Forbes Middle East - May 2023 - English by Forbes Middle East

4 BILLIONAIRE-OWNED HOTEL CHAINS MEET THE MIDDLE EAST’S EXPAT BILLIONAIRES

WORLD’S RICHEST ARABS 2023

5 WORLD RECORD-BREAKING HOTELS HOW THE ULTRA-RICH ARE CREATING WEALTH

MAY 2023 ISSUE 128

ADEL MARDINI Founder and CEO of Jetex

“IT’S NO LONGER JUST THE TRADITIONAL OIL AND GAS PROFESSIONALS FLYING PRIVATE.”

THE MIDDLE EAST’S

MAY 2023 ISSUE 128

TOP 100 TRAVEL & TOURISM LEADERS AS TRAVEL AND TOURISM REBOUNDS WITH A VENGEANCE, MEET THE LEADERS MAKING THE MIDDLE EAST ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST DESIRABLE DESTINATIONS.

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MAY 2023

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

MAY 2023

8 I Sidelines

Powering Through By Claudine Coletti LEADERBOARDS

TRAVEL

CONTENTS

12 I 5 World Record-Breaking Hotels Hotels around the world have scored some incredible feats. From Dubai to Lebanon, here are five of the world’s recordbreaking hotels, according to the Guinness World Records. By Samar Khouri

13 I Snapshot: 2023 Travel Trends With normalcy returning and tourism rebounding, 2023 is the year of the evolved traveler. Today’s travelers are seeking technological and human innovations, deeper connections, and more emphasis on feel-good experiences, according to Hilton 2023 trends report. Here’s a look at some of the latest trends in travel.

By Julian Nabil BILLIONAIRES / TRAVEL & HOSPITALITY

14 I 4 Billionaire-Owned Hotel Chains Of the world’s 2,640 billionaires, 24 built their fortunes from hotels, with the majority coming from the U.S., according to Forbes’ World’s Billionaires 2023 list. Here are four hotel chains backed by billionaires. Net worths are as of April 19, 2023. By Samar Khouri MONEY

16 I How The Ultra-Rich Are Creating Wealth A high percentage of affluent investors are confident their financial portfolios will grow this year, according to Knight Frank’s Wealth Report 2023, as the world’s ultra-rich look beyond the ongoing headwinds and focus instead on diversifying their wealth by taking the long-term approach. By Cherry Aisne Trinidad BILLIONAIRES

18 I Meet The Middle East’s Expat Billionaires These nine expatriate billionaires are not of Arab descent but call the Middle East home. Combined, they are worth $35.6 billion, according to the Forbes World’s Billionaires list 2023. All listees are based in the U.A.E.

By Jamila Gandhi

19 I World’s Richest Arabs: Facts And

Figures 2023

Here’s a deep dive into the Arab billionaire gainers and losers, according to the Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2023.

By Jamila Gandhi

20 I Forbes World’s Billionaires List: Facts

And Figures 2023

The planet’s 2,640 billionaires are worth $12.2 trillion. Here’s who’s up, who’s down, and who’s off the list. All figures derived are from Forbes.

By Jamila Gandhi

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

22 I The World’s Billionaires Falling stocks, wounded unicorns and rising interest rates meant a tough year for the planet’s wealthiest people.

Edited by Rob LaFranco and Chase Peterson-Withorn

32 I World’s Richest Arabs 2023 82 I Mobilizing AI’s Infantry Alexandr Wang briefly became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire by supplying artificial intelligence companies with the one thing they all need: humans. Hundreds of thousands of them. Now, his $7.3 billion startup is primed to cash in on the biggest AI boom yet— unless someone else can do it better or cheaper. By Kenrick Cai

88 I Thoughts On Security MAY 2023

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THE MIDDLE EAST’S

TOP 100 TRAVEL & TOURISM LEADERS 2023 CONTENTS

Breaking Ground Having just opened one of the world’s most luxurious new hotels, Philippe Zuber, CEO of Kerzner International, is now launching two new brands to the market. As the Middle East continues to redefine the standards of luxury hospitality, he’s keeping exclusivity in mind while looking to expand. By Claudine Coletti

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

MAY 2023

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

MAY 2023

May 2023

Issue 128

•

CONTENTS

INSIDE •

COVER STORY

Priority Pass Adel Mardini, Founder and CEO of private jet terminal operator Jetex, is used to catering to the most demanding of HNWI travelers. As demand for sustainable and personalized travel increases, he’s looking to Africa and the U.S. for expansion. By Jamila Gandhi

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

MAY 2023

SIDELINES

FORBES MIDDLE EAST

Powering Through In our May issue, as the scorching summer months lay ahead of us, we reveal the local leaders pushing the Middle East to become one of the most visited and sought after destinations for international travel. The travel and tourism industries are welcoming a rebound in passenger and visitor numbers after the pandemic years brought them to a halt, but for most regions there is still some way to go before business gets back to 2019 levels. According to the UNWTO, over 900 million international tourists travelled in 2022, double that in 2021, gaining back 63% of pre-pandemic numbers. Some regions did better than others, with the Middle East gaining back 83% of the visitor numbers it saw in 2019—marking the strongest relative increase of all regions. But that still leaves some room to grow, and with inflationary and economic worries affecting many key populations globally, 2023 might not be the year it happens, with most experts expecting most markets to not hit pre-pandemic levels until 2024. However, that’s not stopping this year from being ground-breaking in many ways. For this issue, we spoke to two leaders that are over-seeing headline-hitting new openings and traveler-tempting expansion in their industries. In January, Philippe Zuber, CEO of Dubai-based hotel and resort developer Kerzner International, launched his company’s latest offering, Atlantis The Royal, which was widely touted as the world’s most luxurious hotel after Beyonce chose its star-studded grand reveal to mark her first concert in nearly five years, for which she was reportedly paid $24 million for a 60-minute set. In April, Adel Mardini, Founder of Dubai-based private jet terminal operator Jetex, opened his company’s 38th terminal globally in Abu Dhabi, having opened two in 2022 in Singapore and London as an increasing number of wealthy passengers choose private travel over commercial. It’s a sign that although times may be tough for many, there are still enough international travelers with funds for luxury experiences to support the recovering industry. And they’re not the only ones with money to burn. This month we also delve into Forbes World’s Billionaires 2023 ranking, and while there are 28 fewer billionaires in the world this year than last, and they’re collectively worth $500 billion less, the 2,640 members of the three-comma club are still doing okay. As of April 2023, Bernard Arnault, the French founder and CEO of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, was the richest person in the world for the first time ever. On the other hand, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos lost $57 billion in 2022 as shares of his ecommerce giant plummeted 38%. With his net worth still estimated at $114 billion though, Bezos is far from the breadline. While you get to know these leaders and learn more about the current state of the ultra-rich, we at Forbes Middle East are hosting our Women’s Summit 2023 in Riyadh on May 21-23. The agenda is packed with thought-provoking conversations, bringing together business leaders, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and gurus to debate the most pressing topics affecting women today. Secure your ticket or stay tuned to our socials to find out more as the event unfolds. —Claudine Coletti, Managing Editor

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INNOVATING SINCE 2010 MAY 2023 ISSUE 128

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Travel

5 World Record-Breaking Hotels Eh’hausl

LEADERBOARD

Country: Germany • Record: Smallest hotel Germany’s Eh’hausl, which loosely translates to Marriage House, in Seminargasse is only eight-foot-wide. The hotel was built in 1728 between two existing buildings to circumvent a marriage law that required young couples to provide proof of landownership to the city council before they could tie the knot. It was renovated in 2008 as a luxury retreat and only accommodates a maximum of two guests.

Grand Hills Hotel & Spa Country: Lebanon • Record: Largest hotel suite

Gevora Hotel Country: U.A.E. • Record: Tallest hotel Already home to the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, Dubai also boasts the world’s tallest hotel, a title previously held by the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai. Standing at 356 meters in the emirate’s financial district, the 75-storey Gevora Hotel was initially planned as a residential building. The goldcolored, 529-room building took four years to build before its opening in February 2018.

Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan

Lebanon has held the record for having the largest hotel suite since 2008 thanks to its Royal Residence at the Grand Hills Hotel & Spa, which is spread over 4,131 square meters in the pine-forested hills of Broumana. The sevenstoried suite features three pavilions and two private swimming pools. Its private gardens and swimming pools were not included in the Guinness World Record’s measurements.

The Marmara Antalya

Country: Japan • Record: Oldest hotel

Country: Türkiye • Record: First rotating hotel

With 1,318 years of history, Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan has withstood the test of time. The world’s oldest hotel was founded by Fujiwara Mahito during the Keiun era in 705 AD. Situated near Mount Fuji in Japan’s Yamanashi Prefecture with freeflowing hot springs, it is said that townsfolk and military commanders of the warring period visited the longeststanding hotel inn.

The Marmara Antalya puts a new spin on hotels. The world’s first rotating hotel provides guests with panoramic views of Türkiye’s mountains and the Mediterranean Sea from its 24-bedroom revolving loft rooms. The loft rotates 360 degrees several times daily, powered by six 1kW electric motors. The construction of the 18-story hotel was finalized in 2005 for $22 million.

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MAY 2023

BY SAMAR KHOURI ; HARSH - S/ SHUTTERSTOCK.COM, IMAGES FROM SOURCE

Hotels around the world have scored some incredible feats. From Dubai to Lebanon, here are five of the world’s record-breaking hotels, according to the Guinness World Records.

Travel

Snapshot: 2023 Travel Trends

BY JULIAN NABIL ; GREKOV'S/ SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Budget-savvy travelers Against a backdrop of global instability, with inflation impacting all major economies, a survey by Booking. com found that 43% of travelers plan to spend more to make up for missed travel opportunities over the past few years. But “the economy/ inflation” is still the top issue cited (29%) when asked about summer travel concerns, according to a survey from VisitorsCoverage. Affordability is a priority when choosing a destination. This makes value for money a strong driver, with travelers in 2023 expected to be more mindful of how to make the most of their travel budget. This will be about budgeting tightly to benefit from deals, hacks, and smartly-timed travel (63%), according to Booking.com. They will take fewer short city breaks, with 55% of travelers believing that taking one or two longer vacations is a better use of their budget. Travelers will also be less spontaneous. The majority (61%) will plan their trips more in advance to secure better deals, while 60% will prioritize drawing on discounts and loyalty schemes to make even further savings. According to a global survey commissioned by Hyatt and conducted by OnePoll, 62% of respondents said they would use a travel rewards program, and 51% said they would change their travel plans or go out of their way to earn and redeem points if there was a lucrative offer.

Experiences reign supreme The days of nothing but rest and relaxation are changing, with travelers wanting to spend part of their trip living new or unique cultural experiences. Local excursions are likely to become increasingly popular as travelers will

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

What Do Travelers

Prioritize?

43%

51%

plan to spend more to make up for missed travel opportunities over the past few years.

would change their plans or go out of their way to earn and redeem points if there was a lucrative offer.

55%

believe taking 1-2 longer vacations is a better use of their budget.

61%

plan trips ahead to secure better deals.

73%

look forward to experiencing "out of comfort zone" travel.

search for offthe-grid style vacations to escape reality.

88%

are interested in nostalgic experiences.

54%

plan for multigenerational "family reunion" trips.

Sources: Booking.com, Hyatt, and OnePoll.

hunt for authenticity in places with cultures different from theirs. According to Booking.com, 73% of respondents are looking forward to experiencing “out of comfort zone” travel, while 50% want to experience a complete culture shock in 2023, whether through cultural experiences and new languages (51%) or by exploring uncommon cities with hidden gems that aren’t already on the radar (30%). Most travelers (55%) will be searching for off-the-grid style vacations to escape reality. Almost half (44%) want their travel experiences to have a more back-to-basics feel, while 58% are interested in learning survival skills, including how to source clean water and light a fire. But going back to basics doesn’t necessarily mean doing it without the usual comforts and conveniences. Many travelers (48%) will only consider going off-grid if it doesn’t come at the expense of indulgence, and 53% say that having a phone and internet connection is non-negotiable.

Nostalgia, family travel Nostalgic experiences are of interest to 88% of travelers in 2023, including visits to retro film locations or bus travel to recall the feeling of school trips. Almost a quarter (23%) want to dive into the romanticism of a predigital era, according to Booking.com’s trends forecast. Millennials will be the first to book emerging-era-themed accommodation that will take them back to a time they hold close to their hearts. This means the likely comeback of destinations popular in the ’80s and ‘90s—such as Budva in Montenegro and Bolzano in Italy. Many aim to take their families with them too, with 54% planning for multi-generational “family reunion” trips, according to Booking.com. MAY 2023

13 LEADERBOARD

With normalcy returning and tourism rebounding, 2023 is the year of the evolved traveler. Today’s travelers are seeking technological and human innovations, deeper connections, and more emphasis on feel-good experiences, according to Hilton 2023 trends report. Here’s a look at some of the latest trends in travel.

Billionaires / Travel & Hospitality

4 Billionaire-Owned Hotel Chains Of the world’s 2,640 billionaires, 24 built their fortunes from hotels, with the majority coming from the U.S., according to Forbes’ World’s Billionaires 2023 list. Here are four hotel chains backed by billionaires. Net worths are as of April 19, 2023. way. The first Iberostar hotels opened in Majorca and the Canary Islands in 1986.Rosselló sold his travel group to Carlyle Group and Banco Santander for $950 million in 2006 to focus on the hotel division Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, which now has over 100 four and fivestar hotels in 16 countries in Europe, Africa, and North and South America.

Nordic Choice Hotels Billionaire: Petter Stordalen & Family Headquarters: Norway Net worth: $1 billion Nordic Choice Hotels is Scandinavia’s largest hotel chain, which is owned by Stordalen and his three children. Established during the 1990s, the group now has over 214 hotels in the Baltic and Nordic countries. In 2018, the billionaire founder signed over almost all ownership of the hotel chain to his kids but none of the control. In 2022, Stordalen announced that his company would formally be referred to as Strawberry. On March 22, 2023, it entered a strategic partnership with Fortress Hotels that will see four hotels, including Torreby Slott, added to the Norway-headquartered group’s portfolio.

William Heinecke

Minor Hotels Billionaire: William Heinecke Headquarters: Thailand Net worth: $1.6 billion The U.S.-born Thai citizen Heinecke started his first business when he was just a teenager. Today, his Bangkokbased business has over 530 hotels and resorts—under brands such as Four Seasons, St. Regis, Anantara, and Marriott—in 56 countries. Minor Hotels posted 57% year-on-year growth in net profit to generate $55.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, propelled by the easing of travel restrictions and an increase in consumer spending. It operates 26 hotels and resorts in the Middle East across five brands, F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

with plans to expand further in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman. Anantara will debut its first property in Ras Al Khaimah and in India in Q4 2023.

Iberostar Hotels & Resorts Billionaire: Miguel Fluxá Rosselló Headquarters: Spain Net worth: $2.7 billion Rosselló, the third-generation heir to a shoe production business founder Antonio Fluxa, has built Iberostar Group into one of Europe’s largest hotel companies. The Spanish family-owned company has been active in the tourism industry for over 65 years, adding an airline and cruise companies as well as hotel chains to its portfolio along the

H World Group Billionaires: Ji Qi, Zhao Tongtong Headquarters: China Net worth: $3.8 billion, $1.4 billion H World Group, the operator of one of the largest hotel chains in China, was founded by billionaires Qi and Tongtong. As of December 31, 2022, it had a total of 8,543 hotels in 17 countries. The hotel operator and franchisor’s brands include Madison Hotel, Hi Inn, and IntercityHotel. H World Group generated 8.4% in revenue growth to post $2 billion for 2022. It expects to open around 1,400 hotels and close 600-650 hotels in 2023. MAY 2023

BY SAMAR KHOURI; IMAGE FROM SOURCE

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Money

How The Ultra-Rich Are Creating Wealth A high percentage of affluent investors are confident their financial portfolios will grow this year, according to Knight Frank’s Wealth Report 2023, as the world’s ultra-rich look beyond the ongoing headwinds and focus instead on diversifying their wealth by taking the long-term approach.

Top 5 Allocations Of UHNWIs' Investable Wealth Asset

Percentage of wealth

Commercial property indirectly via funds & REITs

13%

Private equity/venture capital

Source: Knight Frank Wealth Report 2023

Just as the world was entering a recovery phase in early 2022, geopolitical tension erupted almost immediately to compound the current global crises, reversing the positive trend in wealth creation seen in 2021. As a result, the cumulative assets of ultrahigh-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs)—whom Knight Frank defines as those with $30 million in net wealth or more—tanked by 10% or $10.1 trillion in 2022. All regions where the wealthy reside witnessed a plunge, with Europe recording the largest wealth drop of 17%. While assets held in Australasia and the Americas shrank 11% and 10%, respectively, in 2022, the Middle East (7%), Asia (7%), and Africa (5%) recorded the smallest drop. Unsurprisingly, 44% of wealthy investors F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

surveyed by Knight Frank foreshadowed the downslide due to last year’s multi-layered crises, which sent shockwaves across markets and prompted a change in the values of residential and commercial properties, fixed income and passion investments like art and cars, among other assets. In 2022, 32% of UHNWIs’ total wealth came from their primary and secondary homes—or residential property—up from 29% in 2021. This wealthy cohort also owned more homes on average, at 3.7, in 2022 than the previous year’s 2.9 homes. Middle Eastern UHNWIs owned the most properties than any regions tracked by Knight Frank at an average of 5.3 homes. However, there is a noticeable change in tack

Africa

17%

Asia

Bonds

Middle East

21%

Americas

Commercial property directly

Australasia

26%

Europe

Equities

All regions where the wealthy reside witnessed a plunge

17%

11%

10%

when it comes to UHNWIs’ investable wealth, with equities representing the largest portion at 26% in 2022. While real estate assets, a cornerstone in many of UHNWIs’ portfolios saw a downward trend last year as direct investments into commercial property (e.g. rental property and offices) nosedived to 21% from 27% in 2021. Wealth plowed into bonds followed at 17%, and indirect investments into commercial property through funds (8%) and REITs (5%) at 13% in total, down from 19% in 2021. Rounding up the top five allocations of investable wealth was private equity/ venture capital, which occupied 9% of the UHNWI’s fortune. But optimism isn’t lost among the wealthy. Knight Frank’s survey showed that

asset repricing, perceived value opportunities, and an economic rebound are powering confidence among 69% of UHNWIs, who believe their portfolios will increase in 2023. Appetite for commercial real estate also remains, with an average 19% of UHNWIs (the highest of which are Middle Eastern UHNWIs at 25%) planning to directly invest in the sector in 2023 and an average 13% of UHNWIs seeking to invest indirectly through REITs or debt funding. Lastly, Knight Frank found UHNWIs investors will be focusing more on these top five sectors this year: healthcare (35%), industrial & logistics (33%), offices (33%), residential private rented sector (32%), hotels & leisure (31%), and retail (27%). MAY 2023

BY CHERRY AISNE TRINIDAD

LEADERBOARD

li Maldives, oa J d n la is e th When I landed in I discovered the en h T e. er h g in v I found joy of li es Joali Being iv ld a M e th in t ea wellbeing retr er joy there. and found my inn

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

MAY 2023

Billionaires

Meet The Middle East’s Expat Billionaires These nine expatriate billionaires are not of Arab descent but call the Middle East home. Combined, they are worth $35.6 billion, according to the Forbes World’s Billionaires list 2023. All listees are based in the U.A.E.

Pavel Durov

migrated to Saudi Arabia after his small construction business in his native Kerala state went bust. With help from a well-connected local partner, the Dubai resident started over in 1978 and built his RP Group into a $7.8 billion (revenue) construction heavyweight. The construction magnate has used his Gulf riches to invest back home, picking up stakes in banks, hotels, and real estate.

Net worth 2023: $11.5 billion Change since 2022: -$3.6 billion Citizenship: U.A.E. • Age: 38 Source of wealth: Technology At 38, Pavel Durov is the youngest among the nine Middle East expat billionaires and the only individual to credit his fortune to technology. With an estimated net worth of $11.5 billion, Durov is not only the richest expat billionaire in the Middle East, but his riches also eclipse that of the world’s richest Arab, Egypt’s Nassef Sawiris, worth $7.4 billion. The self-made billionaire hails from Russia and is the founder and owner of the free-to-use messaging app Telegram, which has over 700 million monthly active users worldwide. He left Russia after he refused to cooperate with the Russian secret service and provide encrypted data of his first social network users. Durov, who became a French citizen in 2021, moved himself and Telegram to Dubai in 2017.

M.A. Yusuff Ali Net worth 2023: $5.3 billion Change since 2022: -$100 million Citizenship: India • Age: 67 Source of wealth: Retail Middle East retail king M.A. Yusuff Ali presides over $8 billion (revenue) LuLu Group International, with 272 stores and shopping malls in the Gulf and elsewhere. Hailing from a village in the state of Kerala in south India, Yusuff Ali left for Abu Dhabi in 1973 to join his uncle’s small distribution business. In April 2020, a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family reportedly acquired a 20% stake in LuLu for $1 billion. Yusuff Ali is reportedly planning to list the retail business in 2023. Other assets include the Waldorf Astoria in Scotland and the Great Scotland Yard Hotel, the former headquarters of the U.K. Metropolitan Police. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Sunny Varkey Net worth 2023: $3 billion Change since 2022: +$900 million Citizenship: India • Age: 66 Source of wealth: Education

Pavel Durov

Micky Jagtiani Net worth 2023: $5.2 billion Change since 2022: +$1.9 billion Citizenship: India • Age: 71 Source of wealth: Retail Retail magnate Micky Jagtiani stands as the biggest gainer on this list, with a boost in fortune of $1.9 billion since 2022. He drove a taxi in London before moving to Bahrain and starting a baby products shop in 1973. He built it into the Dubai-headquartered Landmark Group, which his wife Renuka runs today as chairman. Landmark has 2,200 stores spread across 24 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. His three children are directors in the group, overseeing different aspects of the business.

Ravi Pillai Net worth 2023: $3.2 billion Change since 2022: +$600 million Citizenship: India • Age: 69 Source of wealth: Construction Indian-born farmer’s son, Ravi Pillai,

Son of Indian expat teachers who migrated to Dubai in 1959, Sunny Varkey controls GEMS Education, the world’s largest operator of K-12 schools. The private education firm secured CVC Capital Partners as its key investor in 2019. His sons Dino and Jay run GEMS as CEO and group executive director, respectively. Sunil Munjal, who belongs to the Indian two-wheeler Munjal clan, has acquired a minority stake in GEMS.

Shamsheer Vayalil Net worth 2023: $2.2 billion Change since 2022: Returnee Citizenship: India • Age: 46 Source of wealth: Healthcare Abu Dhabi resident Shamsheer Vayalil is the founder and chairman of Burjeel Holdings, a network of hospitals, clinics and pharmacies. His net worth got a boost from the October 2022 listing of Burjeel Holdings on ADX. Born into a business family in Kerala, India, he migrated to the Middle East after his medical studies and worked as a radiologist at a local hospital. Backed initially by his wealthy father-in-law Gulf retailing billionaire M.A. Yusuff Ali, Vayalil started with a hospital in Abu Dhabi in 2007. It now has 39 hospitals and medical centers across the U.A.E. MAY 2023

BY JAMILA GANDHI; IMAGE FROM SOURCE

LEADERBOARD

Thaksin Shinawatra Net worth 2023: $2.1 billion Change since 2022: +$100 million Citizenship: Thailand • Age: 73 Source of wealth: Investments Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand, has been living in self-imposed exile in Dubai for more than a decade. He owns a controlling stake in property firm SC Asset, among other investments. His sister Yingluck, also a former prime minister, fled the country in 2017 to escape arrest over a rice subsidy scheme. Thaksin has invested in two U.K.based healthtech startups, DnaNudge and Owlstone Medical. His youngest daughter Paetongtarn is reportedly preparing herself for the 2023 national elections.

