way I get my news,” she says. For the record: She does not have a burner account.

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SU, THE DAUGHTER of a mathematician and a bookkeeper turned entrepreneur, was born in Tainan, Taiwan, in 1969, the same year Sanders founded AMD. Her family immigrated to New York City when she was 3. She

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More troubling, AMD was struggling to execute. It couldn’t hit product deadlines, and Intel dominated all but the bargain end of the laptop market with Nvidia, Qualcomm and Samsung carving up the new smartphone business. “Our technology wasn’t competitive at the time,” Su admits. AMD hadn’t always been such a headache for investors. Sanders broke into the microprocessor business making chips for IBM in the early 1980s, but things started to change in the late ’90s and early 2000s. AMD, which had been a perennial second-rater, began generating record profits by building its own processors that beat Intel’s on speed. By 2014, those glory days were long gone. As were about a quarter of AMD’s staff, sacked by Su’s predecessor, Rory Read (Sanders stepped down as CEO in 2002). AMD had once commanded about a quarter of the now $24 billion server chip market, but its share dwindled to 2% in 2014. On her second day as CEO, Su stepped up to the microphone during an all-hands call with a message for AMD’s demoralized employees: “I believe that we can build the best,” she remembers telling her staff. “You might think that was obvious, but it wasn’t to the company at the time.” That rallying cry was also an edict and step one in her three-pronged plan to fix AMD: Create great products, deepen customer trust and simplify the company. “Three things, just to keep it simple,” she says. “Because if it’s five or ten, it’s hard.”

Su refocused her engineers on building Intelbeating chips, but it can take chip designers years to draw up a viable final blueprint. AMD’s share of the server market fell even further, to half a percent, while researchers toiled in the lab. “At the time, the company wasn’t doing well, but holy cow, they were working on the most exciting design in the industry,” she says. “Engineers are motivated by products, and I like to keep that front and center.” Her decision to prioritize a new chip architecture called Zen paid off when it finally launched in 2017. “It was really good,” she says with palpable pride, adding that Zen could compute more than 50% faster than the company’s previous designs. More importantly, it signaled to the industry that AMD had turned a corner. By Zen’s third generation, released in 2020, it was the market leader in terms of speed. Zen architecture now underpins all of AMD’s processors. With her team shepherding a new generation of chips, Su hit the road to hard-sell them to jaded data center clients. She had already spent years building relationships even when AMD had no chips to sell, once driving more than four hours through a Texas ice storm to charm Antonio Neri, now CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “I was, let’s say, disenchanted by AMD’s prior generation,” Neri says. “She showed me she had the conviction of what needed to be done.” A big part of Su’s strategy was inking new deals with the tech giants, which needed oodles of CPUs to power their exploding cloud businesses. “For us, there are really three microprocessor partners. We have Nvidia, Intel, AMD,” says Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “AMD, when I joined, was not really a significant part of our ecosystem—at all. And it is a credit to Lisa that they are a very important partner for us now.” Last February, when AMD’s market cap first surpassed Intel’s, company cofounder Sanders, now 86, was ecstatic. “I called everybody I know!” he says. “I was delirious. I’m only sorry that Andy Grove isn’t around so I could say ‘gotcha!’ ” (Grove, Intel’s legendary former CEO, died in 2016.)

That appointment gave Su a front-row seat for a corporate turnaround that is now a classic business school case study—a rejuvenation ignited, in part, by leaning on the company’s scale and creating a culture devoted to customers. Gerstner grew the stalled IBM’s market cap nearly sixfold in his almost nine-year run. Su also got a taste for dealmaking, helping IBM sign a joint deal with Sony and Toshiba in 2001 to put its chips in Sony’s PlayStation 3. Early on, she sometimes worried she wasn’t qualified to sit at tables packed with business heavyweights, but Su soon realized that her hard-learned technical acumen gave her an edge over executive-track types. “I saw that MIT Ph.D.’s worked for Harvard MBAs, and the truth is that made absolutely no sense to me,” she said in a 2017 graduation speech at her alma mater, whose new nanotech laboratory now carries her name. In late 2011, Nick Donofrio, at the time an AMD board member whom Su had met at IBM, called up his old protégée, who by then was a senior vice president of Freescale, the Austin-based chipmaker that is now part of NXP Semiconductors. The two met for dinner, and over a bottle of Brunello, he made his pitch: an opportunity not just to chase incremental improvements, but to reinvent