BY JAMILA GANDHI; IMAGE FROM SOURCE, NASSEF SAWIRIS PHOTO BY KEVIN DIETSCH / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP

P.N.C. Menon Net worth 2023: $1.6 billion Change since 2022: Returnee Citizenship: Oman • Age: 74 Source of wealth: Real Estate P.N.C. Menon’s Sobha Realty has operations spanning the U.A.E., Qatar, Oman, and other Gulf countries. The self-made property developer left Kerala, India, and migrated to Oman in 1976 to start an interior decorating business with a partner. Seeing an opportunity in real estate back home, Menon established Sobha Developers in 1995 in Bangalore, naming it after his wife. Today, Sobha Developers is run by his son Ravi, an engineer from Purdue University, while Menon lives in Dubai.

Billionaires

World’s Richest Arabs: Facts And Figures 2023 Here’s a deep dive into the Arab billionaire gainers and losers, according to the Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2023. Nine of the 21 Arab billionaires are worth less now than they were a year ago. Seven billionaires have the same net worth as of 2022.

Egypt and Lebanon have the highest number of billionaires in the region, with six each.

Their collective wealth has gone up from $52.9 billion in 2022 to $53.9 billion in 2023.

The six Egyptian billionaires have a combined net worth of $19.1 billion.

Egypt’s Nassef Sawiris is still the richest Arab in the world, with a net worth of $7.4 billion—his wealth dropped $300 million compared to 2022.

Dubai resident Saket Burman is the fifth-generation member of the storied Burman clan that founded Dabur, India’s fourth-largest consumer goods company. He inherited a minority stake and a board seat in Dabur from his father, Siddharth Burman, who died in 2015. Other assets he owns include property and financial investments. Saket is currently focused on building his family office. In August 2022, he took over as vice chairman of Dabur. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

It was a good year for five Arab billionaires who were able to increase their wealth, two of whom saw their net worth surge by more than $1 billion – Hussain Sajwani (+$1.8 billion) and Mohamed Mansour (+$1.1 billion). Emirati billionaire, Hussain Sajwani, is the biggest gainer this year. His personal wealth has risen 66.7% compared to 2022.

Saket Burman Net worth 2023: $1.5 billion Change since 2022: -$200 million Citizenship: U.K. • Age: 46 Source of wealth: Consumer Goods

on the list. He serves as Chairman and CEO of BMCE Bank of Africa.

Nassef Sawiris is also the sole active investor in sporting teams. In December 2020, he acquired a 5% stake in New York-listed firm Madison Square Garden Sports, owner of the NBA Knicks and the NHL Rangers teams. He also teamed up with Fortress Investment Group’s Wes Edens to purchase the Premier League’s Aston Villa Football Club.

Algeria’s Issad Rebrab & family and Morocco’s Aziz Akhannouch & family are the biggest losers this year - their net worth dropped $500 million each compared to 2022. The richest Arab jeweler is Robert Mouawad, with a net worth of $1.5 billion. The Lebanese billionaire inherited the family’s eponymous high-end jewelry business, which his grandfather founded in Beirut in 1890. Othman Benjelloun— valued at $1.3 billion—is the only active banker

The six Lebanese billionaires have a collective net worth of $11.8 billion. The U.A.E. has three billionaires on the 2023 list, with a combined net worth of $9.9 billion. Six Arab billionaires reside in a country they don’t hold citizenship in. The U.K. ranks as the most common location, with three Arabs residing in the country. Four families with multiple listees appear on the list. Lebanon’s Hariri clan and Egypt’s Mansour brothers have the highest representation with three entries each. Five Arab billionaires are listed with joint family wealth. Algeria’s Issad Rebrab and family are the richest with $4.6 billion. Billionaires from Saudi Arabia were excluded from Forbes’ global list in 2023 for the sixth consecutive year. MAY 2023

19 LEADERBOARD

and Oman. He is also a member of the U.A.E. Medical Council and the advisory committee of the University of Sharjah College of Medicine.

2,640 billionaires

$12.2 trillion Total billionaire wealth has dropped – down by $500 billion, to $12.2 trillion, as turbulent times have hit both public and private markets.

337 women

Forbes World’s Billionaires List: Facts And Figures 2023

The wealthiest people on the planet are still overwhelmingly male. Forbes found 337 women on this year’s ranking, up from 327 in 2022, good for about 13% of the list, up from 12%.

The planet’s 2,640 billionaires are worth $12.2 trillion. Here’s who’s up, who’s down, and who’s off the list. All figures derived are from Forbes.

The world’s richest woman remains France’s Francoise Bettencourt Meyers ($80.5 billion), whose grandfather founded beauty giant L’Oréal.

254 people

fell off the list A total of 254 people have lost their billionaire status altogether, including Sam Bankman Fried and Kanye West. One person dropped out of the billionaires club by choice: Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. He donated his company to a trust and a nonprofit fighting environmental crises in September 2022, thus removing himself from the wealth rankings he had long criticized.

No one had a better year than Bernard Arnault who is No. 1 on the World’s Billionaires list for the first time. This is also the first time a French citizen has led the World’s Billionaires ranking, which began in 1987.

Americans billionaires

$57 billion loss Big gainers over the past 12 months include Spanish retailer Amancio Ortega (+$17.7 billion), Chinese e-commerce kingpin Colin Zheng Huang (+$18.9 billion), and Indonesian coal baron Low Tuck Kwong (+$21.8 billion).

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No one has lost more than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is $57 billion poorer than a year ago, thanks to a 38% plummet in the e-commerce giant’s stock. Still, with $114 billion, he ranked as the third-richest person globally.

69% self-made Overall, 69% of the World’s Billionaires list is self-made– meaning they founded or cofounded their company or established their own fortune, rather than inheriting it–down from 71% last year.

735

More members of the Forbes list are Americans than citizens of any other country or territory. The U.S. (735 billionaires) is followed by China (495), India (169), and Germany (126).

There are 96 self-made women billionaires, the richest being Rafaela Aponte-Diamant ($31.2 billion), a Swiss entrepreneur who cofounded shipping giant MSC with her husband Gianluigi in 1970.

150

newcomers 150 fresh faces made the billionaires list for the first time in 2023, including basketball legend LeBron James ($1 billion), golf great Tiger Woods ($1.1 billion), and fashion icon Tom Ford ($2.2 billion).

65 years The average age of the world’s billionaires is 65, and the oldest billionaire is 101-year-old insurance magnate George Joseph ($1.3 billion).

33 billionaires died A total of 33 billionaires died over the past year, including Red Bull cofounder Dietrich Mateschitz, Brazilian banking heir Lily Safra, and real estate mogul Ted Lerner. MAY 2023

BY JAMILA GANDHI , ILLUSTRATION BY GEOFF J. KIM FOR FORBES, AMANCIO ORTEGA PHOTO IMAXE PRESS SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

LEADERBOARD

For the second straight year, the number of billionaires around the globe has declined—from 2,668 in 2022 to 2,640 this year.

Billionaires

LEADERBOARD

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

MAY 2023

THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

EDITED BY ROB LAFRANCO AND CHASE PETERSON-WITHORN PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES

FALLING STOCKS, wounded unicorns and rising interest rates translated into a tough year for the world’s wealthiest. Globally, we counted 2,640 ten-figure fortunes, down from 2,668 last year. Altogether, the planet’s billionaires are now worth $12.2 trillion, down from $12.7 trillion in March 2022. Last year’s No. 1, Elon Musk, suffered a largely self-inflicted wound when he bought Twitter in a $44 billion deal last October, a misadventure compounded by plummeting shares in Tesla. Musk is worth some $180 billion today, down from $219 billion last year. His fall makes way for a new richest person in the

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

world: luxury goods titan Bernard Arnault of France, worth $211 billion. There are 150 newcomers to this year’s ranking, including fashion designer Tom Ford and golf great Tiger Woods. Women are still dramatically underrepresented, at just 13% of the list, up from 12% a year ago. The U.S. once again has more billionaires than any other country, with 736, followed by China (including Hong Kong and Macau) with 562. To calculate net worths, we used stock prices and exchange rates from March 10, 2023. For the full list of billionaires and our methodology, please see forbes.com/billionaires.

MAY 2023

Vive la France After years of jockeying for the top spot, Bernard Arnault leads the World’s Billionaires list—the first time a French citizen has made it to No. 1. Americans have topped the ranks most often (24 years), followed by citizens of Japan (eight times) and Mexico (four).

THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

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

MAY 2023

1. Bernard Arnault & family Net worth: $211 BIL • Source: LVMH Age: 74 • Citizenship: FRANCE

2. Elon Musk $180 BIL

• TESLA, SPACEX • 51 • U.S.

Musk has mostly tweeted himself out of the top spot on the ranks, with Tesla stock down nearly 50% since he announced his $44 billion takeover of Twitter last April, far outpacing the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s 18% drop. Investors have bemoaned thve $23 billion of Tesla shares he sold to finance the acquisition. SpaceX, meanwhile, keeps soaring, with the company valued at nearly $140 billion in a tender offer that closed in early 2023—up from the $127 billion at which investors valued it last May. Still, Musk is worth $39 billion less than a year ago.

3. Jeff Bezos $114 BIL

• AMAZON • 59 • U.S.

Since stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021, Bezos has flown to space via his company Blue Origin, made waves with a near-complete $500 million superyacht and stepped up his philanthropy through support for groups such as Bezos Academy free preschools and grants from his Bezos Earth Fund. His fortune isn’t faring as well: He’s $57 billion poorer than a year ago—the biggest loss of any billionaire— thanks to a 38% decline in Amazon stock.

4. Larry Ellison $107 BIL

• ORACLE • 78 • U.S.

The Oracle chairman and former CEO rose four spots amid a tough year for tech, as Oracle shares increased 10% on solid earnings and a focus on security. Ellison bought one of Florida’s most expensive homes for $173 million last summer, adding to his portfolio of glitzy real estate, including the Hawaiian island of Lanai, where he lives. He stepped down from Tesla’s board in August after four years.

5. Warren Buffett $106 BIL

• BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY • 92 • U.S.

Buffett has spent the past three years on a spending spree, pumping some $90 billion of Berkshire Hathaway’s cash into stocks, share buybacks and the $11.5 billion acquisition of insurance firm Alleghany Corp., which closed in October. In late March the Oracle of Omaha, a veteran of market crises, reportedly advised the Biden administration on bank runs and discussed possible investments in regional banks.

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

6. Bill Gates

8. Carlos Slim Helú & family

$104 BIL

$93 BIL

• MICROSOFT • 67 • U.S.

Gates stepped down from the board of Microsoft in 2020 but still spends 10% of his time working with teams at the software firm– including those at OpenAI, which Microsoft has backed. “This is every bit as important as the PC, as the internet,” Gates told Forbes in February, referring to generative artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Meanwhile, he and his former wife, Melinda French Gates, are boosting spending by the Gates Foundation, which they co-chair and plan to wind down within 25 years.

7. Michael Bloomberg $94.5 BIL

• BLOOMBERG LP • 81 • U.S.

Despite his donations of another $1.7 billion to charity over the past year, the Bloomberg LP cofounder’s fortune still climbed, as estimated revenue at his financial terminal and media business reached $13.3 billion in 2022, up from $12.5 billion in 2021. Bloomberg, a longtime supporter of Israel, waded into Israeli politics in a New York Times opinion piece in March, criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to weaken the country’s judiciary.

• TELECOM • 83 • MEXICO

The New York–listed shares of the telecom tycoon’s pan–Latin American mobile phone firm, América Móvil, rose 14% in the past year, helping to lift Slim’s fortune by nearly $12 billion and place him among the world’s ten richest people for the first time since 2019. In February, he listed his historic Manhattan mansion–located across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art— for $80 million, almost twice what he paid for it in 2010.

9. Mukesh Ambani $83.4 BIL

• DIVERSIFIED • 65 • INDIA

Ambani regained his spot as Asia’s richest person as Gautam Adani (No. 24) tumbled. Last year, Ambani’s oil-to-telecom behemoth Reliance Industries became the first Indian company to surpass $100 billion in revenue. He sidestepped speculation about succession by giving his children key roles last year: Older son Akash is chairman of telecom arm Jio Infocomm; daughter Isha is head of the retail business; and son Anant works in Reliance’s new energy ventures. MAY 2023

LARRY ELLISON BY JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES

THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

The French luxury goods tycoon tops the World’s Billionaires list for the first time on the back of a banner year at LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Tiffany & Co., among others. Revenue, profit and LVMH shares all sit at record highs, helping add $53 billion to Arnault’s fortune over the past 12 months, the biggest gain of any billionaire. Wealthier than ever, Arnault is now planning for succession: In July, he proposed a reorganization of his holding company, Agache, which holds the bulk of his LVMH stock, to give equal stakes to his five children.

$80.7 BIL

• MICROSOFT • 67 • U.S.

Ballmer’s L.A. Clippers–the sixth-most valuable NBA team–are flying high. He’s building them a privately funded $2 billion arena, slated for completion in 2024. The former Microsoft CEO’s fortune is down $10 billion in the past year, primarily due to the slump in Microsoft shares.

11. Françoise Bettencourt Meyers & family $80.5 BIL

• L’ORÉAL • 69 • FRANCE

The L’Oréal heiress has kept her title of the world’s richest woman for the third year in a row, thanks to a 12% rise in the cosmetics giant’s stock in the last 12 months. Besides pledging $230 million for Notre-Dame Cathedral’s reconstruction, she has hired a managing director for her investment firm, Téthys Invest, where she backs projects including French private hospital operator Elsan.

12. Larry Page $79.2 BIL

• GOOGLE • 50 • U.S.

Three years after the Google cofounder stepped away from day-to-day operations, Page and cofounder Sergey Brin (No. 14) attended strategy meetings in late 2022 amid the generative-AI arms race spurred by ChatGPT. Page has also stopped selling his stock: After unloading more than $2.5 billion (pretax) between May 2021 and April 2022, he has not sold a share since.

13. Amancio Ortega $77.3 BIL

• ZARA • 87 • SPAIN

His Inditex fashion retail empire—best known in the U.S. for the Zara chain—has been on a tear. Its stock rose 39% in the past 12 months, buoyed by brisk sales; revenue in the year through January 31, 2023, climbed 18% to nearly $35 billion. That boosted Ortega’s fortune by nearly $18 billion since last year. His daughter Marta Ortega was named Inditex’s chair in April 2022.

Nongfu Spring offset a decline in shares of his Covid test supplier Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy after the country eased pandemic restrictions at the end of last year.

off to a slow start, with the team unexpectedly missing the NFL playoffs.

16. Mark Zuckerberg

$54.4 BIL

$64.4 BIL

• FACEBOOK • 38 • U.S.

Unlike many big tech founders, Zuckerberg remains at the CEO helm. It hasn’t been easy, especially amid AI competition and tech layoffs, including 21,000 job cuts at his Meta Platforms since November. Meanwhile, the charitable Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which aims to create tools to help cure or manage all diseases, announced a new Chicago Biohub in March.

17. Charles Koch $59 BIL

• KOCH INDUSTRIES • 87 • U.S.

$59 BIL

• KOCH INDUSTRIES • 60 • U.S.

17. Julia Koch & family

Change is underway at $125 billion (2022 sales) Wichita, Kansas, conglomerate Koch Industries, which announced a restructuring of certain subsidiaries in March 2022. Charles Koch recently announced that his chief operating officer will join him as co-CEO after 55 years alone in the role. Julia Koch, the widow of Charles’ brother David (d. 2019), was elected as a trustee of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in January.

22. David Thomson & family • MEDIA • 65 • CANADA

Canada’s richest person added another $5.2 billion to his fortune in 2022 as his 68% stake in the conglomerate Thomson Reuters jumped 17%. The Toronto based company, which Thomson chairs, has been supplementing its core news and information business with AI investments like SurePrep, an automated tax software company it acquired in January for $500 million.

23. Michael Dell $50.1 BIL

• DELL TECHNOLOGIES • 58 • U.S.

The Dell chairman and CEO is $5 billion poorer this year after a 27% drop in Dell Technologies’ stock price. His family office, however, has grown into a large investment and advisory firm. MSD Partners, which manages over $12 billion, merged with fellow billionaire Byron Trott’s BDT & Co. in October.

24. Gautam Adani $47.2 BIL • INFRASTRUCTURE, COMMODITIES • 60 • INDIA

$58.8 BIL

• WALMART • 74 • U.S.

Adani was the world’s third-richest person on January 24, when he was worth nearly $126 billion. A report issued by short-seller Hindenburg Research later that day, however, sent his companies’ shares plummeting.

$57.6 BIL

• WALMART • 78 • U.S.

25. Phil Knight & family

$56.7 BIL

• WALMART • 73 • U.S.

19. Jim Walton 20. Rob Walton

21. Alice Walton

After decades of almost religiously holding onto their family retailer’s shares, the children of Walmart cofounder Sam Walton have been among its biggest sellers, unloading another $1.8 billion of stock over the past 12 months. A chunk of the proceeds likely helped fund Rob Walton’s record $4.7 billion purchase of the Denver Broncos last August. That investment is

$45.1 BIL

• NIKE • 85 • U.S.

Knight, who cofounded Nike in 1964 with just $500, is still reaping hefty dividends—$400 million (pretax) worth over the past year— thanks to a 25% stake in the shoe and apparel company. Supply chain difficulties and Covid restrictions in China nudged Nike’s shares down 3%. Ben Affleck portrays a young Knight in the new movie AIR, about the brand’s lucrative signing of a young Michael Jordan.

14. Sergey Brin $76 BIL

• GOOGLE • 49 • U.S.

Like his cofounder Larry Page (No. 12), he stopped what the two men called their “daily nagging” at Google in 2019. But is Brin back? A code request filed in January appears to be his first in years, and he has reportedly submitted code changes to Google’s AI chatbot. Brin sold more than $2.5 billion worth of Alphabet shares between May 2021 and April 2022, but has only gifted stock since. He has donated a total of $1.1 billion to Parkinson’s disease research.

15. Zhong Shanshan $68 BIL • BEVERAGES, PHARMACEUTICALS • 68 • CHINA China’s bottled water king remains the country’s richest person for the third year in a row. Gains by Zhong-led beverage producer

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

M ETH O DOL O G Y The World’s Billionaires list is our annual ranking of the planet’s richest people. Our estimates are a snapshot of wealth as of March 10, 2023. We previously listed couples and family members together in certain cases; this year, we separated these shared fortunes into individual list members, marked “split family fortune.” For a detailed methodology, see forbes.com/billionaires. Daily updated net worths are availaible at forbes.com/real-time-billionaires. Editors: Rob LaFranco and Chase Peterson-Withorn with Andrea Murphy Country Editors: Russell Flannery, Naazneen Karmali, Luisa Kroll Wealth Team: Richard J. Chang, Kerry A. Dolan, Matt Durot, John Hyatt, Phoebe Liu, Jemima McEvoy, Giacomo Tognini, Aris Alexander, Jimmy Hefter, Gabriela A. López Gomes, Segun Olakoyenikan, Carlos Sánchez Mora, Gigi Zamora and reporters at Forbes-licensed editions in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Affärsvärlden of Sweden Reporters: Dan Alexander, Sonya Angraini, Anderson Antunes, Anna Bánáti, Karina Barrymore, Elena Berezanskaya, Justin Birnbaum, Ionut Bonoiu, Igor Bosilkovski, Jonathan Burgos, Kenrick Cai, Nilgun Cavdar, Jayde Cheung, Matt Craig, Katarzyna Dębek, David de Jong, Marisa Dellatto, Amy Feldman, Klaus Fiala, Eduardo Garcia, Agnes Golya, Gloria Haraito, Christopher Helman, Alvaro Hernandez Zorrilla, Max Jedeur-Palmgren, John Kang, Shanshan Kao, Filip Kowalik, Zuzana Krajíčková, Zdravko Krstanov, Volodymyr Landa, Zinnia Lee, Caroline Le Ridou, Nicole Lindsay, Chengbo Liu, Katherine Love, Julie Lu, Joel Millman, Anis Shakirah Mohd Muslimin, Lan Anh Nguyen, Robert Olsen, Kyunghee Park, Phisanu Phromchanya, Jonathan Ponciano, Juraj Porubský, Anu Raghunathan, Yessar Rosendar, Rachel Sandler, Leonard Schoenberger, Aidyn Shagiyev, James Simms, Petr Šimůnek, Chloe Sorvino, Deborah Steinborn, Jessica Tan, Hank Tucker, Ozer Turan, Simran Vaswani, Lisette Voytko, Catherine Wang, Yue Wang, Emily Washburn, Ardian Wibisono, Will Yakowicz, January Yen, Itai Zehorai and Pawel Zielewski Research: Sue Radlauer Photo Research: Merrilee Barton, Gail Toivanen Database: Ken Barney, Dmitri Slavinsky

MAY 2023

25 THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

10. Steve Ballmer

TOP OF THE SHOPS Inflation is eating into paychecks and turbulent markets are hitting retirement savings, but consumers have kept spending. No one has prospered more than the billionaires peddling goods to everyday people, including these new members of the ten-figure ranks. Claudio Del Vecchio

$3.5 bil • Luxottica • U.S. Del Vecchio—the former CEO and majority owner of clothing retailer Brooks Brothers until it filed for bankruptcy in 2020—inherited a stake in eyewear giant Luxottica after his father, Leonardo Del Vecchio, died in June 2022. His six siblings and his stepmother are equally wealthy.

Fan Daidi

$3.5 bil • Skin care • China Fan is cofounder, executive director and chief science officer of Giant Biogene Holding, which makes collagen and other skin care products. It listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in November. She also serves as dean of the school of chemical engineering at Northwest University in Xi’an.

Andrey Krivenko

$2.1 bil • Retail • Russia In 2012, Krivenko opened four stores called VkusVill (Taste Town) to sell fresh products with short shelf lives. Now among Russia’s fastestgrowing retailers, it has more than 1,300 stores. He planned to take it public until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Aleš Zavoral

$2 bil • E-commerce • Czech Republic His Prague-based Alza.cz–known for its green alien mascot, “Alzak”–sold some $2 billion (est. revenue) worth of computers, TVs, appliances and other goods throughout Europe in 2021. Zavoral founded the business in 1994.

Hari Krishan Agarwal $1.1 bil • Shoes • India

He owns 74% of budget shoemaker Campus Activewear, which sells millions of men’s, women’s and kids’ sports shoes to 20,000 retailers across 650 cities in India. A third of the Delhi company’s products are priced below $13.

Tsao Ter-fung

$1.1 bil • Food • Taiwan After acquiring Quaker Oats’ Taiwan assets and establishing Standard Foods in 1986, Tsao turned it into a major supplier of cereal, cooking oil and milkbased beverages. The 77-year-old handed the chief executive role to son Arthur Tsao in 2019 but remains chairman.

David Tran

$1 bil • Hot sauce • U.S. A refugee from Vietnam, Tran started selling his Sriracha hot sauce in Los Angeles in 1980; now the $130 million (est. sales) company’s bottles with the rooster logo and green cap ºare a household staple across America.

Xie Bingzheng

$1 bil • Apparel • China Chinese consumers have a soft spot for international fashion brands, so it’s not surprising that Xie gave his golf apparel business a foreignsounding name: Biem.L.Fdlkk Garment. Shares of the company took flight in recent months as Covid restrictions were lifted.

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

TOM FORD $2.2 bil • Fashion • U.S. The Texas-born fashion designer revived Gucci as its creative director in the 1990s, then struck out on his own in 2005. He owned about 64% of fashion brand Tom Ford International—plus a separate fragrance, cosmetics and skin care business—before he sold them both to cosmetics giant Estée Lauder in a $2.8 billion deal in November. That added to a fortune that includes an art collection featuring works by Andy Warhol and homes in Los Angeles, New York, London, Palm Beach and Santa Fe.

TOM FORD BY RYAN PFLUGER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

MAY 2023

MONEY MASTERS For the ninth year running, there are more billionaires from the finance and investing world, 372, than any other group. And they keep compounding: This year, 24 such newcomers joined the ranks, more than any other sector. Some fresh members of the club:

Arthur Dantchik

$7.2 bil • Trading, investments • U.S.

27 THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

Dantchik cofounded trading firm Susquehanna International Group with fellow billionaire and high school best friend Jeff Yass. Now a managing director, Dantchik oversaw the company’s venture arm in China when it was one of the first to back TikTok parent ByteDance (on whose board he sits) in 2012.

Alexander Gerko

$5 bil • Trading • U.K. A former Deutsche Bank FX quant trader, Gerko founded and runs algorithmic trading company XTX Markets. The London-based financier, who renounced his Russian citizenship in 2022, raked in more than $1 billion in dividends and was the U.K.’s biggest taxpayer in 2022.

Hayes Barnard

$3.7 bil • Fintech • U.S. He finances 26% of all U.S. home solar installations— nearly $800 million in loans per month— through his GoodLeap app, which connects homeowners to lenders for solar panels, home batteries and other sustainable improvements. Barnard, who founded it in 2018, owns 40%.

Stephen Deckoff

$3 bil • Private equity • U.S. Deckoff founded and runs $9 billion (assets under management) Black Diamond Capital Management, which specializes in highyield debt, distressed debt, restructuring and business turnarounds. In August, he shelled out $13.2 million for a Beverly Hills pad that reportedly was previously leased to rapper Diddy.

Nithin Kamath

$2.7 bil • Financial services • India An engineering college dropout, he spent more than a decade as a trader before cofounding online discount brokerage Zerodha with his brother, Nikhil (see right), at age 30. He is CEO.

Samuel Chen

$2.3 bil • Investments • Taiwan An early Zoom investor, Chen has since bet on more than a halfdozen biotech and electronics companies in Taiwan. Among them: Polaris Group, which went public last year and has a patented cancer drug that successfully completed clinical trials.

Rajiv Jain

$2 bil • Finance • U.S.

NIKHIL KAMATH BY ZERODHA

Jain leads GQG Partners, a $9.1 billion (assets under management), Florida-based asset management firm that is publicly traded in Australia. GQG invested $1.9 billion in India’s embattled Adani Group in March.

NIKHIL KAMATH $1.1 bil • Financial services • India He dropped out of school after 10th grade, joined a call center, then began trading in the stock market. In 2010, at age 23, he cofounded online discount brokerage Zerodha with his brother, Nithin (see left). It’s now India’s largest stockbroker, with nearly 6.5 million active customers. In 2019, he launched True Beacon, a wealth management firm for ultrahigh- net-worth individuals. In 2021, he cofounded Gruhas, an investment firm that backs companies in the construction sector that reduce carbon emissions.

Jahm Najafi

$1.3 bil • Investments • U.S. He solely funds Phoenix-based private equity firm Najafi Companies. Among his best investments: an estimated 10% of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, purchased in 2009 for an estimated $43 million. In February, billionaire Mat Ishbia bought a majority of the team at a record $4 billion valuation.

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

MAY 2023

SPORTS STARS The business of sports is booming, with teams in several leagues changing hands for record prices and athletes pulling in more than ever, both on and off the field. There are 39 billionaires whose wealth comes primarily from sports, up from 16 a decade ago, including a dozen newcomers over the past year. Here are some of the most notable. Larry Tanenbaum

$2 bil • Construction, sports teams • Canada

28 THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

As chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, Tanenbaum owns a piece of nearly all of Toronto’s sports teams—the Maple Leafs (NHL), Raptors (NBA), Toronto FC (MLS) and Argonauts (Canadian Football League). He is also the owner and longtime CEO of construction company Kilmer Van Nostrand Co. and boasts a large real estate portfolio.

Mark Davis

$1.9 bil • Las Vegas Raiders • U.S. Football is the only business Davis has ever known, having grown up around the Raiders as his father, Al, served as coach, then general manager and eventually principal owner of the NFL franchise. Mark took over upon his father’s death in 2011 and oversaw the team’s 2020 relocation to Las Vegas.

Amy Adams Strunk

$1.7 bil • Tennessee Titans • U.S. Adams Strunk wrested control of the Tennessee Titans in 2015, two years after the death of her father, Bud Adams. Her 50% stake has doubled in value since she took over.

Irving Grousbeck

$1.6 bil • Cable, Boston Celtics • U.S.

$1 bil • Basketball • U.S. James, who broke the NBA’s all-time scoring record in February, continues to add numbers to his fortune, too. A fixture atop Forbes’ highestpaid players list for nearly a decade, he’s set to make an estimated $124.5 million on and off the court this season from his L.A. Lakers contract and endorsement deals with the likes of Nike, AT&T and Pepsi. James has funneled his earnings into real estate, entertainment company SpringHill and stakes in Blaze Pizza, fitness company Tonal, a Major League Pickleball franchise and Fenway Sports Group, owner of the Boston Red Sox.

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

Hal Steinbrenner

$1.3 bil • New York Yankees • U.S.

Jennifer Steinbrenner Swindal $1.3 bil • New York Yankees • U.S.

Jessica Steinbrenner

$1.3 bil • New York Yankees • U.S. The Yankees, valued at $1.6 billion when George Steinbrenner died in 2010, are now worth $7.1 billion. The three Steinbrenner children each own a share of the MLB team, which is the league’s most valuable, plus pieces of broadcaster YES Network and MLS squad New York FC.

Tiger Woods

$1.1 bil • Golf • U.S. The golf legend reportedly turned down nine figures to join the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour. He doesn’t need the money: Over his three-decade career, Woods has raked in more than $1.7 billion in endorsements, tournament winnings and other income—good enough for him to join LeBron James as the only two active athlete billionaires.

Toto Wolff

$1 bil • Formula 1 • Austria The star of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series, Wolff is team principal and CEO of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team. A former driver, he bought into the Formula 1 team in 2013, long before team values skyrocketed, and has led Mercedes to eight straight Constructors’ Championships. MAY 2023

LEBRON JAMES BY KWAKU ALSTON/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES

LEBRON JAMES

A cofounder of Continental Cablevision (later MediaOne), Grousbeck helped lead an investment group to buy the Boston Celtics for $360 million in 2003. Five years later the storied franchise captured its first NBA championship in two decades. Today his 30% stake alone is worth $1.1 billion.

YOUNGEST The average age of this year’s billionaires is 65, though the list stretches from 101-yearold insurance tycoon George Joseph down to a couple very well-to-do teenagers. Here are the 15 members of the World’s Billionaires who are 30 or younger, including nine newcomers.

Clemente Del Vecchio

$3.5 bil • Luxottica • Italy • 18

Luca Del Vecchio

$3.5 bil • Luxottica • Italy • 21

Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio $3.5 bil • Luxottica • Italy • 27

The world has a new teenage billionaire after eyewear kingpin Leonardo Del Vecchio died in June 2022, leaving his fortune to his widow and six children. Clemente, Luca and Leonardo—the three youngest—each inherited 12.5% of Luxottica, which owns brands including Sunglass Hut and Ray-Ban.

Kim Jung-youn

$1.7 bil • Online gaming • South Korea • 19

Kim Jung-min

The sisters each inherited 15% of game maker Nexon after their father, Kim Jung-ju, who founded the company, died in February 2022.

Kevin David Lehmann

$2.3 bil • Drugstores • Germany • 20 His father gave him 50% of German drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt at age 14, though it remained under a trusteeship until he turned 18. Neither Lehmann nor his father is operationally involved in the $14 billion (revenue) company.

Alexandra Andresen

$1.5 bil • Investments • Norway • 26

Katharina Andresen

$1.5 bil • Investments • Norway • 27

BEN FRANCIS $1.2 bil • Gymshark • U.K. • 30 Francis was juggling college classes and delivering pizzas when he founded activewear maker Gymshark in 2012 at age 19. He sewed the first pieces together in his parents’ Birmingham, England, garage and guerrilla-marketed his way into the workout gear scene, getting weightlifting influencers to pump up his brand. Gymshark did more than $500 million in 2021 sales. Francis sold 21% of the business to private equity firm General Atlantic in 2020 for $300 million but still owns 70%.

The sisters are sixth-generation owners of Ferd, the more than $4 billion (equity) investment company their father, Johan, runs. Katharina works for an Oslo-based construction firm; Alexandra is a champion dressage rider.

Wang Zelong

$1.4 bil • Pigment production • China • 26 Wang’s fortune mainly comes from a stake in Shenzhenlisted CNNC Hua Yuan Titanium Dioxide, a producer of the chemical used to create white pigment for things like paint and paper.

Ryan Breslow

$1.1 bil • E-commerce • U.S. • 28 The Stanford dropout founded three startups, each four years apart: Bolt (2014), which rocketed him to fame, Eco (2018) and Love (2022). They aim to remove middlemen in payments processing, personal finance and pharmaceuticals, respectively.

Gustav Magnar Witzoe

$2.7 bil • Fish farming • Norway • 29 He inherited nearly half of salmon farming company SalMar ASA but does not have an operating role. Instead, he’s casting his line as a real estate and tech startup investor.

Palmer Luckey

$1.7 bil • Virtual reality • U.S. • 30 The former teen whiz founded VR headset maker Oculus and sold it to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, then began building weapons. His defense tech startup, Anduril, raised $1.5 billion at an $8.5 billion valuation in December.

Mark Mateschitz BEN FRANCIS BY LEVON BISS FOR FORBES

$34.7 bil • Red Bull • Austria • 30 This year’s richest newcomer inherited 49% of energy drink giant Red Bull after his father, cofounder Dietrich Mateschitz, died in October. He soon resigned as its head of organics to “concentrate on his role as shareholder.”

Michal Strnad

$2 bil • Weapons • Czech Republic • 30 His Czechoslovak Group is one of the biggest suppliers of ammunition and artillery to the Ukrainian army, which has helped double sales to $620 million in the first half of 2022. He took full control of the business, founded by his father, in 2018.

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

MAY 2023

THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

$1.7 bil • Online gaming • South Korea • 21

D RO P- O F F S

In Memoriam

DROP-OFF S

Sam Bankman-Fried

Yvon Chouinard

DIETRICH

COUNTRY: U.S. COUNTRY: U.S. MATESCHITZ Sam Bankman-Fried Yvon Chouinard NET WORTH: Less than $10 mil NET WORTH: Less than $100 mil 78 • (1944–2022) COUNTRY: U.S. (COUNTRY: from $24U.S. bil) ( from $1.2 bil) An Austrian citizen, Mateschitz NET WORTH: Less than $10 mil NET WORTH: Less than $100 mil discovered energy drinks while The crypto wunderkind convinced Chouinard—who had long ( from $24 bil) ( from $1.2 bil) 78 • (1944–2022) traveling to Asia as a marketing exec, customers, investors and, yes, complained about making Forbes’ crypto was wunderkind Chouinard—who had long “has to then incitizen, 1987 partnered with a Thai An Austrian Mateschitz Forbes that his FTXThe exchange the future wealth lists and once wrote that business convinced customers, investors complained about making entrepreneur to drinks createwhile their own, Red energy of crypto. His house of cards collapsed in late take the majority of the blame for being the enemy discovered and, yes, Forbes that his FTX exchange was the Forbes’ wealth lists and once wrote that traveling Asia asitainto marketing Bull, to and grew a global brand 2022, and now “SBF” faces federal fraud, money of nature”—gave up his spot in September when future of crypto. His house of cards collapsed business “has to take the majority of the exec, then in 1987 partnered synonymous with adventure sports. laundering and campaign finance violation charges he donated his outdoor clothing and gear retailer, with a Thai entrepreneur in late 2022, and now “SBF” faces federal fraud, blame for being the enemy of nature”—gave Mateschitz’s son, Mark,to inherited his (all of which he denies). and cofounder Gary to a trust and a nonprofit fighting create their own, Red Bull, and money laundering andHe campaign finance up Patagonia, his spot in September when he donated 49% share of the $10 billion (sales) brand Wang—who pleaded(all guilty to fraud charges and is hisenvironmental crises. business, violation charges of which he denies). outdoor clothing andThe gear retailer,which Chouinard grew it into a global business. synonymous with adventure reportedly cooperating with authorities—are two of Patagonia, founded in sets aside 1% of sales to finance He and cofounder Gary Wang—who pleaded to 1973, a trust and a nonprofit fighting sports. Mateschitz’s son, Mark, guilty to fraud charges and is reportedly environmental crises. The business, which seven crypto investors to drop from the list this year. environmental groups. inherited his 49% share of the cooperating with authorities—are two of seven Chouinard founded in 1973, sets aside 1% $10 billion (sales) business. crypto investors to drop from the list this year. of sales to finance environmental groups.

DIETRICH MATESCHITZ

Zhao Weiguo

Henrique Dubugras

COUNTRY: China COUNTRY: Brazil Zhao Weiguo Henrique Dubugras NET WORTH: Less than $100 mil NET WORTH: About $900 mil COUNTRY: China COUNTRY: Brazil ( from $2.8 bil) ( from $1.5 bil) NET WORTH: Less than $100 mil NET WORTH: About $900 mil ( from $2.8 bil) ( from bil) funding frenzy has Amid a broad investigation into The $1.5 startup China’s semiconductor industry, fizzled, hammering the valuations Amid a broad investigation The startup funding frenzy a Chinese regulatorinto hasChina’s chargedsemiconductor the former of unicorns—venture-backed companies has fizzled, hammering theworth $1 LILY SAFRA chair of theagovernment-backed semiconductor billion orof more. In all, 51 unicorn founders are worth industry, Chinese regulator has charged valuations unicorns—venture-backed 87 • (1934–2022) conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup with corruption. less than a year ago. At least 19 are no longer the former chair of the government-backed companies worth $1 billion or more. In all, Safra inherited most of her wealth conglomerate Tsinghua 51 unicorn founders are worthDubugras less than a year A semiconductor bankruptcy restructuring left Zhao, whoUnigroup was billionaires at all, including and cofounder with corruption. A bankruptcy restructuring left last ago. At least 19 are no longer billionaires at fintech from her fourth husband, Brazilian reported to have “disappeared” from public view Pedro Franceschi, creators of credit card Zhao, who was have “disappeared” all,Brex. including and cofounder banker Edmond Safra, who died 87 • (1934–2022) year, without anyreported holdings to in Tsinghua Unigroup’s Their Dubugras company is now worth an Pedro estimated $6.4 from public viewcould last year, without anyfor holdings creators of credit card fintech a 1999 fire in their companies. Zhao not be reached comment. Franceschi, billion, down from $12.3 billion in early 2022. Safrain inherited most of herMonaco in Tsinghua Unigroup’s companies. Zhao could Brex. Their company is now worth an estimated apartment thathusband, was set by his wealth from her fourth not be reached for comment. $6.4 billion, down from $12.3 billion in early 2022. nurse. A citizen of Monaco Brazilian banker Edmond Safra, born in Alex Atallah Niraj Shah whoBrazil, died in a 1999 fire in the theirEdmond J. Safra chaired COUNTRY: U.S. COUNTRY: Monaco apartment thatwhich was set Safra Foundation, supports Alex Atallah Niraj Shah U.S. NET WORTH: NET WORTH: About $600 mil by his nurse.including A citizen of Monaco science causes education, COUNTRY: U.S.Less than $600 mil COUNTRY: U.S. born in Brazil, Safra chaired the (NET from $2.2 Less bil) than $600 mil ( from About $1.6 bil)$600 mil WORTH: NET WORTH: and medicine. Edmond J. Safra Foundation, ( from $2.2 bil) ( from $1.6 bil) The bubble for nonfungible tokens Demand for sofas, beds and which supports causes including sold the OpenSea marketplace, rugs from his online home goods education, science and medicine. The on bubble for nonfungible Demand for sofas, beds and created by Atallah tokens and cofounder andOpenSea fellow dropretailer, Wayfair, plummeted, sending shares— sold on the rugshas from his online home bySales Atallah and cofounder goods retailer, has plummeted, sending offmarketplace, Devin Finzer,created has burst. of NFTs—computer bid up 90% Wayfair, during the pandemic—down 75% since and fellow drop-off Devin Finzer, hasdigital burst. Sales during the (CEO pandemic—down files used to track ownership of unique assets shares—bid last year.up In 90% January, Shah and co-chairman) of NFTs—computer fileshave usedplummeted, to track ownership since last year. In January, (CEO and also including art and music— dropping 75% and cofounder Steve ConineShah (co-chairman; ofvalue unique assets including art to and andannounced cofounder Steve Conine the ofdigital OpenSea from $13.3 billion anmusic— co-chairman) a list drop-off) Wayfair was cutting have plummeted, dropping the value of OpenSea (co-chairman; also a list drop-off) announced estimated $3.1 billion. In July 2022, OpenSea laid off 10% of its workforce as part of a $1.4 billion costfrom $13.3 billion to an estimated $3.1 billion. Wayfair was cutting 10% of its workforce as 20% of its staff.OpenSea laid off 20% of its staff. savings plan. In July 2022, part of a $1.4 billion cost-savings plan.

LILY SAFRA

TED LERNER

Drop-offs by Country

Rest of the world 93

China 76

Other 92

FORBES.COM

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

Technology 52

Finance and Investments 44

South Korea 15 India 23

97 • (1925–2023)

Drop-offs by Industry

U.S. 47

Health Care 31

Manufacturing 35

Lerner borrowed $250 from his TED LERNER wife in 1952 to start a real estate

97 • (1925–2023) business, eventually becoming one Lernerof borrowed $250 from his area’s the Washington, D.C., wife in 1952 to start a real estate biggest developers. In 2006 he business, eventually becoming the Washington onebought of the Washington, D.C.,Nationals team, now run area’sbaseball biggest developers. In by son for $450 million; it’s currently 2006Mark, he bought the Washington worth $2 billion. Nationals baseball team, now run by son Mark, for $450 million; it’s currently worth $2 billion. A P R I L / M AY 2 0 2 3

MAY 2023

GUERIN BLASK FOR FORBES; BEN GABBE/GETTY IMAGES; KIM KYUNG-HOON/REUTERS/ALAMY; BREX; SASHA MASLOV FOR FORBES; DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES; SVEN SIMON/NEWSCOM; SLIM AARONS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; STEPHEN VOSS FOR FORBES

THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

In Memoriam

THE LIST • THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES

The number of billionaires around the globe has fallen for the second straight year, as both public and private markets shuddered. In all, 254 people fell off the listnumber in 2023;ofanother 33 died. Herethe areglobe some has of the highest-profile people The billionaires around fallen for the second who public lost their three-comma status. straight year, as both and private markets shuddered. In all, 254 people fell off the list in 2023; another 33 died. Here are some of the highest-profile people who lost their three-comma status.

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

MAY 2023

WORLD’S RICHEST ARABS 2023

he last year has proven challenging for the world’s richest people. The Forbes World’s Billionaires 2023 ranking features 2,640 people, down from 2,668 in 2022. Collectively, billionaires are now worth $12.2 trillion—$500 billion less than in March last year—and nearly half are poorer than they were in 2022. This is also reflected in the Middle East, with nine of the 21 Arab billionaires worth less now than they were a year ago. However, their collective wealth has gone up from $52.9 billion in 2022 to $53.9 billion in 2023. Billionaires from Saudi Arabia were excluded from Forbes’ global list for the sixth consecutive year. Egypt’s Nassef Sawiris is still the richest Arab in the world, with a net worth of $7.4 billion— his wealth dropped $300 million less compared to 2022. His most valuable asset is a nearly 6% stake in sportswear maker adidas. He also runs OCI, one of the world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer producers, with plants in Texas and Iowa. Algeria’s only billionaire, Issad Rebrab & family, is also still the second richest Arab in the world, worth $4.6 billion—$500 million less compared to 2022. Rebrab is the founder and CEO of Cevital, Algeria’s largest privately-held company. Cevital owns one of the largest sugar refineries in the world, with the capacity to produce two million tons of refined sugar a year. Emirati billionaire, Hussain Sajwani, is the highest earner this year. His personal wealth has risen 66.7% compared to 2022. Mohamed Mansour also saw his fortune increase by 44% this year. Egypt and Lebanon have the highest number of billionaires in the region, with six entries each. The six Egyptian billionaires have a combined net worth of $19.1 billion. They are the three Mansour brothers, Mohammed, Youssef, and Yasseen, the two Sawiris brothers, Nassef and Naguib, and Mohamed Al Fayed, the 94-year-old former owner of Harrods. The six Lebanese billionaires have a collective net worth of $11.8 billion. They are the two Mikati brothers, the fine Jewelry tycoon Robert Mouawad, and the three brothers of former billionaire and prime minister of Lebanon Saad Hariri, Bahaa, Ayman, and Fahed Hariri. The U.A.E. has three billionaires on the 2023 list—Hussain Sajwani, Abdulla bin Ahmad Al Ghurair & family, and Abdulla Al Futtaim & family, with a combined net worth of $9.9 billion. Morocco and Qatar have two billionaires each, with Moroccan prime minister Aziz Akhannouch & family and banking tycoon Othman Benjelloun & family representing Morocco, and Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani and Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, both members of the Qatari Royal Family, representing Qatar.

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

MAY 2023

T H E P I N N AC L E O F LUXU RY L I V I N G

B U LG A R I L I G H T H O U S E .C O M

SUSPENDED BETWEEN SEA AND SKY Stretching skywards, the Bulgari Lighthouse Dubai is a living, breathing beacon of light. Born out of its magnificent location where architecture and the natural landscape meet to create a dynamic interplay of contrasts. The surrounding natural landscape inspires the living space, and as a result, our opulent 4 to 5-bedroom luxury penthouses rise from the golden sands of Jumeira Bay Island. Crafted in harmony with contemporary aesthetics, Bulgari Lighthouse Dubai provides a tranquil and serene abode for those who call it home.

WORLD’S

RICHEST

ARABS 2023

Nassef Sawiris

Net worth: $7.4 billion Change since 2022: $300 million Nassef Sawiris is an investor and a scion of Egypt’s wealthiest family. His most valuable asset is a nearly 6% stake in sportswear maker Adidas. In December 2020, he acquired a 5% stake in New York-listed firm Madison Square Garden Sports, owner of the NBA Knicks and the NHL Rangers teams. He runs OCI, one of the world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer producers, with plants in Texas and Iowa; it trades on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. Orascom Construction, an engineering and building firm, trades on the Egyptian Exchange and Nasdaq Dubai. His holdings include stakes in cement giant Lafarge Holcim and Adidas; he sits on the supervisory board of Adidas. Nassef Sawiris teamed up with Fortress Investment Group’s Wes Edens to purchase the Premier League’s Aston Villa Football Club.

FORBES ME STRIP AD Strip 1 : Trim 19.4cms x 4cms

PHOTO BY KEVIN DIETSCH / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP

Residence: Egypt

Hussain Sajwani

Net worth: $4.5 billion Change since 2022:

$1.8 billion Residence: U.A.E.

Hussain Sajwani is the chairman of Dubai-based luxury real estate developer DAMAC Properties, which he founded in 2002. He started out in the food services business, catering to the U.S. military and construction giant Bechtel. In 2001, after Dubai allowed foreigners to own property, he shifted to real estate and sold units in a residential building in less than six months. DAMAC teamed up with Donald Trump in 2013 to develop two Trump-branded golf courses in Dubai developments. Sajwani is known for extravagant marketing, sometimes offering free Lamborghinis to apartment buyers. He has co-branding deals with Versace and Bugatti.