MARTYN GODDARD/ALAMY

THE PROFILE • RICHEST SELF-MADE WOMEN

chose electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because it seemed to be the most difficult major. For someone so technically talented, she was also good with people, playing peacekeeper when disagreements flared between fellow students, says Hank Smith, who ran MIT’s nanostructures lab at the time. Su laughs upon hearing herself described as a people person. “Well, that’s compared to other MIT people,” she jokes. “I don’t think anyone would say I’m an extrovert, but communication is a huge part of my job.” After a brief stint at Texas Instruments, in 1995 she was hired as a staff researcher at IBM, where she helped design chips that run 20% faster by using semiconductors with copper circuitry instead of the traditional aluminum. Higher-ups quickly spotted her talent: In 1999, a year after the launch of the copper technology, IBM’s then-CEO, Lou Gerstner, tapped her to be his technical assistant. In his first interview in 20 years, Gerstner tells Forbes he initially worried Su was too junior for the job, but his doubts were quickly quelled. “She proved to be one of the most outstanding employees who worked in my office. Lisa doesn’t follow normal patterns—she’s been blowing them up her entire career.”

Microchip Giant AMD cofounder Jerry Sanders (shown here in 1979) was an early Silicon Valley swashbuckling salesman. “People thought I was all hat and no cattle,” he tells Forbes now. But he argues AMD wouldn’t have lasted so long if that were true. “We were just trying to get attention. We were in the shadow of Intel.”

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NOW THAT SU has renewed and energized AMD, she’s focused on ensuring its future in a highly competitive market. While she diligently rebuilt its business, Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang was hard at work making his company the go-to vendor for artificial intelligence computing power. Huang, who is a distant relative of Su’s, sees a gold mine in selling the chips to buttress AI tools like Chat GPT. Demand has already catapulted Nvidia’s share price to near all-time highs with a forward P/E of around 64x—nearly double AMD’s. “It’s why investors are looking at AMD: because they want the poor man’s Nvidia,” says Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein. “Maybe the market is so big they don’t need to be competitive.” But Su intends it to be. And she hopes to take on

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Nvidia’s AI-centric H100 GPUs by betting on annual chip upgrades meant to burnish AMD’s position. Under her leadership, R&D spending has risen nearly fourfold, to $5 billion—almost as much as AMD’s entire revenue when she took over. A new supercomputer at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory—the fastest in the world when completed in 2022—is Su’s passion project. The groundbreaking machine was built to have the processing power of at least a quintillion calculations per second and is a showcase for AMD’s AI chips. She’s throwing a curveball as well: The MI300 chip, which fuses CPUs with GPUs in a bid to counter Nvidia’s new superchip, will ship later this year.

SU IS IN A GOOD POSITION TO TAKE A RUN AT THE AI CHIP MARKET. BUT SHE KNOWS WELL HOW QUICKLY TURNAROUNDS CAN BECOME DOWNFALLS.

She has also been maneuvering against Nvidia with acquisitions, such as her $48.8 billion takeover in 2022 of Xilinx, a company that makes programmable processors that help speed up tasks like video compression. As part of the deal, Victor Peng, Xilinx’s former CEO, became AMD’s president and leader of AI strategy. Beyond Nvidia lurk other emerging threats: Some of AMD’s customers have begun doing chip development of their own—a move designed to mitigate their dependence on the semiconductor giants. Amazon, for example, designed a server chip in 2018 for its AWS business. Google has spent nearly a decade developing its own AI chips, dubbed Tensor Processing Units, to help “read” the names of the signs captured by its roving Street View cameras and provide the horsepower behind the company’s Bard chatbot. Even Meta has plans to build its own AI hardware. Su shrugs off concerns that her customers could someday be competitors. “It’s natural,” she says, for companies to want to build their own components as they look for efficiencies in their operations. But she thinks they can do only so much without the technical expertise AMD has built over the decades. “I think it’s unlikely that any of our customers are going to replicate that entire ecosystem.” Su is in a good position to take a run at the AI chip market. But she knows well how quickly turnarounds can become downfalls. There’s more work to be done to ensure AMD endures: “I think there’s another phase for AMD. We had to prove that we were a good company. I think we’ve done that. Proving, again, that you’re great, and that you have a lasting legacy of what you’re contributing to the world, those are interesting problems for me.”