Issad Rebrab & Family

Net worth: $4.6 billion Change since 2022:

$500 million Residence: Algeria

Rebrab founded Cevital and served as its CEO for more than 50 years. He named his son, Malik, CEO in July 2022. Cevital, Algeria’s biggest privately held company, owns one of the largest sugar refineries in the world, with the capacity to produce two million tons a year. Cevital owns European companies, including French home appliances maker Groupe Brandt, an Italian steel mill and a German water purification company. After serving eight months in jail on charges of corruption, Rebrab was released on January 1, 2020. He denies any wrongdoing.

Mohamed Mansour

Net worth: $3.6 billion

IMAGES FROM SOURCE

Change since 2022:

$1.1 billion Residence: U.K.

Mohamed Mansour oversees family conglomerate Mansour Group, which was founded by his late father Loutfy in 1952 and has 60,000 employees. Mansour established General Motors dealerships in Egypt in 1975, later becoming one of GM’s biggest distributors worldwide. Mansour Group also has exclusive distribution rights for Caterpillar equipment in Egypt and seven other African countries. Mansour, who has both Egyptian and U.K. citizenship, served as Egypt’s of transportation from 2006 to 2009 under the Hosni Strip 2 : Trim 20.2cmsminister x 4cms Mubarak regime. His brothers Yasseen and Youssef, who share ownership in the family group, are also billionaires; his son Loutfy heads private equity arm Man Capital.

T H E P I N N AC L E O F LUXU RY L I V I N G

Abdulla bin Ahmad Al Ghurair & family

Net worth: $3 billion Change since 2022:

$400 million Residence: U.A.E.

AMMAR ABD RABBO / EL GOUNA FILM FESTIVAL / AFP-SERVICES, IMAGE FROM SOURCE

Abdulla Al Ghurair founded Mashreqbank in 1967. He stepped down as chairman in October 2019, but remains a board member. His eponymous holding company has interests in food, construction and real estate; non-family members are part of the leadership team. His construction company did the exterior cladding of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, and helped build the Dubai Metro. His brother Saif Al Ghurair, who passed away in August 2019, was also a billionaire.

Naguib Sawiris

Net worth: $3.3 billion Change since 2022:

$100 million Residence: Egypt

Naguib Sawiris is a scion of Egypt’s wealthiest family. His brother Nassef is also a billionaire. He built a fortune in telecom, selling Orascom Telecom in 2011 to Russian telecom firm VimpelCom (now Veon) in a multibillion-dollar transaction. He’s chairman of Orascom TMT Investments, which has stakes Strip 3 : Trim 20.2cms x 4cms in an asset manager in Egypt and Italian internet company Italiaonline, among others. He also developed a luxury resort called Silversands on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

Najib Mikati

Net worth: $2.8 billion Change since 2022:

Net worth: $2.7 billion $400 million

Residence: Lebanon Najib Mikati cofounded Beirutbased investment firm M1 Group. Mikati currently serves at the prime minister of Lebanon, a position he previously held from 2011 to 2014 and briefly in 2005. Mikati and his billionaire brother Taha founded Investcom in 1982, selling satellite phones at the height of Lebanon’s civil war. They expanded into Africa where they built cellphone towers in Ghana, Liberia and Benin, among other countries. In 2005, Investcom went public on the London Stock Exchange, and in 2009, South Africa’s MTN bought the Mikatis’ stake for $3.6 billion.

Change since 2022:

$200 million Residence: Oman

Suhail Bahwan is the founder and chairman of Suhail Bahwan Group, one of the largest conglomerates in Oman. It is a major producer of fertilizers, generating 1.3 million tons of urea annually. It also owns Nissan and BWM dealerships. He first went into business with his brother Saud in 1965, selling fishing nets and building materials, before scoring the Toyota dealership in 1975. In 2002, he split with his brother, who kept the Toyota dealership and passed it along after his death to his son Mohammed.

Taha Mikati

Net worth: $2.8 billion Change since 2022:

$400 million

Residence: Lebanon

IMAGES FROM SOURCE

Suhail Bahwan

Taha Mikati cofounded Beirut-based holding company M1 Group. Its investments include stakes in South African telecom firm MTN, fashion retailer Pepe Jeans and prime real estate in New York, London and Monaco. Mikati and his billionaire brother Najib founded Investcom in 1982, selling satellite phones at the height of Lebanon’s civil war. They expanded into Africa where they built cellphone towers in Ghana, Liberia and Benin, among other countries. In 2005, Investcom went public on the London Stock Exchange, and in 2009, South Africa’s MTN bought the Mikatis’ stake for $3.6 billion.

Abdulla Al Futtaim & family

Net worth: $2.4 billion Change since 2022:

$100 million Residence: U.A.E.

Abdulla Al Futtaim owns the conglomerate Al Futtaim Group, run by his son Omar, who is vice chairman and CEO. In 1955, the group became the exclusive distributor in the U.A.E. of Toyota and still has the distributorship today. Al Futtaim is also licensed to operate Hertz, Ikea, Toys “R” Us, and Marks and Spencer in the U.A.E. The retailers anchor their malls, which include Dubai Festival City, Dubai Festival Plaza, Doha Festival City, Strip 4 : Festival Trim 19.4cms x 4cms and Cairo City. His cousin Majid Al Futtaim died in December 2021 and was also a billionaire.

B U LG A R I L I G H T H O U S E .C O M

Bahaa Hariri

Net worth: $2.1 billion Change since 2022:

No change Residence: Switzerland

Bahaa Hariri is the eldest son of slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He inherited his fortune from his father, who was a billionaire. In 2008, Bahaa Hariri sold his stake in Saudi Oger, the family construction business, to his brother Saad Hariri, also a former prime minister of Lebanon. Bahaa Hariri founded and chairs Horizon Group, a real estate holding company with investments in Amman, Jordan and Beirut, Lebanon. He helped revitalize an area of Amman, called Abdali, in partnership with the Jordanian government. He’s the majority owner of Globe Express Services, a logistics company with a presence in more than 100 countries.

WORLD’S RICHEST ARABS 2023

Mohamed Al Fayed

Net worth: $2 billion Change since 2022:

$100 million Residence: U.K.

Mohamed Al Fayed was born in Alexandria, Egypt and moved in the mid-1960s to the U.K., where he made his fortune. He’s best known for being the one-time owner of London department store Harrod’s, which he sold to Qatar for a reported $2.4 billion in 2010. He owns the storied Ritz Paris hotel. After a four-year renovation, it reopened in 2016. Suites are named after illustrious guests, like Coco Chanel. In 2013, Al Fayed sold Fulham Football Club to U.S. auto parts billionaire Shahid Khan for a reported $300 million.

Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani

Net worth: $1.8 billion Change since 2022:

$300 million Residence: Qatar

Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani is the chairman of Al Faisal Holding, one of Qatar’s biggest conglomerates, which he founded in 1964. It owns more than 20 hotels around the world, including the St. Regis in Washington, D.C. and Miami, and the W Hotel in London. Al Faisal Holding also has a majority stake in publicly-traded Aamal, which owns real estate in Qatar and sells medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. Al Thani started selling car parts in Doha at age 16. He became the sole distributor of Bridgestone tires in the 1960s.

PHOTO BY GLYN KIRK / AFP IMAGES FROM SOURCE

Aziz Akhannouch & family

Net worth: $1.5 billion Change since 2022:

$500 million Residence: Morocco

Aziz Akhannouch is the majority owner of Akwa Group, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate founded by his father and a partner, Ahmed Wakrim, in 1932. It has interests in petroleum, gas and chemicals through publicly-traded Afriquia Gaz and Maghreb Oxygene. Akhannouch was appointed prime minister of Morocco in September 2021. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

MAY 2023

Youssef Mansour

Net worth: $1.5 billion Change since 2022:

Robert Mouawad

Net worth: $1.5 billion No change

Residence: Egypt

Change since 2022: No change

Youssef Mansour is chairman of familyowned conglomerate Mansour Group, which was founded by his late father Loutfy in 1952. Mansour Group is the exclusive distributor of GM vehicles and Caterpillar equipment in Egypt and several other countries. He oversees the consumer goods division, which includes supermarket chain Metro, and sole distribution rights for L’Oreal in Egypt. Younger brothers Mohamed and Yasseen are also billionaires and part owners of Mansour Group.

Residence: Bahrain Robert Mouawad inherited the family’s eponymous highend jewelry business that his grandfather founded in Beirut in 1890. He turned over management of the business to his sons Fred, Alain and Pascal in 2010. Mouawad boasts one of the world’s most dazzling gem collections, including Dynasty, a 51.12 carat Russian diamond estimated at nearly $10 million. Robert Mouawad also owns extensive real estate and has developed luxury residences on a man-made island in Bahrain.

Ayman Hariri

Net worth: $1.4 billion Change since 2022: No change Residence: France Ayman Hariri is a son of the late Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s prime minister, who was assassinated while in office in 2005. He inherited a stake in his father’s Saudi-based construction company Saudi Oger, and sold it to his brother Saad in 2014. In 2017, he sold his 42% stake in family holding company GroupeMed, which has interests in banking and real estate, for $535 million. He invests in startups through New York-based firm Red Sea Ventures; among its investments was smart thermostat Nest, now part of Google. He’s a cofounder and CEO of Vero, an ad-free social media platform that lets users share music, videos and photos. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

AYMAN HARIRI IMAGE COURTESY OF CLAYENDS, IMAGES FROM SOURCE

WORLD’S RICHEST ARABS 2023

MAY 2023

Yasseen Mansour

Net worth: $1.3 billion Change since 2022:

$200 million Residence: Egypt

Yasseen Mansour is a shareholder in family-owned conglomerate Mansour Group, which was founded by his late father Loutfy in 1952. Mansour Group is the exclusive distributor of GM vehicles and Caterpillar equipment in Egypt and several other countries. His brothers Mohamed and Youssef are also billionaires and part owners of Mansour Group. He’s chairman of Palm Hills Developments, one of Egypt’s biggest real estate developers.

20 Hamad bin Jassim bin

Jaber Al Thani

Net worth: $1.2 billion Change since 2022: Residence: Qatar

No change

Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani was prime minister of Qatar between 2007 and 2013; he also served as foreign minister from 1992 until 2013. His great uncle founded modern Qatar in 1971, and he’s a cousin of the current Emir. Through an entity called Paramount Services Holdings, Al Thani owns 3% of Deustche Bank, his biggest publicly-traded holding. In 2016, he was mentioned in the “Panama Papers”—leaked files from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, which set up offshore entities for clients.

20 Fahed Hariri

Net worth: $1.2 billion Change since 2022: Residence: U.K. 18

Othman Benjelloun & family

Net worth: $1.3 billion

IMAGES FROM SOURCE

Change since 2022:

No change Residence: Morocco

Othman Benjelloun is CEO of BMCE Bank of Africa, which has a presence in more than 20 African countries. His father was a shareholder in RMA, a Moroccan insurance company; Benjelloun built it into a leading insurer. Through his holding company FinanceCom, he has a stake in the Moroccan arm of French telecom firm Orange. He inaugurated in 2014 a $500 million plan to build the 55-story Mohammed VI Tower in Rabat. It will be one of the tallest buildings in Africa. FinanceCom is part of a project to develop a multibillion-dollar tech city in Tangiers that is expected to host 200 Chinese companies. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

No change

Fahed Hariri is the youngest son of the late billionaire Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon who was assassinated in 2005. In 2012, Fahed sold his shares in family construction firm Saudi Oger to his brother Saad Hariri, who was Lebanon’s prime minister until January 2020. He invested some of the proceeds in real estate in New York, Paris and Monte Carlo and in now beleaguered Lebanese banks. He is also developing residential buildings in Beirut. MAY 2023

WORLD’S RICHEST ARABS 2023

• COVER STORY •

ADEL MARDINI

PRIORITY PASS

Adel Mardini, Founder and CEO of private jet terminal operator Jetex, is used to catering to the most demanding of HNWI travelers. As demand for sustainable and personalized travel increases, he’s looking to Africa and the U.S. for expansion.

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

MAY 2023

Adel Mardini, Founder and CEO of private jet terminal operator Jetex.

IMAGE BY FORBES MIDDLE EAST

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

MAY 2023

ADEL MARDINI

Patience, flexibility, and many deep breaths are almost a prerequisite when facing a typical airport experience. There are often long lines to check in, pass security, and board the plane. Delayed flights, lost luggage, and canceled plans can create additional stress and uncertainty. The constant announcements over the blaring intercom only add to the chaos. The experience is a stark contrast to the customercentric experience of flying privately. At the Jetex VIP terminal in Dubai, for example, the travel journey is purposefully designed to be stress-free and seamless. “Our crew has time-based KPIs for all guest experiences,” says Adel Mardini, Founder and CEO of Jetex. “When a flight lands, travelers must be in their car within 20 minutes and luggage delivered between seven to 12 minutes. At airports, you are a passenger. But at Jetex, you are a guest.” Mardini founded Jetex in Dubai in 2005 to cater to the needs of the most discerning travelers in private aviation. While it doesn’t have its own fleet, the company operates private jet terminals—or fixed base operators (FBOs)—that offer services including managing private passenger jets, aircraft fueling, ground handling, and global trip planning for both owners and operators of business jets for corporate, commercial, and personal air travel. Mardini also serves as a board member of the Middle East Business Aviation Association and the Dubai Airshow. Jetex first launched at the Dubai Airshow in 2005. Its first FBO opened at Paris Le Bourget in 2009, and its flagship FBO in Dubai in 2016. In 2022, the company facilitated more than 71,000 private jet flights and served 367,000 passengers, an increase from 51,000 flights and 239,000 passengers in 2021. Last year, it also opened two new private jet terminals in Singapore and London. Most recently, in April 2023, Jetex partnered with Abu Dhabi’s Al Bateen Executive Airport to open its first FBO in the U.A.E.’s F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

capital, bringing its total number of terminals to 38 globally. “As a dedicated FBO operator well versed with the needs and requirements of this specific market segment, we look forward to collaborating with Jetex moving forward and successfully delivering great value to all our passengers,” says Jamal Salem Al Dhaheri, Managing Director and CEO of Abu Dhabi Airports. For context, Jetex offers round-trip flights from Dubai to Malé in the Maldives starting at roughly $7,000 per person, based on 10 passengers traveling together. A first-class ticket of the same itinerary with Emirates would cost around $6,800. The region’s potential has also been recognized by international players. Over the past two years, Lithuania’s KlasJet, Malta’s AllianceJet, and U.K.based Mirai Flights have all announced their GCC expansion plans. “Globally, business aviation is expected to grow at a healthy 4.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in 2023, with the MENA region estimated to see similar growth,” says Akram Alami, Partner at Bain & Co. According to Skyscanner, approximately one in three travelers from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. have expressed interest in flying in first or business class in 2023, compared to a global average of one in five.

“I believe that being on the ground is the most efficient way to guide, inspire, and learn.” Mardini points out that travelers are increasingly seeking flexibility, safety, and security in the postpandemic era. “The executive aviation market has a great opportunity to continue to respond to these concerns by working on ways to deliver a more hygienic flying experience with fewer touchpoints than commercial airlines,” he adds. According to Honeywell’s 2022 Global Business Aviation Outlook survey, nearly 74% of new private aviation users plan to maintain the same level of flying in 2023 as they did in 2022, 10 percentage points above the fleet average. Only 4% expect to fly less in 2023. This growing demand is also reflected in surging private jet fleet sizes, with Honeywell data projecting 8,500 new business jet deliveries over the next decade, valued at a total of $274 billion. However, Alami explains that primary challenges lie in infrastructure and FBO supply rather than aviation demand. Currently, the infrastructure mainly relies on commercial airports. MAY 2023

IMAGE FROM SOURCE

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

Jetex. Priced at around $65,000 for up to 10 passengers, the special package attracted a new customer segment, including a high share of first-time private jet flyers, families, groups of friends, and corporate clients. It also offered preferential rates for luxury hotels, as well as a limousine service in both cities. As travelers become increasingly aware of their environmental impact, the demand for cleaner and more sustainable travel has also become significant. This trend is not limited to commercial passengers; luxury travelers are also paying attention. According to a Virtuoso survey, around 75% of high-end

In April 2023, Jetex partnered with Abu Dhabi’s Al Bateen Executive Airport to open its first FBO in the U.A.E.’s capital.

travelers are willing to pay extra to make their trips more sustainable. Crucially, it is the luxury traveler segment that has the purchasing power to afford to make their sustainable travel intentions a reality. With this in mind, as well as its commitment to the International Air Transportation Association’s (IATA’s) ambitious emissions reduction goals, Jetex has implemented a series of sustainable initiatives. In 2022, it introduced sustainable aviation fuel at select airports and offered customers the option to offset their carbon footprint. In January 2022, Jetex and Berlin Neuhardenberg Airport announced the world’s first pure green FBO development in the German capital. And in May, Jetex partnered with Volocopter GmbH to develop MAY 2023

39 ADEL MARDINI

Mardini’s priority remains to continuously elevate services and experiences for guests. “The people who travel with us, they have everything. So, the challenge is to innovate and create unique experiences for them consistently,” he says. “Every single guest is very important, and they want to be treated as such.” According to Jetex, the majority of its frequent passengers fall into five main groups: business travelers, large groups of family or friends, travelers with postpandemic concerns, VIPs like celebrities and athletes, and travelers with pets. The average age of a private jet traveler is 44 years old. A VistaJet and Wealth-X report projects that a younger clientele will be the future of private aviation. These users expect a bespoke flying experience with personalization, price transparency, and ease of access through advanced technology. “It’s no longer just the traditional oil and gas professionals flying private; we now welcome and appeal to a new generation of highnet-worth individuals from different ages and industries,” explains Mardini. And they can expect a hyper-personalized service. On one occasion, a guest that visited Dubai weekly with Jetex for business and used the shower facilities at the FBO, flagged to Mardini how he would benefit from a powder room. Within three weeks, the CEO constructed and set up two powder rooms for his VIP guests at the terminal. In another encounter with a Covid-19-conscious guest, all departure lounge and aircraft personnel wore a face mask upon the flyer’s request. To further entice emerging clientele, Jetex adopted cryptocurrency as a form of payment in 2022, and it has introduced travel packages tailored to global events such as fashion weeks in London, Milan, New York, and Paris, as well as the upcoming 2023 UEFA Champions League in Istanbul. These packages are billed as a one-stop shop for high-flying guests, offering private flights, hotels, and local dining and entertainment options. During the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, DubaiDoha became one of the busiest routes for

ADEL MARDINI

a safe and sustainable model of urban air mobility through an eVTOL suite of services. The company is also in the process of installing electric-driven equipment for airside operations. Currently, fueling at Jetex Le Bourget, Paris, is facilitated by a 100% electric refueling truck, reducing the operation’s carbon footprint. With 23 years of experience in the aviation industry, Mardini’s own journey began as a driver and bellboy at Damascus International Airport in Syria in 2000, where the Turkish-Syrian national interacted with travelers and gained insight into the challenges and frustrations of travel. “I shuttled crew and passengers between the airport to the commercial terminal,” recalls the 53-year-old. “I learned what the customer was looking for and identified a gap in the market, which ultimately inspired me to pursue private aviation.” In 2005, he relocated to Dubai and established Jetex with the support of funding from his family and friends. Today, Jetex relies heavily on its team of more than 750 people to deliver exceptional experiences. “Hiring the right team is one of the biggest challenges because we are

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a service company, so guest satisfaction depends profoundly on the staff-guest interaction and delivery,” Mardini explains. Jetex recruits team members with experience in five-star restaurants, hotel clubs, and leading hospitality schools globally. The founder is a big advocate of leading by example, spending significant time at both the Jetex headquarters in Dubai and its international locations to stay informed and inspire his team. “I believe that being on the ground is the most efficient way to guide, inspire, and learn,” he says. While the future holds consistent FBO expansion, Mardini is also particularly excited about taking Jetex into new markets, with a particular focus on the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2026 in the U.S., as well as eyeing expansion into Nigeria and Senegal. The CEO sees no comparable competition in the market, looking instead to hospitality providers as inspiration. “I don’t see Jetex as just a private aviation provider,” he reveals. “I envision Jetex to become a complete ecosystem, featuring hotels and a memorable brand that deeply understands and caters to our valued patrons. This is what sets us apart.”

The Middle East’s Private Aviation Leaders These are the top Middle East leaders heading private aviation companies, according to our latest Top 100 Travel and Tourism Leaders 2023 ranking.

Name

Mohammed Husain Ahmed

Adel Mardini

Ahmad Abu Ghazaleh

Paras Dhamecha

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

Designation

Company

Nationality

CEO

RoyalJet

Emirati

Founder and CEO

Jetex

Turkish/Syrian

CEO and Vice Chairman

International Wings Group (IWG)

Jordanian

Founder and Managing Director

Empire Aviation Group

Indian

MAY 2023

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Turning Back The Biological Clock Dr. Antoinette Sarasin Gianduzzo, Director of Biomolecular Restoration (BIO-R®) at The Kusnacht Practice

What is BIO-R® and what does it aim to achieve? Biomolecular Restoration, or BIO-R® for short, is a registered, exclusive, highly personalized medical method used to detox and rejuvenate body and mind on a cellular level. The innovative program is based on precision medicine and focuses on delaying the ageing process as well as extending the health lifespan of body and brain. It reverses biological age to allow clients to grow older without the negative implications of ageing. Our BIO-R® treatment is based on five pillars. These include stateof-the-art laboratory testing and analysis; unique BIO-R® vitality diets; personalized micronutrient supplementation and infusion programs; specific rejuvenation treatments; and lifestyle coaching designed to delay the ageing process. The treatment leaves clients feeling re-energized and vitalized, both mentally and physically. How is BIO-R® personalized for each client? The BIO-R® treatment is based on an in-depth assessment of the individual’s complex body and brain biochemistry, which is as unique as their fingerprint. Through extensive lab tests and examinations, we obtain a significant amount of data

Dr. Antoinette Sarasin Gianduzzo, Director of Biomolecular Restoration (BIO-R®) at The Kusnacht Practice, explains how the exclusive Switzerland-based treatment center is helping clients reverse their biological age. which our experts translate into individualized holistic treatment plans to support rejuvenation and longevity on a cellular level. Our BIO-R® team of antiageing doctors, naturopathic doctors, dermatologists, sleep experts, women’s and men’s health specialists, personal trainers, and coaches join forces alongside top nutritionists, dieticians, and laboratory technicians. How does BIO-R® help clients live a longer and healthier life? BIO-R® is a game-changer. It offers a specific method to reverse ageing for measurable and sustainable success and enables clients to avoid the negative aspects of ageing, keeping the body and brain young. Initial testing and analysis are fundamental in gaining precise insights into every individual’s metabolic imbalances, health risks, and weaknesses; every program is then fully personalized. What specific therapies does BIO-R® incorporate? There is a multi-faceted approach to BIO-R®, with tailored infusion and detox protocols, personalized phytochemical supplementation for cellular rejuvenation, a unique BIO-R® vitality diet tailored by an expert nutritional team, personalized ozone therapy, cryotherapy, and

The expressed inOthis F O Rthoughts BESMIDD L E E A S T.C M advertorial are those of the client.

hyperbaric chamber treatments, as well as intermittent hypoxiahyperoxia therapy. As part of the program, clients may also be offered anti-ageing skin treatments, muscle rejuvenation and reshape training, longevity lifestyle coaching, body reshaping and balancing, and detox lymph drainage. Personal development and mindfulness come into play too, as well as sleep hygiene coaching, sleep reset treatments, and aromatherapy. What are the different BIO-R® programs and retreats offered at The Kusnacht Practice? We offer several BIO-R® programs, which are entirely personalized depending on the goal of each individual client. The Body & Brain Rejuvenation and Longevity program is our core anti-ageing treatment, but we also run a diabetes remission program to help combat the disease, a leadership retreat tailored to help business leaders increase resilience, and a ladies’ retreat designed for women to detox, reshape, and revitalize with friends.

www.kusnachtpractice.com MAY 2023

• TOP 100 TRAVEL & TOURISM LEADERS •

PHILIPPE ZUBER

BREAKING GROUND

Having just opened one of the world’s most luxurious new hotels, Philippe Zuber, CEO of Kerzner International, is now launching two new brands to the market. As the Middle East continues to redefine the standards of luxury hospitality, he’s keeping exclusivity in mind while looking to expand.