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and innovate—with the ground cover to actually do it. A few days later, Su accepted a role as senior vice president of AMD’s global business units. Two years after she started, she was running the entire company—making her the first female CEO of a major semiconductor company. “I would walk into rooms where there were, like, 25 people, and I might have been the only woman,” she recalls of her early engineering days. “Where I have a lot of passion is young women engineers—keeping them in engineering.” When Su first took over, she flew to Beverly Hills and personally asked AMD’s Sanders to speak to her team. Sanders says he was touched by Su’s offer but declined. “It’s not my team now. It’s your team,” he recalls telling her. Ever the salesman, though, he also made a counteroffer: He’d make the visit once the company had hit two years of profitability. In 2019, coinciding with the company’s 50th anniversary, Sanders made good on that promise. Semiconductor hotshot Mark Papermaster, who led the iPhone and iPod engineering teams at Apple and who had joined AMD around the same time as Su, has been a keen observer of the company’s remarkable comeback under her leadership. At Apple, Papermaster had worked for another skilled turnaround artist: cofounder Steve Jobs, who saved the company from catastrophe and set it on the path that would make it the world’s most valuable company. “What Lisa had, in a number of ways, was an even more difficult task,” Papermaster says. “When you’re not a founder, you have to establish your own credibility and your own vision, and bring the entire company, your customers and your investors with you.” Su’s success at AMD has made her an inspiration for young engineers and a hero to investors. It has also made her into a meme: A few years ago, 8-bit animations in which Su uses AMD’s Ryzen chips to morph into a superhero or shoot lasers from her eyes went viral on Twitter. A figurine of her clad in orange-and-red armor, helmet at her side, features prominently on her office shelf, a gift from a fan at the E3 gaming conference. “That’s probably one of the funnier moments in my career,” says Su, who, while a keen Twitter and Reddit user, isn’t “big on memes. It’s not my thing.”

• THOUGHTS ON •

Legacy “No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.”

“I think the whole world is dying to hear someone say, ‘I love you.’ I think that if I can leave the legacy of love and passion in the world, then I think I’ve done my job in a world that’s getting colder and colder by the day.”

—Taylor Swift “My legacy is that I stayed on course... from the beginning to the end because I believed in something inside of me.”

—Lionel Richie “I am ever mindful of the legacy of my grandfather, the founder of this Kingdom, who had said to me that he perceived his life as a link in a continuous chain of those who served our nation and that he expected me to be a new and strong link in the same chain.”

—Tina Turner “We stand our best chance of leaving a legacy to those who want to learn, our children, by standing firm. In matters of style, hey, swing with the stream. But in matters of principle, you need to stand like a rock.”

—Hussein bin Talal of Jordan

—Kevin Costner “Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.”

Kevin Costner

—Bill Gates “I am very aware of my family name. I’m very aware of the legacy that that kind of carries with it. And I think that I didn’t want to lose any kind of hold of that. And I think once you’re born into something that you’re proud of and that you’re aware of, you don’t take it lightly.”

“If you look to your past or even your present to see why you are here or what your purpose is, you may get stuck in a limited view of yourself. Instead, look beyond your years here on earth, reconnect with the divine, and bring forth your soul’s legacy into the present moment.”

“Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.”

—Stella McCartney

—Debbie Ford

—Richard Branson

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“I’m not looking for a legacy, and you’ll never shut up the critics. I’ve been around 50 years. When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies - and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.” —Rupert Murdoch “Everybody getting a significant exit creates a legacy and creates something that you can pay forward and bootstrap an industry in a substantial way.” —Ryan Holmes AUGUST 2023

LUCKY TEAM STUDIO/ SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

THOUGHTS

SOON IN DUBAI HILLS MALL F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Daze_uae #dazeUAE

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F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

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Forbes Middle East - August 2023 - English

Articles inside

Legacy

OVERCLOCKING A M

TOP 100 ARAB FAMILY BUSINESSES 2023

A Slice Of Paradise

SEEDING SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Beyond Luxury

GOING STRONG

Saudi IPOs 2023

EXECUTING AN EVOLUTION

Inflection AI, The Year-Old Startup Behind Chatbot Pi, Raises $1.3 Billion

World’s Billionaires Musk Vs Zuckerberg: Who’s Winning The Tech Billionaires’ Brawl?

Sustainability 20 Smartest Cities In The World

In Numbers: Global Asset Allocation Shifts For Family Offices

Enduring Legacies: 5 Renowned Global Businesses That Were Founded By Families

Moving Millionaires: The Shifting Trend In Private Wealth Migration

The World’s 5 Richest Billionaire Families

World’s Billionaires Notable Investments Of Bernard Arnault

Succession Continues