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

MAY 2023

Philippe Zuber, CEO of Kerzner International.

IMAGE BY FORBES MIDDLE EAST

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

MAY 2023

PHILIPPE ZUBER

It was a comfortably warm winter night in Dubai. Over 1,500 celebrities, VIPs, and media were gathered around a vast fountain shooting fire and water into the air in the grounds of the emirate’s newest ultra-luxury hotel, all focused in one direction as from the depths of an immense stage in front of a full orchestra Beyoncé emerged bathed in golden yellow. “At last…” she began, and the crowd went wild. The choice of opening song—an Etta James classic—was poignant. In January 2023, after nearly seven years of construction and endless months of speculation, Atlantis The Royal had finally been revealed to the world. Among those enjoying the show was Philippe Zuber, CEO of Kerzner International, which owns and operates the Atlantis brand. While the grand reveal was spectacular for the guests, for the team behind it, the event was the culmination of a long and intense journey. “It was actually very stressful,” laughs Zuber. “It was only when the fireworks were over we said, wow, that’s done. We were so happy. I have to give credit to the team. It’s a blessing to be surrounded by so much talent.” The work paid off, with the grand reveal generating more than 44 billion online impressions worldwide within three months, according to the CEO. Standing at around 1,640 feet long and 584 feet high, Atlantis The Royal is an imposing property. From a distance, it dominates the skyline, dwarfing its neighbor and sister property, Atlantis The Palm, which now appears quite modest at around 289 feet tall. The structure of The Royal is made up of six distinct towers adjoined by a 90 meter sky bridge. From the outside, the vertical design resembles a well-played game of Jenga, appearing to be made up of multiple individual blocks stacked in neat order. The rounded open façade means that every one of the 693 rooms, 102 suites, and 231 luxury apartments has a view of sky and water. More than 90,000 square meters of glass and 150,000 square meters of marble were used in its construction. “We wanted to create a building with water views in two directions: both towards the Gulf to the north and the lagoon to the south. At the same time, we didn’t want to build a solid wall that would separate the mainland from the sea. The curved ‘S’ shaped plan of the building maximizes its waterfront surface area,” explains James von Klemperer, President and Design Principal at Kohn F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Pedersen Fox (KPF) Associates, the architects who designed the building. “The hotel design came together in about six months, with another year to complete the technical details. We were aiming to create an aweinspiring form, characterized by a series of grand facade apertures and dramatic cantilevers. This required structural offsets, multiple elevator cores, and complex plumbing transfers.” The modular approach also allows for groups of guests to book an entire block at a time or for individual guests to never be faced with a corridor more than 100 meters long. “We are trading this hotel in a very ultra-luxury space. Long corridors don’t reflect a luxury feeling—we feel like that’s depressing,” explains Zuber. However, booking out a whole block of rooms will not be on the cards for everyone. With a minimum visit of two nights allowed, a half-board stay in a Seascape Queen room at the end of April 2023 would have set you back roughly $2,300. If you wanted to buy one of the two-bedroom branded residences, you’d be looking at spending more than $4.3 million, according to Property Finder. Ultra-luxury at this level just doesn’t come cheap—Atlantis The Royal cost $1.6 billion to build. “It was expensive,” says Zuber.

“We spent a lot of time and energy on renovating Atlantis The Palm, bringing new F&B, to make sure that no one can say the old and new Atlantis.” The latest offering is the Atlantis brand’s third hotel, with the others being Atlantis The Palm and Atlantis Sanya on China’s Hainan Island. Founded in 1993 by Sol Kerzner, Dubai-based Kerzner International also owns and operates One&Only Hotels and Resorts, which currently has 12 ultra-luxury properties across the world, from Mexico and Montenegro to Rwanda, the Maldives, and Australia, with an additional four under development in Dubai, Greece, and Montana. Kerzner also operates the Mazagan Beach and Golf Resort in Morocco. In February 2023, Kerzner introduced a new brand to its portfolio—Rare Finds—which opened with the renovation and relaunch of the Bab Al Shams resort in Dubai. Kerzner began managing the sprawling sandy-colored Arabian desert retreat in April 2022, and the 19-year-old property is well known locally for offering traditional Bedouin activities and a taste of Arabic culture to its guests. For a hotel to be eligible to MAY 2023

IMAGE FROM SOURCE

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MAY 2023

45 PHILIPPE ZUBER

become a Rare Finds Hotel & Resort, it must generate The Royal and SIRO—seeing both come to life is a big no less than 60% of its revenue from entertainment moment. “Atlantis The Royal was just the superlative or F&B—much higher than the average 20%-30%, of anything I have ever done before,” he stresses. according to Zuber. “Kerzner now has the largest Although, with nearly 30 years in the industry, he has amount of collaborations with celebrity chefs, so we done quite a lot. want to expand on that,” he explains. “Rare Finds is the Zuber’s journey in travel and tourism began as a vehicle to bring chefs and concepts that are bespoke and student when he pursued a degree and master’s in unique into destinations.” While the refurbishment of hospitality from EM Strasbourg Business School in Bab Al Shams took care to preserve its historical appeal, his home city of Paris. As a fresh graduate, he joined it has reimagined the driveway and landscaping, as well Hyatt in 1995, climbing the ranks and taking roles in as the F&B space. “It’s quite a spectacular transition; it’s Israel, Morocco, Germany, Paris, and South Korea. not in your face,” adds Zuber. In 2011, he moved to the U.A.E and joined Emaar Now the CEO is preparing to launch Kerzner’s Hospitality as the general manager of The Address fourth—and final—brand to the market. The first 132Downtown Dubai. Over the next four years he played key fitness-focused SIRO hotel is set to open in One a role in the creation of the Rove Hotels chain and also Za’abeel in Dubai by the end of 2023, centering around sport and recovery. Among its facilities, the hotel will offer Atlantis The Royal cost $1.6 billion to build. It a sports concierge to ensure guests stands 1,640 feet long and 584 feet high. have access to any fitness activity they want, a mindfulness and recovery space with a plunge pool, infrared sauna, and massage, and rooms designed around maximizing restful sleep. Kerzner has partnered with globallyrecognized athletes to help deliver this concept, including football club AC Milan, British-Somali boxer Ramla Ali, and British Olympic swimmer Adam Peaty. “I have worked hard to create an environment within the male-dominated world of boxing where women feel welcomed and encouraged to participate. In the same way, SIRO mirrors my ambitions, to introduce hotels worked with the Armani, Manzil, and Vida brands. In and platforms where guests at different stages of their 2013, he became the chief operating officer and acting fitness journey will be given the opportunity to unlock CEO of the company, leading a team of 5,000 people. their peak mental and physical performance,” says He was first attracted to Kerzner thanks to the Ramla Ali. “It is incredibly exciting to be working with One&Only brand, which had made a big impact on the team to develop programs and experiences that the hotelier. “You know you have those brands where will give guests the chance to learn life habits that they you get addicted, and you say you don’t know why you can take away with them and incorporate into their like it, but you like it. Perfumes, handbags, cars, there’s everyday lives.” something you get a connection with. And I always felt Being developed alongside SIRO, One Za’abeel a connection with One&Only,” he explains. He joined will also house One&Only’s first 200-key urban Kerzner in 2015 as president and chief operating retreat and 94 branded residences, with a officer of One&Only Resorts. In 2020, he was 210-meter long, 110-meter high suspended link promoted to CEO of Kerzner International. Stay connected platform connecting the two towers containing It was not the best time to be heading a with our latest business news. bars, celebrity chef restaurants, and other hospitality company. As the global pandemic entertainment venues. “It’s an architectural spread in early 2020, by Q2 many hotels were masterpiece,” says Zuber. forced to close or run services for residents Having joined Kerzner nearly eight years ago, only. Worldwide travel and tourism stopped Zuber was there when ground broke on Atlantis for months and remained limited and subject

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

Best Of The Best While Atlantis The Royal wasn’t open in time to be considered yet, these five Middle East-based five-star hotels were awarded Star Awards by the Forbes Travel Guide in February 2023.

Four Seasons Hotel Kuwait at Burj Alshaya—Kuwait

Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh at Kingdom Centre—Saudi Arabia

Jumeirah Al Naseem—UAE

The Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh—Saudi Arabia

Waldorf Astoria Dubai International Financial Centre—UAE

who we are as a brand. What we are creating is really a legacy maker and it’s obliging us to think out of the box, be super humble but also bold, and that’s a very important statement.” The CEO is looking to Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Egypt, or Asia for potential spots for a new Atlantis, although nothing is decided yet. “We have a lot of ideas – nothing down, nothing signed, just full of ideas,” he insists. In the meantime, 2023 will see the opening of SIRO and One&Only One Za’abeel, as well One&Only Aesthesis in Athens. Next year, One&Only Kéa Island Greece and SIRO Boka Place in Porto Montenegro will hit the market, and in 2025 One&Only Moonlight Basin in Montana—the brand’s first alpine resort—is due to open its doors. All this has come in time for a rapid post-covid recovery in the travel markets, albeit with some notable changes in travelers’ behavior. Value for money, unique experiences, and family or group travel are all important factors for travelers in 2023, according to a survey by booking.com. For Kerzner, this is coming to light at the top of its inventory, with villas, suites, and private homes all performing well. “People are willing to have a much larger space and be much closer to the people they travel with. They want to create this community; they want to travel with this bubble, and they are staying longer,” says Zuber. Entertainment, fitness, and wellness are also key elements attracting the big spenders. “It seems that every moment of life is becoming more meaningful and more important,” he adds. For the CEO, every moment of life remains busy. But with Dubai and the Middle East providing a world-leading platform for hoteliers, Zuber has no plans to go anywhere else for now. “In our space, hospitality, there is no equivalent. You have the capability to dream; you have the capability to make things happen. It’s extraordinary,” he muses. “We are definitely in a Middle East moment.” MAY 2023

IMAGES FROM SOURCE

PHILIPPE ZUBER

to restrictions for well over a year or more in some regions. Construction on new developments was also forced to halt before slowly ramping back up, albeit subject to delays due to global supply chain and logistics issues. Having broken ground in July 2016, Atlantis The Royal was due to open in 2021 but had to delay its launch by more than 18 months because of construction and covidrelated challenges. For a new CEO, it was an unprecedented crisis. “Covid was absolutely terrible from a financial standpoint; we took a huge hit. From a profitable company, we turned into red overnight, and with very little visibility on how long the crisis was going to be,” recalls Zuber. But progress didn’t slow for long. In 2021, Kerzner opened One&Only Portonovi in Montenegro and completed an extension of the Aquaventure waterpark in Atlantis The Palm, expanding it by more than 30% and making it one of the world’s largest waterparks. “We spent a lot of time and energy on renovating Atlantis The Palm, bringing new F&B, to make sure that no one can say the old and new Atlantis,” reveals the CEO. This included repositioning the famous Japanese restaurant Nobu and giving it a new home in The Bridge Suite, which at $25,000 per night was once one of the world’s most expensive hotel suites, according to Forbes. This is all part of a wider strategy for Kerzner. Its vision for 2025 is based on its four brand pillars and markers, and while it plans to grow, it doesn’t plan to expand wildly. The company has stated that it will not open more than 35 One&Only Hotels & Resorts worldwide. And while it’s looking to expand the Atlantis brand globally, in the U.A.E. for now it’s sticking to two. “You cannot deliver ultra-luxury experiences if you have 50 hotels; it’s just impossible because they will not have my attention nor my team’s,” explains Zuber. “It’s not about growth, it’s not about money, it’s really about

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Building Sustainability, Brick By Brick Chris Roberts, Group CEO of Eltizam, explains how the built environment industry can embrace ESG and create a sustainable future for stakeholders, society, and the planet we all share.

Chris Roberts, Group CEO of Eltizam

s our planet faces increasing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenges, businesses in the built environment industry must prioritize ESG considerations in all their practices, with Eltizam and its subsidiaries no exception. Buildings account for a significant proportion of global carbon emissions, and stakeholders, including customers and investors, are increasingly demanding sustainable and socially responsible practices. Technology is playing a crucial role in helping businesses achieve excellence in ESG, particularly in the area of carbon monitoring. Carbon tracking enables the accurate measurement of carbon emissions and identification

of areas for reduction. In the future, carbon credit trading can potentially offset emissions and further reduce the environmental impact. Additionally, new technologies and building materials can help increase energy efficiency and sustainability, reducing the carbon footprint of buildings. Yet the future is not solely about carbon neutrality, it is also about understanding how societal changes and shifts in priorities are dictating what we want from our assets. Younger generations, in particular, have a heightened awareness of the importance of sustainability, health, wellness, and community engagement. To meet their changing needs, buildings must adapt to incorporate new smart technologies that focus on sustainability and energy efficiency. The use of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) can help in managing buildings more efficiently, collecting data and enabling automation and predictive maintenance. In addition to technology, sustainable practices in design and construction are crucial to reducing the carbon footprint of buildings. Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, and materials that are more sustainable and less carbonintensive must be prioritized. In fact, some cities have even implemented building codes that require new buildings to meet certain sustainability standards.

The expressed inOthis F O Rthoughts BESMIDD L E E A S T.C M advertorial are those of the client.

To create more inclusive and sustainable spaces, businesses must engage with communities and invest in projects that promote social and environmental sustainability. For example, a building can provide green spaces for the community or sponsor local environmental initiatives. Here, the emphasis should be on creating long-term value for stakeholders and contributing to a more sustainable future. In conclusion, businesses must acknowledge the urgent need to embrace ESG considerations and take action to reduce their carbon footprint. With the help of technology, companies can monitor and reduce their emissions, while also incorporating innovative sustainable building materials and technologies. Additionally, businesses must recognize the importance of engaging with communities and investing in social and environmental sustainability projects to create more inclusive and sustainable spaces. By prioritizing ESG practices, businesses can not only contribute to a more sustainable future but also strengthen their reputation and build long-term value for stakeholders.

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MAY 2023

THE MIDDLE EAST’S

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TOP 100 TRAVEL & TOURISM LEADERS 2023

he travel and tourism industry in the Arab world has been a major contributor to the region’s economic growth and development, with the region emerging globally as a world-class destination. Dubai has become a hub for tourism, and in recent years Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and Abu Dhabi have invested heavily in the sector. The region is also becoming an important sporting destination, with the Formula One Grand Prix hosted by Bahrain, the U.A.E., and Saudi Arabia. The U.A.E. also hosts UFC events, and in 2022 Qatar hosted the FIFA World Cup and in 2027 will bring the FIBA Basketball World Cup to the Middle East for the first time. According to a UNWTO report, the tourism sector globally recovered 63% of pre-pandemic levels in 2022, with the Middle East recovering 83% of its pre-pandemic visitor numbers. The World Travel and Tourism Council expects Saudi Arabia’s travel and tourism market to become the fastest-growing in the Middle East, forecasting it to grow at an average of 11% annually over the next decade. The contribution of travel and tourism to the Middle East’s GDP grew 46.9% in 2022 compared to 2021, at a value of $107 billion, while Middle Eastern airlines witnessed a 157.4% increase in traffic in 2022 compared to 2021, with capacity surging by 73.8%, according to IATA. In our 2023 list of the most influential leaders in the region’s travel and tourism industry, hospitality companies and hotels and resorts dominate with 59 entries, followed by aviation (airlines and airports) with 31 entries. This year, there are also eight entries from tourism authorities. Leaders from over 33 nationalities feature on the list, with Emiratis leading with 16 entries, followed by 12 Saudis, and 10 British nationals.

Methodology For this ranking, we included leaders that span the entire travel ecosystem, including aviation, hotels, destinations, and tourism development authorities. All individuals had to be based in the Middle East. We ranked entries based on the following: • Size of the business, including the number of hotels, rooms, passengers, and visitors, revenues, values of investments and assets, fleet size, etc. • Ownership of assets. • Designation of the business leader. • Experience of the business leader. • Degree of influence of the business leader. • Other achievements of the business leader. To nominate yourself or someone else for our lists, email: info@forbesmiddleeast.com

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MAY 2023

Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum 1

• Chairman and CEO

Company: Emirates Airline & Group Nationality: Emirati Sector: Airlines

Helal Saeed Almarri

• Director General

Company: Department of Economy and Tourism - Dubai Nationality: Emirati Sector: Tourism Development Almarri is responsible for enhancing Dubai’s positioning as a destination for investment, business, and leisure, and for strengthening the emirate’s economy. In February 2023, Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism announced that Dubai received 14.36 million international overnight visitors in 2022, a 97% increase compared to 2021. Almarri is also a member of the Executive Council of Dubai and is the director general of the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority (DWTCA). He is also a member of the Supreme Committee of Expo 2020, and a board member of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Investment Corporation of Dubai, Emaar Properties PJSC, and Taaleem PJSC.

Akbar Al Baker

• Group CEO

Company: Qatar Airways Group Nationality: Qatari Sector: Airlines Al Baker has been the Group CEO of Qatar Airways since 1997. In 2019, he was appointed Secretary-General of Qatar’s National Tourism Council, which became Qatar Tourism in 2021. In February 2023, Qatar Airways and Airbus reached a settlement in relation to a legal dispute over A350 surface degradation and the grounding of A350 aircraft. In March 2023, Al Baker announced that Qatar Airways would add over 655 weekly flights in summer 2023. Qatar Airways flies to over 160 destinations and has 210 passenger and 31 cargo aircraft. The group reported revenues of $14.3 billion and assets of $41.4 billion for the financial year ended March 2022.

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Al Maktoum began his aviation career in 1985 when he was appointed President of the Dubai Department of Civil Aviation. In the same year, he became chairman of the newly-founded Emirates and launched the airline with two leased aircraft flying to two destinations from Dubai. Today, the airline flies to more than 150 destinations across six continents. With more than 263 aircraft as of November 2022, it has the world’s largest fleet of Boeing 777s and Airbus A380s. The Emirates Group’s revenues surged by 128% in the first half of the 2022/23 financial year, hitting $15.3 billion. Al Maktoum is also the second deputy chairman of the Dubai Executive Council and the chairman of the Dubai Supreme Fiscal Committee.

MAY 2023

Paul Griffiths

Mohammed Almaghlouth

• CEO

Nationality: British Sector: Airports

Nationality: Saudi Sector: Airports

Paul Griffiths has been overseeing Dubai Airports since 2007. Dubai International Airport (DXB) is the busiest international airport in the world. In 2022, DXB’s annual traffic jumped 127% to reach 66.1 million passengers, which is 76.4% of 2019 levels. The airport is now connected with 229 destinations across 99 countries via 88 international airlines. Other than DXB, Griffiths also heads Dubai World Central. Griffiths was previously a board member of the Virgin Travel Group for 14 years, and he was the managing director of London’s Gatwick Airport for more than three years.

Almaghlouth was appointed to his current role in March 2023. MATARAT Holding was founded in 2013. In March 2023, the group signed a three-year contract with Egis to serve 26 airports in Saudi Arabia and provide support for strategic planning. The group manages 27 airports across Saudi Arabia. Its subsidiaries include Riyadh Airports Company, Jeddah Airports Company, Dammam Airports Company, and Cluster2 OpCo. Almaghlouth has over 35 years of experience and 18 years in executive roles. Before MATARAT Holding, he was the CEO at Riyadh Airports Company and held several roles with Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

Company: Dubai Airports

Fahd Hamidaddin

Company: MATARAT Holding

Saleh Mohamed Al Geziry

• CEO

• Director General Tourism Sector

Nationality: Saudi Sector: Tourism Development

Nationality: Emirati Sector: Tourism Development

Company: Saudi Tourism Authority (STA)

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Hamidaddin was appointed as CEO of the Saudi Tourism Authority in March 2020. He oversees the development and distribution of tourism offerings in collaboration with the tourism industry, as well as the Visit Saudi destination brand. In September 2022, the authority signed an MoU with UnionPay International to promote Saudi as a tourism destination among global Chinese travelers. Hamidaddin was previously chief of investment, strategy, and tourism marketing for the Saudi Ministry of Tourism and chief commercial officer at King Abdullah Economic City. He is also a member of the board of trustees of the Prince Mohammad bin Salman College for Business and Entrepreneurship and a board member of the Qiddiya Investment Company, the Saudi Conventions and Exhibitions General Authority, and several government committees.

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Company: Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT Abu Dhabi) Al Geziry assumed his current role in April 2022. DCT Abu Dhabi is instrumental in bringing events like the UFC and NBA to the region and is targeting 24 million visitors by the end of 2023. In February 2023, DCT Abu Dhabi signed an MoU with the INPEX Corporation through its subsidiary Japan Oil Development for a $7.6 million sponsorship of the upcoming TeamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi. Al Geziry has been in the tourism industry since 2002 and has previously held leadership positions at DTCM, Meraas Holding, and Ajman Tourism Development Department.

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Jerry Inzerillo

• Group CEO

Company: The Diriyah Company Nationality: American Sector: Destinations and Experiences

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Inzerillo became the Group CEO of the The Diriyah Company in 2018, leading a $63.2 billion development project. In November 2022, DGDA announced that it was adding 16 new global hotel brands to its hospitality portfolio, bringing the total number of hotel management agreements to 34. Inzerillo previously served as the CEO of Forbes Travel Guide, president and CEO of IMG Artists, and president of the Kerzner Entertainment Group. He has also worked with brands, including One&Only Resorts, Ian Schrager Hotels, Four Seasons, and Hilton Hotels.

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MAY 2023

Hesham Al Qassim

• CEO

Company: wasl Asset Management Group Nationality: Emirati Sector: Hotels and Resorts Al Qassim leads wasl Asset Management Group, which operates across key strategic business units, including wasl properties, wasl hospitality & leisure, Dubai Golf, and the Food Tech Valley. wasl hospitality & leisure manages a portfolio of 7,960 rooms across 32 hotels and hotel apartments in Dubai. The company brought the Mandarin Oriental, MGM, and Bellagio hotel brands to the U.A.E. Al Qassim is also the chairman of Deniz Bank A.Ş Turkey, the vice chairman and managing director of Emirates NBD Bank, the chairman of Emirates Islamic Bank, and the chairman of Dubai Sports Corporation and Dubai Autism Center.

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Ibrahim Koshy

• CEO

Company: SAUDIA Nationality: Saudi Sector: Airlines Koshy was promoted to CEO of Saudi Arabian Airlines (SAUDIA) in 2020. Established in 1945, SAUDIA is the national flag carrier of Saudi Arabia. In March 2023, SAUDIA ordered 39 fuel-efficient Boeing 787s with options for 10 more airplanes. In April 2023, SAUDIA added 56 weekly flights to 14 global destinations. It flies to over 90 destinations and operates a fleet of 144 aircraft. In 2022, SAUDIA carried 25 million passengers. Koshy was previously the vice president of safety, AVSEC, and quality at SAUDIA. He was also previously director general of the Aviation Investigation Bureau of Saudi Arabia from 2012 to 2016.

John Pagano

• Group CEO

Company: Red Sea Global (RSG) Nationality: Canadian

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Sector: Destinations and Experiences Pagano assumed his current role in 2018. RSG partners with scientists and experts at NASA, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the University of Miami, and Arizona State University. In 2021, RSG secured the first Riyal-denominated credit facility to receive green financing accreditation for $3.76 billion. In 2022, it also formed its first joint venture with Almutlaq Real Estate Investment Co., a subsidiary of the Al Mutlaq Group, to develop the 159-key, $426.7 million Jumeirah The Red Sea hotel on Shura Island. Pagano has 40 years of industry experience. He is a licensed pilot for business jets and an advocate for regenerative tourism and sustainable practices. He was previously president of Baha Mar Development Company Ltd in Nassau in the Bahamas. F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

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Guy Hutchinson

• President and CEO

Company: Rotana Hotel Management Corporation (Rotana) Nationality: British Sector: Hotels and Resorts

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Hutchinson joined Rotana as COO in 2014 and assumed his current role in 2020. Rotana operates 73 hotels with 19,500 keys in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Türkiye, serving more than six million guests per year. It employs 10,113 people. In 2022, Rotana opened Centro Mada in Amman, Jordan, the Slemani Rotana in Iraq, and Dana Rayhaan by Rotana in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. In May 2022, it announced a new brand, Edge by Rotana, and launched its first Edge by Rotana Arabian Park property in Dubai in November 2022. The group is developing seven new hotels in Saudi Arabia and others in Algeria and Egypt. Hutchinson has 33 years of experience. Before Rotana, he held several leadership roles at Hilton in Japan, Australia, China, and India.

Yehia Zakaria Ismail

• Chairman and CEO

Company: EGYPTAIR Holding Company Ismail assumed his current role in October 2022. EGYPTAIR carried nearly eight million passengers between July 2022 and March 2023, an increase of 60% compared to the previous year. It had a load factor of almost 78% in the first nine months of the fiscal year 2022/23, with an average of 1,400 international flights and 360 domestic flights weekly. EGYPTAIR flies to 70 international and eight domestic destinations. Before joining the airline industry, Ismail gained 30 years of experience in the Egyptian Air Force.

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MAY 2023

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Nationality: Egyptian Sector: Airlines

Katerina Giannouka

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• CEO

Company: Jumeirah Group Nationality: Greek Sector: Hotels and Resorts Giannouka assumed her current role in December 2022. The Jumeirah Group is a member of Dubai Holding and employs 7,800 people. Its portfolio consists of 6,500 keys in 26 luxury properties across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Giannouka has over 20 years of experience in business leadership, hotel development, asset management, and strategic advisory. Before Jumeirah Group, she worked at Rosewood Hotels & Resorts and as president of the Asia-Pacific region at the Radisson Hotel Group.

Jamal Salem Al Dhaheri 15

• Managing Director and CEO Company: Abu Dhabi Airports

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Nationality: Emirati Sector: Airports Al Dhaheri was appointed managing director and CEO of Abu Dhabi Airports in September 2022. Abu Dhabi Airports operates Abu Dhabi International Airport (AUH), which serves 102 passenger destinations and has a network of 28 airlines, Al Ain International Airport, Al Bateen Executive Airport, Delma Island Airport, and Sir Bani Yas Island Airport. Its airports served 15.9 million passengers in 2022. In November 2022, Abu Dhabi Airports joined Pharma Aero as a strategic member for the Middle East. Al Dhaheri previously served as CEO of Silal and held roles at the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority and ADNOC. He is also the chairman of the Ducab Cable Manufacturing Company and Silal and vice chairman of Emirates Steel Arkan.

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MAY 2023

Sandeep Walia

• COO for the Middle East, Egypt & Türkiye • Company: Marriott International Nationality: Indian Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Walia assumed his current role in 2021. Marriott International has 230 properties and more than 100 projects underway in the Middle East. The company opened 24 properties in 2022, including the Ritz-Carlton in Jordan. In March 2023, it also signed three deals with NEOM for two Luxury Collection properties and one Autograph Collection in Sindalah. Walia started his career as a butler at Oberoi Hotels and has 26 years of industry experience.

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MAY 2023

Adel El Fakir

• CEO

Company: Moroccan National Tourism Office (ONMT) Nationality: Moroccan Sector: Tourism Development

Mohamed Abdalla Al Zaabi

• Group CEO

Company: Miral Group Nationality: Emirati Sector: Destinations and Experiences

Antonoaldo Neves

• Group CEO

Company: Etihad Aviation Group Nationality: Brazilian

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Sector: Airlines Neves was appointed the Group CEO of Etihad Aviation Group in October 2022. In March 2023, Etihad Airways launched interline and codeshare partnerships with six African, Asian, and European airlines, including Philippine Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Airlink South Africa, Biman Bangladesh, Air Seychelles, and ITA Airways. Neves was previously the CEO of TAP, the national airline of Portugal. He was also the President of Azul Airlines in Brazil and a partner at McKinsey & Company, where he developed the long-term plan for the aviation sector in Brazil.

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Al Zaabi joined Miral Group in 2015. Miral is responsible for the destination management of several leisure, entertainment, and cultural landmarks in Abu Dhabi, including Yas Island and Saadiyat Island. Through its subsidiary Miral Experiences, it also manages the operations of Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, Yas Waterworld Abu Dhabi, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, and CLYMB Abu Dhabi, among others. In October 2022, Miral announced a portfolio of projects under construction worth over $3.5 billion on Yas Island and across Abu Dhabi. Al Zaabi also serves as the chairman of Miral Destination, the trade and promotion arm of Yas Island Abu Dhabi and a subsidiary of Miral, and he is on the Board of Directors at Miral Experiences.

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El Fakir joined the Moroccan National Tourism Office (ONMT) as CEO in 2018. ONMT develops commercial and marketing programs with tour operators and airline companies globally, connecting local players to global partners. In April 2022, it launched the Morocco Kingdom of Light Campaign. Morocco welcomed about 11 million tourists in 2022. El Fakir has about 29 years of experience. He has previously held positions at the Atlas Bottling Company and The Coca-Cola Company.

Ghaith Al Ghaith

• CEO

Company: flydubai Nationality: Emirati Sector: Airlines

Nasser Matar AlKawari

• CEO

Company: Katara Hospitality Nationality: Qatari Sector: Hotels and Resorts AlKawari joined Katara Hospitality as CEO in January 2023. The company owns properties in Qatar, Egypt, Morocco, the U.K., France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand, and the U.S. As of September 2022, it had 42 owned and managed hotels in its portfolio, with a target of 60 hotels by 2030. AlKawari has more than 25 years of experience in various leadership positions across different industries. He was previously the CEO of Msheireb Properties and the CEO of Astad Engineering Consultancy and Project Management.

Kamil Al-Awadhi

• Regional Vice President for Africa and the Middle East Company: International Air Transport Association (IATA) Nationality: Kuwaiti Sector: Tourism Development Al-Awadhi has over 31 years of experience in the aviation industry and joined IATA in 2021. He represents IATA in 68 countries, which serves 57 airlines across Africa and the Middle East. He leads IATA’s priorities in terms of improving safety levels, enhancing connectivity, reducing costs for airlines, and ensuring the sustainability of air transport. In September 2022, IATA announced that it would be trialing a CO2 emissions calculation tool specifically developed for cargo flights together with Etihad Airways to effectively manage and report on sustainability progress. Al-Awadhi was previously the CEO of Kuwait Airways.

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Adel Abdullah Ali

• Group CEO

Company: Air Arabia Nationality: Bahraini Sector: Airlines Ali founded Air Arabia in October 2003 as the first lowcost carrier in MENA. As of December 2022, the airline had a fleet of 68 aircraft, with ten being added in 2022. In 2022, the airline carried more than 12.8 million passengers from its seven hubs in the U.A.E., Morocco, Egypt, Armenia, and Pakistan, an increase of 90% compared to 2021. Air Arabia also reported a net profit of $326.8 million in 2022, an increase of 70% compared to 2021. Ali is also the chairman of Information Systems Associates, Alpha Aviation Academy, and Cozmo Travel.

MAY 2023

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flydubai has a network of more than 110 destinations across 50 countries in Africa, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Central and South-East Europe, the GCC and the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. It operates a single fleet type of 76 Boeing 737 aircraft. Al Ghaith was appointed CEO to launch the airline in 2008 before it began operations in 2009. flydubai has since carried more than 90 million passengers. In 2022, it recorded $327 million in profit, an increase of 43% compared to 2021. Al Ghaith has more than 35 years of experience in the aviation industry. He previously worked at Emirates Airlines, which he joined in 1986.

Kabir Mulchandani

• Founder and Chairman

Company: FIVE Global Holdings Nationality: Indian Sector: Hotels and Resorts Mulchandani established FIVE Hotels and Resorts in 2017. In 2019, it launched FIVE Jumeirah Village, with 247 hotel rooms and 254 hotel apartments. In 2022, it launched the 149-room FIVE Zurich and maintained an occupancy rate of 93% between FIVE Palm Jumeirah and FIVE Jumeirah Village. The company’s hospitality revenue grew by 21% in 2022, compared to 2021. The company will open FIVE LUXE, JBR, in 2023, with 222 hotel rooms and suites and 276 residences. Mulchandani has also launched Project Udaan, which helps children in India with lifesaving heart operations.

Tarek M. El Sayed

• CEO and Managing Director

Company: Al Rayyan Tourism Investment Company (ARTIC) Nationality: Egyptian Sector: Hotels and Resorts El Sayed has been in his current role since 2017. ARTIC opened four hotels in Qatar for the FIFA World Cup 2022, adding over 3,150 hotel rooms. ARTIC’s hotels hosted the Portuguese, Welsh, South Korean, and Ghana teams during the World Cup. The company’s current portfolio is worth over $5 billion and includes multiple residential and commercial properties and more than 35 hotels spread over MENA, the U.S., and Europe, with a total of 9,900 keys. El Sayed previously worked with Al Faisal Holding, ARTIC’s parent company.

Duncan O’Rourke

• CEO for the Middle East, Africa, Türkiye &

Asia Pacific / Premium, Midscale & Economy brands Company: Accor Group Nationality: Irish Sector: Hotels and Resorts

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O’Rourke assumed his current role in January 2023. He oversees 1,000 operating hotels and resorts and more than 200 properties in the pipeline with brands including Swissotel, Movenpick, Pullman, Grand Mercure, and Novotel, among others. Accor employs 100,000 people in the Middle East, Africa, Türkiye, and Asia Pacific. O’Rourke has 35 years of experience and has been with Accor since 2016. He previously served as the COO for Europe for the luxury segment and the COO for Central Europe, where he led Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from 2018. He is also a member of the group’s executive committee and manages the business for the Premium, Midscale, and Economy divisions for Accor across 44 countries.

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Philippe Zuber

• CEO • Company: Kerzner International Nationality: French Sector: Hotels and Resorts Zuber joined Kerzner International in 2015 as president and COO of the One&Only Resorts, with over 27 years of experience in hospitality. He became CEO of Kerzner International in 2020. It has 17 operating resorts with a total of 5,505 keys and six new resorts in the pipeline with 751 new keys. Kerzner operates the Atlantis and One&Only brands. In 2022, the company launched the Rare Finds collection of hotels and resorts. The first hotel to open under the Rare Finds vertical was the desert retreat Bab Al Shams in Dubai, which reopened under Kerzner’s management in February 2023. It also plans to launch the SIRO brand in 2023. Zuber was previously Emaar Hospitality’s chief operating officer and acting CEO. He began his career at Hyatt International, where he started in food and beverage in France.

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MAY 2023

Sami Bin Abdulmohsen AlHokair 28

• Managing Director and Acting CEO

Company: Abdulmohsen Alhokair Group for Tourism and Development (Al Hokair Group) Nationality: Saudi Sector: Hotels and Resorts The Al Hokair Group manages and operates 35 hotels and 92 entertainment centers across Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., with over 5,122 rooms. The group reported $192 million in revenues in 2022 and had $551.2 million in total assets as of 2022. In July 2022, the group opened the 274-room Madinah Road Marriott Hotel in Jeddah. AlHokair is also a board member at the Saudi Airlines Catering Company.

Haitham Mattar

• Managing Director of India, Middle East & Africa Company: IHG Hotels & Resorts

Nationality: Lebanese American Sector: Hotels and Resorts Mattar assumed his current role in April 2021. IHG manages 180 hotels and franchises across the Middle East, Africa, and India. In 2022, it opened several hotels, including voco Bonnington Dubai, voco Doha West Bay Suites, Crowne Plaza West Cairo, and InterContinental Ras Al Khaimah. It also signed over 25 hotels, including InterContinental properties in Riyadh and Jeddah, a Holiday Inn in Najran, a hotel Indigo in Jeddah, and Staybridge Suites in Dubai. Mattar has 27 years of industry experience. He was previously a senior advisor to the Saudi Ministry of Tourism and CEO of the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority.

Raki Phillips

• CEO

Company: Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority (RAKTDA) Nationality: Lebanese American Sector: Tourism Development

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Phillips has been leading RAKTDA for over three years. In 2022, Ras Al Khaimah achieved its highest-ever annual visitor numbers, with 1.13 million overnight arrivals. The emirate’s hotel inventory is presently at over 8,000 keys. $136 million is designated for the development of over 20 projects in partnership with RAK Hospitality Holding and RAK Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Phillips has over 20 years of experience. He was previously a senior partner and senior vice president of development with the International Hospitality Consulting Group. He is also an executive board member of RAK Airport.

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MAY 2023

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Badr Mohammed Al Meer

• COO

Company: Hamad International Airport (DOH) Nationality: Qatari Sector: Airports Al Meer oversees operations at DOH. In 2022, the facility witnessed a 101.9% year-on-year surge in passenger traffic, welcoming over 35.5 million passengers. It also saw a 28.2% increase in overall aircraft movement compared to 2021. DOH was established in 2014. Today, it has access to over 170 global destinations and a capacity of approximately 5,600 passengers per hour. The airport has invested in the latest AI tools for a full digital transformation, including robotics and blockchain technology.

•

Habiba Laklalech

General Director

Company: Moroccan Airports Authority ONDA Nationality: Moroccan Sector: Airports Laklalech assumed her current role in February 2021. ONDA develops and manages airport infrastructure and provides air navigation services in Morocco. In 2022, the Moroccan Airport Authority recorded a recovery rate of 84% for international traffic, compared to 2019 with 18.4 million passengers. In terms of air connectivity, the airport added 20 additional lines in 2022. The Mohammed V Airport has been awarded three recognitions by the Airports Council International, among them the Best African Airport of 2022.

Basmah Al-Mayman

Yacine Benslimane

• CEO

Company: Air Algérie Nationality: Algerian Sector: Airlines Bensilmane assumed his current role in June 2022. Air Algérie’s current network includes more than 77 lines, 44 of which are international. Air Algérie achieves a turnover of $394.1 million. The company has three subsidiaries specializing in cargo, catering, and technical services. Before joining Air Algérie, Bensilmane was the general delegate of Aigle Azur and commercial director at the airport services management establishment at Algiers airport.

• Regional Director for the Middle East

Company: United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Nationality: Saudi Sector: Tourism Development Al-Mayman joined the UNWTO in 2003 and became regional director of the Middle East in 2018. In March 2023, the UNWTO launched the Women in Tech Startup Competition to support women tourism tech entrepreneurs and innovators across the Middle East. In the same month, the UNWTO signed an agreement with the Ministry of Tourism in Saudi Arabia to create training programs offering courses in all the United Nations languages. Al-Mayman is also a member of the Program and Budget Committee at UNWTO, where she was a founding member representing the Middle East. In 2018, Al-Mayman was the first woman to become regional director for the Middle East and the first GCC national to hold a leading role in the UNWTO.

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MAY 2023

Fernando Eiroa

• CEO

Company: Dubai Holding Entertainment Sector: Destinations and Experiences Eiroa was appointed to his current role in December 2021. Dubai Holding Entertainment develops, operates, and manages media and entertainment platforms and leisure attractions in the U.A.E. Some of its attractions include Ain Dubai, Global Village, Dubai Parks and Resorts, Coca-Cola Arena, Roxy Cinemas, and The Green Planet. Its entertainment and media portfolio includes the Arabian Radio Network (ARN), which has ten radio stations under it. Eiroa was previously the CEO of CircusTrix, Palace Entertainment, and Parques Reunidos.

Chris Newman

Abdulaziz Al Raisi

• Executive Director

• CEO

Nationality: British Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Al Raisi joined Oman Air, the national airline of the Sultanate of Oman, in 1984 as a trainee engineer and was promoted to his current role in 2018. Today, the airline flies to over 45 destinations. The company announced the appointment of its first female Omani captain in February 2023. In the same month, it announced four new destinations: Chittagong, Maldives, Lucknow, and Thiruvananthapuram. Al Raisi has more than 35 years of cross-functional airline industry experience and held several roles at Oman Air before assuming his current role.

Company: NEOM Hotel Development Newman has 35 years of experience leading organizations across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. In April 2023, NEOM Hotel Development and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts announced their plans for a new luxury resort on Sindalah Island. In March 2023, Marriott International also announced it has signed an agreement with NEOM to open three properties on Sindalah, which are expected to be open in 2024. Newman previously worked with Emaar Hospitality Group, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Le Méridien.

Company: Oman Air Nationality: Omani Sector: Airlines

Ali Salim Al Midfa

• Chairman

Company: Sharjah Airport Authority Nationality: Emirati Sector: Airports

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Al Midfa has been the chairman of the Sharjah Airport Authority since January 2014. In February 2023, the authority announced that Sharjah had welcomed almost 13 million passengers in 2022, an increase of 84.73% compared to seven million in 2021. Flight movement also increased by 51.69% and freight handled increased by 21.2% in 2022 compared to 2021. Al Midfa is currently heading the development team for an airport expansion project valued at $517 million. This will increase the airport’s annual capacity to 20 million passengers by 2026. Al Midfa has 26 years of experience in airport management and is also chairman of the boards for Sharjah Sports Club and Sharjah Aviation Services.

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MAY 2023

TO P 1 0 0 T R AV E L & TO U R I S M L E A D E R S

Abdelhamid Addou

• Chairman and CEO

Company: Royal Air Maroc Nationality: Moroccan Sector: Airlines Addou joined Royal Air Maroc in 2016 as its chairman and CEO. Royal Air Maroc plans to offer around 6.2 million seats to more than 90 destinations by summer 2023. In March 2023, the national carrier announced six new routes between northern Morocco and Europe. Addou is also a member of the Board of Governors of the International Air Transport Association. Addou previously headed Diana Holding and the Moroccan National Tourist Office.

Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri

• Managing Director and Group CEO Company: ADNEC Group

Nationality: Emirati Sector: Diversified Al Dhaheri joined ADNEC Group when it was founded in 2005. The group comprises seven clusters: venues, events, hotels, F&B, services, tourism, and media. Its hotel portfolio includes Aloft London ExCeL, DoubleTree Hilton London ExCeL, Aloft Abu Dhabi, Anantara Sir Bani Yas Island Abu Dhabi Resort, and more. Its tourism and travel portfolio includes Tourism 365. In 2022, ADNEC Group brought around $969.5 million in direct and indirect income to Abu Dhabi, a 48% increase compared to 2021. Al Dhaheri is also the chair of the ExCeL London and the deputy chair of twofour54.

Mohammed Husain Ahmed

• CEO

Company: RoyalJet Nationality: Emirati Sector: Private Aviation Ahmed assumed his role at RoyalJet in May 2022. The group offers premium private jet aviation services and operates from its Fixed Based Operations VIP Terminal at Abu Dhabi International Airport. It is owned by Abu Dhabi. The group’s fleet totalled 13 Boeing business jets as of November 2022. Ahmed has 25 years of experience in the aviation industry. Before RoyalJet, he was the general manager for Abu Dhabi Airports. He also has an international licence in Air Traffic Control operations from the Airways Corporation in New Zealand and is a certified international negotiator from Harvard.

Khalid Al-Amoudi

• CEO

Company: Jabal Omar Development Company (JODC) Nationality: Saudi Sector: Hotels and Resorts Al Amoudi assumed his current role in 2019. JODC is a mixed-use real estate mega-development project within walking distance of the Grand Mosque of Makkah. The development currently has six hotels that have nearly 3,000 hotel rooms and suites, all within a 10-minute commute from the Grand Mosque. In 2022, the company reported $7.3 billion in assets and revenues of $226.5 million. Al Amoudi previously worked for over 20 years in the financial services industry. He was head of real estate finance at NCB (now Saudi National Bank) from 2012 to 2017 before leading the transformation of the Real Estate Development Fund of Saudi Arabia.

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MAY 2023

Nicolas Claude

• CEO

Company: Airport International Group (AIG) Nationality: French Sector: Airports Claude assumed his current position in 2020. The Airport International Group has managed Queen Alia International Airport, Jordan’s main airport, since 2007. QAIA welcomed 7.84 million passengers in 2022, marking a 71.9% increase compared to 2021. It also handled 61,290 tons of cargo, a 5.2% increase compared to 2021. In 2022, the Airport International Group Foundation reaffirmed its commitment to supporting and developing the local community through vocational training, educational opportunities, and environmental and sustainable initiatives.

Bander Almohanna

• CEO and Managing Director Company: flynas

Nationality: Saudi Sector: Airlines Almohanna joined flynas in 2006 as the CFO and was appointed CEO of flynas Group, including flynas, NASJET, and flynas Hajj & Umrah, in 2015. He oversees an aircraft purchase investment of more than $10 billion. flynas has 45 aircraft, operating more than 1,500 weekly flights to 70 domestic and international destinations. The company has transported more than 60 million passengers since its inception in 2007. Almohanna has previously worked at Makshaff Services and Investments and the the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, among others.

Hisham Talaat Moustafa 45

• CEO and Managing Director

Company: Talaat Moustafa Group Holding (TMG Holding) Nationality: Egyptian Sector: Hotels and Resorts

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Moustafa has been with TMG Holding for more than 40 years. The company owns the Four Seasons Sharm El Sheikh Resort, the Four Seasons Nile Plaza Cairo, the Four Seasons San Stefano Grand Plaza Alexandria, and the Kempinski Nile Hotel Cairo, which together have over 1,000 units. In 2022, the group’s hospitality revenues jumped 102%, with an occupancy rate of 60%. The group is also among the biggest real estate developers in the region. In June 2022, the group laid the cornerstone of a 200-room, 40,000-square-meter Four Seasons hotel project in Luxor, Egypt. Moustafa started his career in 1980 at his family business, the Alexandria Construction Company.

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MAY 2023

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Simon Casson 46

• President – Hotel

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Operations, Europe, Middle East, and Africa Company: Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts Nationality: British Sector: Hotels and Resorts Casson joined Four Seasons in 1989 as an assistant manager in London. He assumed his current position in 2016, where he oversees operations for over 40 properties and the development of 20 various hotels, skyscrapers, and beach resorts across EMEA. In 2022, the group added seven new properties to its portfolio, including the expansion of residential offerings in Marrakech and Dubai. Globally, the group holds 126 hotels and resorts and 53 residential properties across 47 countries. It employs more than 50,000 people. Casson has 40 years of industry experience. He is also a founding board member of the Enderun Hospitality Management School in the Philippines.

Philip Jones

• Chief Tourism Officer

Company: The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) Nationality: American Jones joined the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) in May 2019. RCU is transforming the historic city of AlUla into a major tourism destination, working on archaeology, heritage conservation and preservation, architecture, and master planning. Jones was previously the president and CEO of Visit Dallas, the Department Secretary (Minister) of Tourism, Culture, and Recreation for the State of Louisiana, and the director and chairman of key national travel and tourism associations.

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MAY 2023

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Sector: Destinations and Experiences

Amir Golbarg

Waleed Al Alawi

• Senior Vice President of Operations for the Middle

• CEO

Company: Minor Hotels

Nationality: Bahraini Sector: Airlines

East and Africa

Nationality: Danish Sector: Hotels and Resorts Golbarg was promoted to his current role in September 2021. The Minor Hotels chain owns, manages, and operates more than 530 hotels, resorts, and branded residences across six continents. Golbarg currently oversees 38 properties in operation across 11 countries and four brands in the Middle East and Africa. In February 2023, the company opened the NH Collection Dubai The Palm. Golbarg began his career in hospitality in 2004 as a restaurant manager. He joined Minor International in 2012.

Company: Gulf Air Al Alawi was appointed as CEO of Gulf Air in October 2022. The national carrier operates flights from its hub at Bahrain International Airport to destinations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Indian sub-continent, and the Far East. Al Alawi joined Gulf Air in 2017, and he is a board member of the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Bahrain.

Hashil Al Mahrouqi

• CEO

Company: OMRAN Group Nationality: Omani Sector: Hotels and Resorts Al Mahrouqi was appointed to his current role in 2021. The OMRAN Group has delivered over 2,751 keys across 10 international and nine local hotel and resort brands. The group’s subsidiaries are the Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre, Oman Sail, Oman Tourism College, and Marina Bandar Rowdha. In May 2022, the group signed an agreement with the South Al Sharqiyah Governor’s Office to develop several tourism projects in the governorate, including a park development in Al Suwaih with a total area of more than 65,000 square meters. Before joining the OMRAN Group, Al Mahrouqi was the senior manager of investment real estate at the Oman Investment Authority and chairman and CEO of Yiti Tourism Development Company.

Maen Mahmoud Razouqi

• CEO

Company: Kuwait Airways

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Nationality: Kuwaiti Sector: Airlines Razouqi joined Kuwait Airways in 2021. In 2022, the national carrier had 33 aircraft and increased its destinations by 25% to reach 60 destinations. Between December 22, 2022, to January 7, 2023, Kuwait Airways operated around 1,450 flights to and from Kuwait, carrying almost 205,000 passengers to various destinations. It also carried 14,000 passengers to Doha to attend the FIFA World Cup Qatar in 2022. Razouqi is also a director at AFKAR Ventures, an energy-tech venture that he cofounded in 2020. He was previously president and GM for Schlumberger for the northern Middle East region.

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MAY 2023

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Adel Waly

• Executive Managing Director

Company: Holding Company for Tourism and Hotels (HOTAC) Nationality: Egyptian Sector: Hotels and Resorts

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HOTAC is owned by the government of Egypt. It owns 28 hotels and resorts throughout Egypt, including the Sofitel Legend Cataract Hotel, which was built in 1899. HOTAC has seven wholly-owned companies, including the Misr Travel Company and the Egyptian General Company for Tourism and Hotels. In December 2022, the company reopened the Safir Dahab Resort after renovations. HOTAC reported nearly $31 million in revenues in the financial year ending June 2022, up 408% compared to the financial year 2021.

Hussein Sherif Fahmi

• Chairman and CEO Company: Air Cairo

Nationality: Egyptian Sector: Airlines Air Cairo is a hybrid Egyptian national airline operating more than 300 domestic monthly flights. It currently flies to over 40 international and domestic destinations. The airline has been on an expansion spree in 2023, buying five new aircraft in Q1, increasing its fleet to 30 aircraft. Fahmi previously spent over a decade in EGYPTAIR, where he held several roles, including GM of overseas offices, VP of Commercial, and advisor to the chairman.

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Khalifa Bin Braik

• CEO

Company: Majid Al Futtaim Asset Management Business Nationality: Emirati Sector: Hotels and Resorts Bin Braik leads 29 shopping malls and 13 hotels across MENA. In 2022, Majid Al Futtaim Properties’ revenue increased by 43% to hit $1.6 billion, and Majid Al Futtaim Hotels’ revenue increased by 48% to hit $182.8 million. In February 2023, the company launched the virtual Mall of the Metaverse, which will represent Majid Al Futtaim in Decentraland. In 2022, the company maintained ‘Green Star’ status from the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark GRESB. Bin Braik started his career with Dubai Holding and then moved to Sharjah Holding before joining Majid Al Futtaim Properties in 2014. He previously served as a director in the shopping malls business unit and as the managing director of the hotels business unit.

Samer Majali

• Vice Chairman and CEO

Company: Royal Jordanian Airlines Nationality: British /Jordanian Sector: Airlines Majali has more than 40 years of experience in the aviation industry. He assumed his current role in 2021. In 2022, RJ reported $864 million in revenues and $1 billion in total assets. With its 13 international airline partners, its combined travel network reaches more than 1,000 airports in 170 countries. In March 2023, RJ announced a new direct route between Amman, Jordan and Stockholm, Sweden. Majali founded Plane Vision in 2019, a corporate strategy and organization advisory in Bahrain. He previously worked at the Alton Aviation Consultancy in New York and Dublin, and he was CEO of SaudiGulf Airlines between 2013 and 2019.

MAY 2023

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Panos Loupasis

• Market Managing Director for Türkiye, the Middle East, and Africa

Fahad Abdulrahim Kazim

• CEO

Company: Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

• Company: Millennium Hotels and Resorts MEA, Tetra Hospitality Investment

Nationality: Greek Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Nationality: Emirati Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Loupasis joined Wyndham in 2011 with 25 years of industry experience. In 2022, the company signed 11 hotels with a total of 1,633 rooms and opened four hotels and 790 rooms. It also launched Wyndham Residences The Palm in Dubai and Ramada by Wyndham Riyadh King Fahd Road in Saudi Arabia. The company now has 22 hotels in the U.A.E. and 13 in Saudi Arabia. Before assuming his current position, Loupasis was the vice president of development for the Middle East, Eurasia, and Africa at Wyndham. He is also a member of the advisory board for the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference and the African Hotel Investment Forum.

Kazim assumed his current position in August 2022. Millennium Hotels & Resorts MEA currently operates 54 hotels across the region, with over 30 hotels under development. In 2023, the company announced the signing of the tallest hotel tower in Africa, the Grand Millennium Tycoon Tower in the New Administrative Capital in Cairo with Nile Developments. The company also took over the management of the former Crowne Plaza Dubai on Sheikh Zayed Road to become Millennium Plaza Downtown Dubai, which is undergoing a $136.2 million renovation program. Kazim was previously a partner at KPMG Lower Gulf. He is also the CEO of Tetra Hospitality Investment.

Rohit Ramachandran

• CEO

Company: Jazeera Airways Nationality: Indian Sector: Airlines

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Ramachandran joined Jazeera Airways in 2017, leading the restructuring of the company, including cost reduction, network expansion, and fleet renewal. The company returned to profitability in 2021, with $23.4 million in net profit, and recorded $65.7 million in net profit in 2022. Jazeera Airways also launched 15 new routes to cities in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Europe, reaching 58 destinations by the end of the year. In Q1 2023, the company expanded to 62 destinations. Ramachandran has over 26 years of aviation experience and has worked with four major airlines on three continents.

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MAY 2023

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Adel Ezzat

• CEO

Company: Elaf Group Nationality: Saudi Sector: Hotels and Resorts Ezzat became CEO of the Elaf Group in September 2021. The group is fully owned by SEDCO Holding. It has nine properties with a total of 3,377 rooms. The Elaf Group also has a travel and tourism services arm with offices in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Medina in Saudi Arabia that operate Elaf Holidays, Elaf Corporate Travel, and general sales agent services. In April 2023, the Elaf Group signed an MoU with the Kinan International Real Estate Development Company to manage and operate its hotel in the Aliat Mall in Medina from Q1 2025. Ezzat previously served as president and chairman of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, and CEO of Saudi Paper Group, and held roles at Procter & Gamble and Abdul Lateef Jamil, among others.

Mohamad El Hout

• Chairman and Director General

Company: Middle East Airlines – Air Liban (MEA) Nationality: Lebanese Sector: Airlines El Hout has been at the helm of MEA for 25 years. MEA flies to 32 destinations across the Middle East, the Gulf, Africa, and Europe. The group’s subsidiaries include Middle East Airlines Ground Handling, the Mideast Aircraft Services Company, Cedar Executive, Middle East Airports Services, and the Lebanese Beirut Airport Catering Company. In January 2023, MEA inaugurated its new headquarters, “the green building.” El Hout is also a member of the board of governors at the International Air Transport Association. He was previously an adviser to the governor at Lebanon’s Central Bank.

Robert Carey

• President

Company: Wizz Air Abu Dhabi Nationality: American/ French Sector: Airlines Carey has 22 years of experience and joined Wizz Air in 2021. Wizz Air Abu Dhabi (WAAD) serves 40 destinations within a five-hour flight time radius of Abu Dhabi. In 2022, WAAD transported over 1.2 million passengers and added 13 new destinations, including the Maldives, Medina, Ankara, and Samarkand. In October 2022, it doubled its fleet to eight Airbus A321neo aircraft. In August 2022, Wizz Air announced its largest inbound market expansion with the launch of 20 routes from Europe to Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam, offering over a million ultra-low-fare seats. Carey previously worked with America West Airlines, Delta Air Lines, McKinsey & Company, and easyJet.

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MAY 2023

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Tim Cordon

• COO for the Middle East and Africa Company: Radisson Hotel Group

Nationality: British Sector: Hotels and Resorts Cordon assumed his current role in September 2022. Radisson Hotel Group has over 68 hotels and 26,830 keys in the Middle East and North Africa, with plans to reach 100 hotels in the Middle East by 2025. In March 2023, the group opened a new Radisson Blu property at the Riyadh Convention and Exhibition Center. Cordon started his career with the Radisson Hotel Group in January 2006 as a general manager.

Sultan Al-Otaibi

• CEO

Company: Dur Hospitality Nationality: Saudi Sector: Hotels and Resorts Dur owns and operates 33 properties across nine cities in Saudi Arabia. The company started developing the luxury Rixos Resort in Jeddah in 2022, adding 174 hotel units to the company’s portfolio. The company reported $911.5 million in total assets and $151.6 million in revenues in 2022. Al-Otaibi has been with Dur Hospitality for over 22 years. He is also a member of the Tourism Committee at the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce.

Fawaz Farooqui

• Managing Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee

Company: Cruise Saudi Nationality: Saudi 63

Abdulla Aujan

• Executive Chairman

Company: Aujan Group Holding (AGH)

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Nationality: Saudi Sector: Hotels and Resorts Aujan assumed his current role in 2018. AGH owns the Anantara Downtown Dubai Hotel in the U.A.E., the Radisson Blu Hotel in Maputo, Mozambique, and the Avani Pemba Beach Hotel in Pemba, Mozambique, through a joint venture with the Minor Group. It also owns two island resorts in Mozambique under the Anantara brand, Anantara Medjumbe Island Resort & Spa and Anantara Bazaruto Island Resort & Spa, through another joint venture with the Minor Group. Aujan joined AGH in 2011 as director of business development.

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Sector: Destinations and Experiences Farooqui assumed his current role in 2020. Cruise Saudi is fully owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The country’s investment arm launched Cruise Saudi to build Saudi Arabia’s offshore and onshore cruise ecosystem and to position it as a premier global cruise destination. Cruise Saudi recently announced its collaboration with hotel brand Aman to develop a new 183-meter ultraluxury yacht aimed at High Net Worth passengers. Farooqui is also a chief advisor to the Saudi Minister of Culture and a board member of flyadeal and the Saudi Sports for All Federation.

MAY 2023

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Nader Ahmed Al Hammadi

• Chairman

Company: Abu Dhabi Aviation (ADA) Nationality: Emirati Sector: Airlines Al Hammadi joined ADA as managing director in 2009. The company recorded $1.5 billion in total assets and $112.4 million in profit in 2022. In March 2023, ADA approved an offer from Abu Dhabi-based ADQ Aviation to combine the latter’s full ownership of Etihad Airways Engineering and AMMROC, as well as its 50% ownership of Global Aerospace Logistics, into ADA, creating an entity with total assets of around $2.6 billion. Al Hammadi is also the chairman of Decovision and a board member at Abu Dhabi Airports and Waha Capital, among others.

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Talal Jassim Al-Bahar 68

• Chairman and Group CEO

Company: IFA Hotels & Resorts (IFA HR) Nationality: Kuwaiti Sector: Hotels and Resorts IFA HR has operations in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. With a market cap of $37.6 million as of April 16, 2023, the company ended 2022 with revenues of $129.4 million and total assets of $648 million. Al-Bahar has over 18 years of experience in the financial and real estate investment and development sectors. He is also the vice chairman and CEO of the Kuwait Real Estate Company (AQARAT) and a Board member of the Commercial Real Estate Company (Al-Tijaria).

Marloes Knippenberg

• CEO

Company: Kerten Hospitality Nationality: Dutch Sector: Hotels and Resorts

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Knippenberg has been with Kerten Hospitality for eight years. The company’s hospitality portfolio includes The House Hotel, The House Residence, Cloud7 Hotels, and Cloud7 Residence, among others. The company has grown from one brand in one country seven years ago to more than 50 projects across 12 countries and a portfolio of 12 lifestyle brands. In 2022, the company opened Cloud7 Residence AlUla in Saudi Arabia. In the same year, the company expanded its pipeline in the Middle East by 20%, adding eight key signings in the region. Knippenberg has 25 years of hotelier experience and previously worked with Hilton for over a decade.

MAY 2023

Hossam El Shaer

Khalid Jasim Al Midfa

• Founder and Chairman; Chairman

• Chairman

Nationality: Egyptian Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Nationality: Emirati Sector: Tourism Development

Founded in 2002 by El Shaer, SUNRISE has 20 resorts across the Red Sea in Egypt, including Meraki Resort Sharm El Sheikh, Tanoak Hotel Ain Sokhna Egypt, and Kwanza Resort in Tanzania. The company also operates seven cruises in different locations in Luxor and Aswan. In 2022, the company opened White Hills Resort Sharm El Sheikh in Sharks Bay, Egypt. El Shaer is also the chairman of SkyMax, which is a destination management company with a presence in Egypt, Morocco, and the U.A.E. El Shaer previously served on the board of the Egyptian Tourism Federation and the Egyptian Travel Agents Association. He is also a partner in Ingas company.

Al Midfa joined SCTDA in 2011, which promotes commercial and tourism activities in Sharjah. The emirate welcomed more than 1.4 million hotel guests in 2022, with a 66% occupancy rate. Al Midfa is also a member of the Sharjah Executive Council and the executive committee of the Emergency, Crisis, and Disaster Management Team in Sharjah, among other roles.

Company: SUNRISE Resorts and Cruises; SkyMax Holidays

Company: Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority (SCTDA)

Julien Bergue

• Cofounder and Managing Partner Middle East/ CIS Region

Company: Valor Hospitality Partners Nationality: French Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Stuart Deeson

• Vice President of Operations, Middle East and Africa Company: Hyatt Hotels Corporation

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Nationality: British Sector: Hotels and Resorts Deeson is responsible for Hyatt’s operating hotels across the Middle East and Africa, with a current portfolio of more than 30 properties across seven brands, including Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Alila, Andaz, Hyatt Centric, Hyatt Place, and Hyatt House. In February 2023, Hyatt announced the signing of three Hyattbranded hotels in Madinah, adding 1,729 keys to the brand’s portfolio in Saudi Arabia. Deeson joined Hyatt in 1995. He has 30 years of industry experience in Asia and the Middle East.

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Bergue joined Valor Hospitality Partners in 2018. The company provides third-party hotel management, hotel franchise management, and technical services advisory, among other services. In September 2022, the company announced a joint venture with ICD Hospitality and Leisure, putting the Radisson Blu Dubai Deira Creek under its management, among other hotels. Bergue has previously worked with several brands, including One&Only, Armani Hotels, Address Hotels & Resorts, Nikki Beach Hotels & Resorts, and SLS Hotels Dubai.

MAY 2023

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Khalid Anib

• CEO

Company: Abu Dhabi National Hotels (ADNH) Nationality: Finnish citizen of Moroccan origin Sector: Hotels and Resorts Anib joined ADNH and assumed his current position as CEO in 2016. ADNH owns several luxury and five-star hotels in the U.A.E., including The Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi, Grand Canal, Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi Hotel and Villas (Saadiyat Island), Address Boulevard, The Address Dubai Mall, and more. With a market cap of $1.5 billion as of April 2023, ADNH recorded a profit of $113 million and total assets of $2.8 billion in 2022. Anib is a board member of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry and a member of the board executive committee of Alhokair Group.

Prateek Kumar

• SVP – Operations for EMEA

Company: Dusit International Nationality: Singaporean Sector: Hotels and Resorts Kumar was promoted to his current role in April 2022. He oversees Dusit properties in EMEA, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Maldives, Japan, and a few properties in Thailand. In October 2022, the brand inaugurated its third property in Qatar, the Dusit Hotel and Suites Doha. Kumar has spent his career with the Dusit brand. He started as general manager of Dusit Thani in Manila in 2008 and became general manager of Dusit Thani Dubai in 2013. He was made regional VP of EMEA in 2017.

Joachim Schmitt

• CEO

Company: Orascom Hotels Management Nationality: German Sector: Hotels and Resorts Schmitt oversees Orascom Hotels Management’s 34 hotels across six destinations. It employs more than 5,235 people. Before joining the company in 2018, Schmitt worked in Germany, Australia, Türkiye, India, Sri Lanka, China, and Egypt with international hotel companies such as Kempinski, Intercontinental, Oberoi, and Four Seasons. Orascom Developments Holding (ODH), the parent company of Orascom Hotels Management, reported revenues of $770 million in 2022, a rise of 28.1% year-on-year compared to 2021. ODH reported $2 billion in total assets in 2022.

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Nadia Zaal

• Founder and CEO

Company: Zaya and Abwab Real Estate Group Nationality: Emirati Sector: Hotels and Resorts Zaal cofounded Zaya in 2008. Today, the company employs 880 people. The group specializes in high-end real estate development and hospitality. Zaya’s projects include ZUHA Island, Hameni Tower, Al Barari Residences, Zaya Hotel Living Al Barari, Zaya Early Learning Center, and FIVE Palm Jumeirah Hotel. Al Barari Residences is Abwab Real Estate’s flagship project. Zaya’s Nurai Island Resort was sold to Aldar Properties in July 2022. Zaal is also the CEO of the $2 billion Al Barari project and the director of FIVE Global Holdings.

MAY 2023

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Adel Mardini

• Founder and CEO

Company: Jetex Nationality: Turkish/Syrian Sector: Private Aviation

IMAGE BY FORBES MIDDLE EAST

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Mardini launched Jetex in Dubai in 2005. Today, Jetex has a network of 37 private jet terminals, as well as lounges and ground handling facilities in more than 25 countries. It employs 750 people. The company offers international trip planning, ground support, and concierge services. In 2022, it facilitated more than 71,000 private jet flights, up from 51,000 in 2021, and carried more than 367,000 passengers, up from 239,000 in 2021. Mardini is a board member of the Middle East and North Africa Business Aviation Association and an active member of the World Economic Forum and the Young Presidents’ Organization.

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MAY 2023

Hany Farag

• CEO

Company: National Corporation for Tourism and Hotels (NCT&H) Nationality: Egyptian Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Ahmad Abu Ghazaleh

Mohamed Ahmed

• CEO

Company: SalamAir Nationality: Bahraini Sector: Airlines Mohamed Ahmed assumed his current role in 2017. SalamAir's fleet includes six A320neo, four A321neo, and one Airbus A321 freighter. The Omani airline flies to over 38 domestic and international destinations. Ahmed has over 30 years of experience. He started flying as a pilot after graduating from the Oxford Air Training Academy in 1987. His previous roles include chief pilot and group director of operations and maintenance at Air Arabia.

• CEO and Vice Chairman

Company: International Wings Group (IWG) Nationality: Jordanian Sector: Private Aviation Abu Ghazaleh has been CEO and vice chairman of the International Wings Group since 2003. Its subsidiaries include the Arab Wings, Gulf Wings, the Queen Noor Civil Aviation Technical College, and the Royal Jordanian Air Academy. Arab Wings has a fleet of 18 jet planes and 74 crew members that fly to 200 destinations. Abu Ghazaleh serves on the boards of Fresh Del Monte Produce, the Queen Rania Foundation, Endeavor Jordan, and he is a member of the board of trustees at the American Center of Research and Jordan’s Investment Council. He is also the founder and executive vice chairman of the Abdali Hospital in Amman, Jordan, and the chairman of the United Cable Industries Company.

Rob Burns

• CEO

Company: The First Group Nationality: American Sector: Diversified Burns began his career with The First Group as Chief Marketing Officer before being promoted to CEO. The First Group offers property development and specialized services, international hotel investments, and property asset management, as well as global investor services. In March 2023, The First Group launched Soluna Beach Club, a contemporary Mediterraneaninspired waterfront experience at the Balqis Residences in Palm Jumeirah. The group is set to launch its flagship hotel, Ciel, in Q1 2024, which is set to be the tallest hotel in the world with 82 stories. Burns has 37 years of industry experience. He started his career in property development in 1986 and has worked in the U.S., the U.K., Europe, CIS, Africa, and the Middle East.

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Farag assumed his current role in October 2018. The company owns five properties in Abu Dhabi: InterContinental Abu Dhabi, InterContinental Residences Abu Dhabi, managed by IHG Hotels & Resorts, and the self-managed Danat Hotels & Resorts Brand, which encompasses the Danat Al Ain Resort, Danat Jebel Dhanna Resort, and Dhafra Beach Hotel. NCT&H also owns the Cheers chain of retail liquor stores and the Abu Dhabi franchise of the Belgian Café. It managed a total of 1,229 rooms, villas, and chalets across seven managed properties in Abu Dhabi and recorded total assets of $771 million in 2022. NCT&H recently signed a contract with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) to provide food catering services for its drilling sites from 2022 to 2027.

Simon Leigh

• Managing Director

Company: Premier Inn - MENA Nationality: British Sector: Hotels and Resorts Leigh has over 20 years of industry experience and assumed his current role in 2021. Premier Inn MENA has 11 hotels in the Middle East, seven of which are in Dubai, two in Abu Dhabi, and two in Doha. In the GCC, Premier Inn operates through a strategic joint venture between the Emirates Group and Whitbread PLC U.K., Premier Inn’s parent company. In February 2023, it announced its plans to expand further in the region, eyeing a potential opening in Saudi Arabia. Leigh was previously the group procurement and supply chain director for Whitbread globally.

Laurent Voivenel

• SVP Operations and Development and Group HR and Talent Development EMEAI,

Company: Swiss Belhotel International Nationality: French Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Ranjit Phillipose

• Area Director for the Middle East and General Manager Company: The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL)

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Nationality: British Sector: Hotels and Resorts Phillipose started his career IHCL in 1993 at Taj Coromandel Hotel in Chennai, India. The company opened the Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, The Palm, Dubai, in 2022, which is the fourth Taj Exotica in IHCL’s portfolio and the first in the Middle East, bringing IHCL’s keys in the region up to 821 keys. Phillipose has 30 years of experience. He has held multiple roles at IHCL and has overseen hotel openings and rebranding projects across Asia, the U.K., the U.S., and the Middle East.

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Voivenel joined Swiss Belhotel International in 2017. The hotel management company was founded in 1987, and by 2022 it had a portfolio of more than 125 managed hotels spread over 19 countries. In January 2023, Swiss Belhotel signed a joint venture with Malaysian company Nautical Insight Sdn Bhd, which focuses on the concept of accommodation for Muslim travelers. Voivenel has more than 30 years of experience in international hotel/asset management. He was previously the CEO of a hospitality management group in Dubai.

Alison Grinnell

• CEO

Company: RAK Hospitality Holding Nationality: British Sector: Destinations and Experiences Grinnell joined RAK Hospitality Holding in 2016 as CFO and became CEO in 2019. The group was established in 2014 by the government of Ras Al Khaimah. Its subsidiaries include RAK National Hotels, RAK Leisure, RAK Hospitality Logistics, Safarak, and Stirling Hospitality Advisors. Grinnell has over 28 years of experience, with a financial background within hospitality. She previously held several roles at PwC, including a leader for Middle East hotels.

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Bani Haddad

• Founder and Managing Director Company: Aleph Hospitality

Nationality: Lebanese French Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Monther Darwish

• Managing Director; Founder

Company: Palazzo Versace Dubai; Palazzo Hospitality Nationality: Emirati Sector: Hotels and Resorts Darwish joined Palazzo Versace in 2013 as a partner and has been the managing director of the property since 2017. The property has 215 rooms and suites and opened in November 2015. The hotel recently announced a partnership with Binance, which will enable guests to pay using cryptocurrency. Darwish founded Palazzo Hospitality in 2019. He was vice chairman of ENSHAA. Darwish is also the CEO and owner of MD Interior Design.

Anthony Costa

• Regional President

Company: Caesars Palace Dubai Nationality: British Sector: Hotels and Resorts Costa was appointed Regional President of Caesars Palace Dubai in October 2020. The hotel has 479 rooms and suites, with 500 meters of private beach access. In 2023, the hotel received a fivestar rating from the Forbes Travel Guide. Costa was previously the regional vice president and managing director of the Burj al Arab at Jumeirah Group. He has also worked with Wynn Palace and Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, among others.

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Haddad founded Aleph Hospitality in 2015. Today, the company employs 650 people. Aleph Hospitality operates 13 hotels across the Middle East and Africa. In February 2022, the company was valued at $20 million. In the same year, it launched Aleph CARES, its global sustainable development program, which sets sustainability standards for all of its hotels. In February 2023, it signed an exclusive agreement with Fauchon Hospitality to operate its luxury hotel portfolio. In March 2023, the company opened a regional office in Saudi Arabia. Haddad has 30 years of industry experience. He was previously the regional vice president for MEA for the Wyndham Hotel Group.

Raj Rana

• CEO

Company: Citymax Hotels and Foodmark Nationality: American Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Paras Dhamecha

• Founder and Managing Director Company: Empire Aviation Group

Nationality: Indian Sector: Private Aviation Dhamecha founded Empire Aviation Group in 2007. It has a fleet of more than 20 jets and provides private jet charter, aircraft management and sales, flight operations, and VIP ground transportation, among other services. In December 2022, the group signed an agreement with the Mohammed bin Rashid Aerospace Hub at Dubai South to develop a new, multipurpose business aviation facility on a plot adjacent to the VIP Terminal. Dhamecha previously cofounded and was CEO of Elite Jets. He was also the operations manager at Zabeel Contracting Company and was a pilot at Executive Airlines.

Mohamed Awadalla

• CEO

Company: Time Hotels Management Nationality: Egyptian; Belgian Sector: Hotels and Resorts

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Awadalla cofounded TIME Hotels Management in 2012 and was appointed CEO to oversee the company’s 17 hotels. In 2022, TIME Hotels opened the Time Coral Nuweiba Resort overlooking the Gulf of Aqaba and TIME Moonstone Hotel Apartments in Fujairah. It also added City Landmark Suites Tabuk in Saudi Arabia and Atlas Crown in Morocco to its portfolio. Awadalla has 39 years of industry experience and has previously worked with leading global hospitality companies, including Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, Hilton International, and Rotana Hotels.

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Rana oversees eight Citymax hotels in MENA with 2,182 keys. Established in 2010, Citymax is a subsidiary of the Landmark Group. In 2022, the Citymax Hotels portfolio recorded an average occupancy of 92%. The group launched a sustainability program that has been implemented across all properties focused on creating a cleaner and greener environment, resulting in lowered cost and carbon footprint. Rana has 38 years of industry experience and previously worked at the Radisson Hotel Group. He also oversees Foodmark’s varied restaurant portfolio.

Richard Haddad

• CEO

Company: Ishraq Hospitality Nationality: Lebanese Sector: Hotels and Resorts Haddad joined Ishraq Hospitality as CEO in January 2023. Formerly known as Abjar, Ishraq Hospitality is part of the Mohamed & Obaid Almulla Group, and it owns eight properties, including Holiday Inn Express hotels, Staybridge Suites Dubai Al Maktoum Airport, Crowne Plaza DubaiDeira, and Crowne Plaza Dubai Jumeirah. The company signed an MoU with Capital Elite Development to launch two new hotels in the New Capital, Cairo, Egypt, in 2025. Haddad was previously CEO of Jannah Hotels and Resorts and worked at Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority.

Siegfried Nierhaus

• Vice President for the Middle East Company: Deutsche Hospitality Nationality: German

Kamal Fakhoury

• CEO

Company: Cristal Group Nationality: Canadian Lebanese Sector: Hotels and Resorts Fakhoury assumed his current role in September 2016. The Cristal Group manages and owns four properties in the Middle East—two in Iraq, one in Saudi Arabia, and its flagship property in Abu Dhabi. It has an additional five hotels in the pipeline. Established in Abu Dhabi in 2007, the group set up another base in the British Virgin Islands in 2012. In 2022, the group recorded an annual hotel turnover of more than $15 million. Fakhoury spearheaded a move into white-label hospitality solutions, forming strategic alliances with Hilton, Accor Hotels, IHG, Marriott, and Wyndham Worldwide. He has been in hospitality for 30 years and was previously COO of the Cristal Group from October 2007. Before joining Cristal Hotels, Fakhoury was COO of Sanctuary Hotels and Resorts.

Abdullah Omar Al-Suwailem

• Managing Director and CEO

Company: Tourism Enterprise Company (Shams) Nationality: Saudi Sector: Hotels and Resorts Al-Suwailem assumed his current position in January 2023. Shams is listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of $257.8 million as of April 16, 2023. In 2022, it recorded revenues of $2.7 million and total assets of $152.2 million. The company owns The Palm Beach Resort, which stretches along 1,300 meters of private beach with a total area of 550,000 square meters. In March 2023, it announced the opening of a diving center within the resort in partnership with Saihat Divers Center.

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Sector: Hotels and Resorts Nierhaus joined Deutsche Hospitality in November 2020. In 2022, the company doubled its keys in the Middle East, reaching over 1,531 keys with the opening of four new hotels. It has 29 properties across the U.A.E., Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt. Over the last 30 years, Nierhaus has worked with Sheraton, Concorde, Hilton, Carlson, Rezidor, and Steigenberger, managing the openings of over 15 hotels across the world.

Fariborz (Fred) Vessali

• CEO

Company: Oman Hotels Tourism Company (OHTC) SAOC Nationality: Australian Sector: Hotels and Resorts Vessali joined the Oman Hotels and Tourism Company SAOC in 2017. The group was established in 1971. It operates a total of 455 keys across the Alwadi Hotel, Ruwi Hotel, Sur Plaza Hotel, and Desert Nights Resort. It has strategic alliances with Accor, SalamAir, and Grant Thornton, among others. Vessali was previously the vice president of supply chain management at Oman Air. He also held roles with the Rural Areas Electricity Company “Tanweer,” Lindt & Sprüngli, and the Kellogg Company.

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Nadim Yousef Muasher

• Chairman

Company: The Arab International Hotels Company (AIHO) Nationality: Jordanian Sector: Hotels and Resorts AIHO owns and manages the Amman Marriott Hotel and owns shares in several other companies in the hospitality sector. It owned 35.5 % of the Business Tourism Company as of December 2022, which owns the Dead Sea Marriott Resort & Spa and the Petra Marriott Hotel. It also owned 26.9% of Al Dawliyah for Hotels & Malls as of December 2022, which owns the Sheraton Amman Al-Nabil Hotel & Towers. Muasher is also the chairman of Al Dawliyah for Hotels & Malls, among other roles.

JS Anand

• Founder and CEO

Company: LEVA Hotels Nationality: Canadian Sector: Hotels and Resorts Anand founded LEVA Hotels in 2019. The group manages eight hotels, with a total of 894 keys across Jeddah and Africa, as well as its flagship 184-room LEVA Hotel Mazaya Centre in Dubai. The brand also manages Resivation, a co-living property in Al Furjan in Dubai. In October 2022, the group signed a management agreement for an airport hotel in Jeddah and introduced the first EKONO by LEVA brand in Saudi Arabia. Anand has 25 years of industry experience. He previously held roles at Louvre Hotels, Marriott International, and Hilton.

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Sanjiv Malhotra

• Executive Vice President

Company: Shaza Hotels Management Nationality: Indian Sector: Hotels and Resorts

Sumair Tariq

• Managing Director Company: R Hotels

Nationality: Pakistani

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Sector: Hotels and Resorts Tariq has been overseeing R Hotels operations since 2010. The company owns, operates, and manages seven hotels across the U.A.E., including Ramada Hotel and Suites by Wyndham Ajman, Ramada by Wyndham Beach Hotel Ajman, and Ramada by Wyndham Downtown Dubai. In 2022, R Hotels had an average occupancy of more than 90% for all its properties. Tariq has experience in different industries, including real estate, hospitality, manufacturing, and oil and gas. He joined R Holding as head of internal audit in 2007. He is also a board member for the City University College of Ajman, Ajman Academy, and the Tech Group.

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Malhotra has 35 years of experience in the hotel industry. He joined Shaza Hotels 12 years ago. The company has four hotels in Makkah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia as well as Doha in Qatar and Salalah in Oman. Kempinski is one of the major shareholders in Shaza Hotels. In 2022, the company opened Shaza Hotels in Doha, which consists of 171 guestrooms and suites. Malhotra previously worked with Kempinski and Oberoi Hotels and Resorts.

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THE TREND

LEXANDR WANG

BRIEFLY BECAME THE WORLD’S YOUNGEST SELF-MADE BILLIONAIRE BY SUPPLYING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANIES WITH THE ONE THING THEY ALL NEED: HUMANS. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THEM. NOW, HIS $7.3 BILLION STARTUP IS PRIMED TO CASH IN ON THE BIGGEST AI BOOM YET—UNLESS SOMEONE ELSE CAN DO IT BETTER OR CHEAPER.

MOBILIZING A.I.’S INFANTRY.

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

PHOTOGRAPH BY ETHAN PINES FOR FORBES MAY 2023

THE TREND

In 2018, ON A TRIP to his ancestral homeland, Alexandr Wang listened as China’s brightest engineers gave impressive presentations on artificial intelligence. He found it odd that the researchers conspicuously avoided any mention of how AI might be used. Wang, whose immigrant parents were nuclear physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the first atomic bombs were designed, was unsettled. “They were really dodgy on what the use cases were. You could tell it was for no good,” recalls Wang, the cofounder of Scale AI, who has no second “e” in his first name so that it has eight characters, a number associated with good fortune in Chinese culture. Scale was then an up-and-coming startup providing data services primarily to self-driving auto-makers. But Wang began to worry that AI might soon upend a world order that, excepting the fall of the Soviet Union, has remained mostly stable since World War II. “If you think about the history of humanity, it’s mostly been punctuated by war except the last 80 or so years, which have been unusually peaceful,” he says from Scale’s sixth-floor headquarters in downtown San Francisco, as the occasional (partly) self-driving car zips by below. “A lot of that has been because of American leadership in the world.” At first glance, Wang, 26, exudes the skittish energy of a fresh college graduate. He listens to “sad girl” musicians like Gracie Abrams and Billie Eilish and dresses “gorpcore,” an in-vogue style of fashionable hiking clothes. He posts Instagram photos with actor Kiernan Shipka of Mad Men fame and spouts pithy nuggets on Twitter: “The best problems can only be solved by blood, sweat, tears, spirit and an overwhelming sense of purpose,” he wrote in one February tweet. At bars, he still gets carded regularly. None of that matters in Silicon Valley and D.C., where he’s already a power player. His rise began with a bet he made in 2016 to “label” the mass of data required F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

to power AI, primarily for self-driving cars. Someone needed to train the AI to know the difference between a paper bag and a pedestrian. He cornered that market and put Scale in a good position in another sector: generative AI. It was a prescient move that helped him garner a client list that includes the biggest names in AI—and the U.S. government. “We’re the picks and shovels in the generative AI gold rush,” he says. It has quickly become a lucrative business for Scale, which says it pulled in $250 million in revenue last year, at a time when many AI startups aren’t yet making a cent. Its tech has been used by the government to analyze satellite imagery in Ukraine and by OpenAI to create ChatGPT, the bot that rocked the world with its ability to answer trivia and write poetry. Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of cloud software giant Salesforce, likens Scale’s rise to that of cloud computing darlings Snowflake and Datadog. Former Amazon consumer boss Jeff Wilke, one of Wang’s most trusted advisors, takes an even more enthusiastic view: Scale could become the Amazon Web Services of AI. Investors awarded Scale a $7.3 billion valuation in 2021, making Wang the latest Silicon Valley insta-billionaire. But his fortune wasn’t built entirely on silicon. It was also built with a vast outsourced workforce that performs a rudimentary task crucial to AI: labeling the data used to train it. Those people— some 240,000 of them in countries including Kenya, the Philippines and Venezuela—work for Remotasks, a subsidiary Scale doesn’t mention in public marketing materials. In other words, if AI does someday liberate humans from mundane workplace tasks, it will have done so using a legion of workers in the Global South, many of whom are paid less than $1 an hour. “They’re very, very important to the process of building powerful AI systems,” Wang says of his Remotasks workers. They’re also, increasingly, an ethical concern, with worries emerging about substandard working conditions and low pay. Meanwhile, competitors see Scale as a house of cards that has suffered layoffs and declining value on secondary markets in the past year that has stripped Wang of billionaire status. (Those markets now value his 15% stake at $630 million. Scale argues it’s worth closer to $890 million.) “Scale markets itself as a technology company,” says Manu Sharma, cofounder of rival startup Labelbox. “For us, they’re no different than any business-process outsourcing company.” Tech upstarts think they can do what Scale does better, while traditional outsourcers think they can do it cheaper. “I would say that we’ve been working on this MAY 2023

WAS CONCEIVED AS A ONE-STOP SHOP → SCALE FOR SUPPLYING HUMAN LABOR TO PERFORM TASKS THAT COULD NOT BE DONE BY ALGORITHMS—ESSENTIALLY, THE ANTITHESIS OF AI.

EFORE COLLEGE, Wang moved to the Bay Area to work for internet startup Quora, where CEO Adam D’Angelo gave him a crucial piece of advice: Four years of college is overrated, two is underrated. In the end, Wang spent just one year at MIT before heading to storied startup accelerator Y Combinator. There he teamed up with Quora alum Lucy Guo, another dropout, to start Scale in 2016. He remembers being “ridiculously young” at the time, just 19. “But I was just like, ‘Yeah, I know how to code. We’re going to go do this thing.’ ” As it was first conceived, Scale was to be a one-stop shop for supplying human labor to perform tasks that could not be done by algorithms—essentially, the antithesis of AI. Accel partner Dan Levine was early to see its potential, offering the pair a seed investment of $4.5 million (and his basement as temporary headquarters) in July 2016. Within months, Wang and Guo realized Scale was a viable solution to a problem plaguing the self-driving car companies at AI’s thenfrontier: They had millions of miles of on-the-road driving footage with which to train their autonomous vehicle AI, and not nearly enough people to review and label it. Scale could fill that need. In 2018, Wang and Guo were named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in enterprise technology. Guo subsequently left the company “due to differences in product vision and road map,” she says. “I think Alex has done a great job continuing to run the company.” Guo otherwise declined to comment for this story, and Wang declined to speak about their split. Investor Mike Volpi first heard Scale’s name F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

during a 2018 board meeting for autonomous vehicle (AV) startup Aurora. “Who?” he remembers asking. Scale’s data labeling service had become crucial for Aurora, he learned, just as it had for Uber and for General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary, Cruise. Volpi persuaded his firm, Index Ventures, to lead an $18 million investment in Scale that August, when its revenue was still shy of $3 million. The AV wager was becoming a cash cow. Scale’s client list now included major international auto manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda, as well as Silicon Valley behemoths like Google AV subsidiary Waymo, according to a June 2019 fundraising pitch deck seen by Forbes. An account with Apple’s secretive self-driving unit alone was bringing in more than $10 million, the document said, putting annual revenue on track to surpass $40 million. (Scale declined to comment on the deck.) When Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund made a $100 million investment that minted Scale as a Silicon Valley unicorn in August 2019, it kicked off a 20-month, $580 million fundraising spree, the final round of which valued the company north of $7 billion. It had taken Wang, then 24, just five years to become the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.

Y THE TIME Scale dominated the data labeling market for self-driving car companies, its name had become something of an irony. The more it scaled, the harder it became to keep up with the demand for human labor. Wang first turned to outsourcing agencies to fill gaps, but costs quickly spiraled. Gross margins, which hovered at about 65% in early 2018, approached a mere 30% by the fourth quarter. Wang needed to stanch the bleeding while still capturing both the human and machine sides of the AI data training supply chain. Enter Remotasks, Scale’s in-house outsourcing agency. Created in 2017, Remotasks soon became a priority as the company’s AV business skyrocketed. In need of cheap labor, Scale set up a dozen-plus facilities MAY 2023

THE TREND

problem longer and have built more technology than anyone else,” Wang counters. He’s trying to follow Amazon’s playbook of managing the entire chain, from warehouses to shipping. For Scale, that means both the machines—which are increasingly automating the data work—and the human army, which is growing ever larger. “We’re always going to want a human in the loop,” he says.

THE TREND

Wang was just 19 when he started Scale. His cofounder, Lucy Guo, was 21. “It definitely made it harder to hire,” Wang says. “There was somebody who asked me, ‘Explain to me why I should entrust my career to you.’ ”

in Southeast Asia and Africa to train thousands of data labelers. By mid-2019, Scale’s margins had recovered to 69%, according to the deck. Scale has been careful to position Remotasks as a separate brand. Its website makes no mention of Remotasks; the reverse is also true. Early employees say this was done to make Scale’s strategy less obvious to competitors and shield the company from scrutiny. Scale told Forbes it separated the two brands for client confidentiality. In a 2022 study into working conditions on 15 digital labor platforms, University of Oxford researchers concluded Remotasks met the “minimum standards of fair work” in just two of 10 criteria, flunking equitable pay—which early employees say is pennies per hour on average—and fair representation. They noted that the “obfuscation” of its association with Scale creates confusion that “can contribute to workers’ vulnerability to exploitation.” Lead researcher Kelle Howson compared data labelers on digital labor F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

services like Remotasks to garment factory workers in many of the same countries. “There is pretty much zero accountability for those working conditions,” she added. Scale says it is committed to paying workers “a living wage.” Beyond the ethical considerations, there are business questions, too. What Scale is doing with Remotasks isn’t hard to replicate. Kevin Guo, cofounder of Hive, a startup that once fielded its own Remotasks rival before shuttering it due to tough margins, contends that the sort of data labeling Scale does is a commodity business. “Anyone who puts up a team can compete with you, and it comes down to price really quickly,” he says.

HILE REMOTASKS’ huge overseas workforce is critical to Scale’s private sector success, it’s a nonstarter for the company’s other focus: defense contracts with the U.S. government, which is unlikely to share classified data with foreign labelers. Wang is therefore building a much more expensive domestic AI army. Last year, Scale opened an office in St. Louis and announced plans to hire 200 people, many as data labelers. MAY 2023

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Young and Younger

“WANG DIDN’T GET TO WHERE HE IS → BECAUSE HE’S A BOY GENIUS—MIT PUMPS OUT

A LOT OF TEENAGE DROPOUTS. HE HAS AN ABSOLUTELY INSANE WORK ETHIC.”

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AI startups told Forbes confidentially that they have concerns about the quality of its humanmade AI training data. One described a text-based generative AI model that was hampered by the labelers’ poor English. “Their data quality can be high, but also that’s not a given,” said another. Said a Scale spokesperson: “We stand behind our products and [their] results.” Alternatives are emerging. San Francisco–based Surge AI, which debuted in 2020, offers data labeling tools and specifically targets AI companies. OpenAI, along with upcoming AI heavies Cohere and Adept, use both Scale and Surge. Then there are billion-dollar Bay Area labeling startups Labelbox and Snorkel AI, which focus on bringing AI to nontech enterprises. In January, Scale slashed 20% of its fulltime staff. Wang cited “uncertainty” in market conditions. “We increased head count assuming the massive growth would continue,” he wrote in a blog post. Shares of the company are currently trading on private secondary markets at a 42% discount to the last funding round in July 2021. Scale’s stakeholders remain confident Wang can keep the company ahead of its rivals. “He didn’t get to where he is because he’s a boy genius—MIT pumps out a lot of teenage dropouts,” says William Hockey, the centimillionaire cofounder of $8 billion fintech Plaid, who sits on Scale’s board. “He has an absolutely insane work ethic like nobody I’ve ever met.” Scale recently signed a strategic partnership with consulting giant Accenture, which plans to use its services to help hundreds of companies build custom AI apps and models. And with nearly a quartermillion human labelers, Remotasks is still growing, Wang confirms. All this growth comes down to what he views as Scale’s ultimate purpose: playing a role in maintaining America’s AI supremacy. “We’re in an era of great power competition,” he says. “American leadership—I don’t want to say it’s at risk, but it’s never been more important for us to retain that.” MAY 2023

THE TREND

“There’s two things I deeply believe,” Wang says. “One, AI is a huge force for good, and it needs to be applied as broadly as possible. Two, we need to make sure that America is in a leadership position.” So far Scale has made $60.6 million from such contracts, according to a government database. The company touted a $249 million award in a press release last year—but the Defense Department told Forbes it is one of more than 70 companies eligible for the money. Scale has so far received one contract capped at $15 million and no payouts have materialized yet. The lion’s share of government spending on AI is still going to the likes of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, not Silicon Valley upstarts. “Those companies, they’re really not that cuttingedge when it comes to understanding generative AI,” Wang says. For him, government partnership is a long game. The U.S. government has already used Scale’s expertise to make strategic sense of satellite imagery in Ukraine. And that’s just the beginning. Generative AI, he says, could someday be used more comprehensively. Train a custom AI model on live data from America’s 1.3 million active service personnel and you might just change the nature of war. But it won’t be easy to get there. Generative AI models require far more complex training than their precursors. They too need additional human help, but instead of simply labeling data harvested from the internet, people need to create it. For AI to explain why puppies are cute in a way that sounds right to the human ear, you need people to train it using natural phrasing. “Human-annotated data turns out to be extraordinarily impactful to model performance,” says Aidan Gomez, cofounder of Cohere, a Toronto-based OpenAI competitor that counts Scale as its primary custom data provider. Not all AI companies are sold on Scale. OpenAI, for example, relies on Scale’s human labelers but opts to use its own software to manage the data, says cofounder Wojciech Zaremba. Three engineering leaders who used Scale at prominent

• THOUGHTS ON •

Security “If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helterskelter style that will at first appear to you to be crazy.”

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends.”

—Jon Krakauer “True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.”

—Helen Keller “Was any future, anyone’s future, unfraught by hazards of some sort? The only security was death.” —Winston Graham

—Tom Robbins “How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm.”

“You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about you and take your rest in safety.”

—Sylvia Plath

—Job 11:18

“Happiness has many roots, but none more important than security.” —E.R. Stettinius Jr. “There is not much collective security in a flock of sheep on the way to the butcher.” —Winston Churchill “When what we believe we’ve mastered is no longer predictable, we’re not fine. The world suddenly is a very scary place. It loses its charm.” —Patricia Cornwell F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M

Helen Keller

“I suppose that’s a common conceit, that you’ve already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.”

defense? Speed, some poison in the leaf, the tongue, the tail?”

—Lionel Shriver

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”

“Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.” —Carl von Clausewitz “Did not everything on God’s earth have or acquire

—Toni Morrison

—Voltaire “There’s always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there’s always a siren.”

FINAL THOUGHT

“When the times are out of joint, attend to your knitting.”

—B.C. Forbes

—Caitlín R. Kiernan MAY 2023

IAMGE FROM WIKIPEDIA.ORG

THOUGHTS

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

MAY 2023

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

MAY 2023