Naguib Sawiris
| Naguib Sawiris | |
|---|---|
| نجيب ساويرس | |
 | |
| Born | Naguib Onsi Sawiris June 15, 1954 (age 72) Cairo, Egypt |
| Nationality | Egyptian-American |
| Citizenship | Egypt; United States |
| Religion | Coptic Orthodox Church |
| Education | German Evangelical School, Giza ETH Zurich (mechanical engineering; MSc, technical administration) |
| Alma mater | ETH Zurich |
| Occupation | Business executive, investor |
| Years active | 1979–present |
| Employer | Orascom |
| Company | Orascom Investment Holding |
| Organization | Orascom Investment Holding; La Mancha Holding; Ora Developers |
| Title | Chairman of Orascom Investment Holding; former chairman and chief executive of Orascom Telecom Holding |
| Known for | Building Orascom Telecom into a leading operator across the Middle East, Africa and Asia; founding the Free Egyptians Party |
| Political party | Free Egyptians Party (founder, 2011) |
| Parents | Onsi Sawiris Yousriya Loza Sawiris |
| Relatives | Nassef Sawiris (brother) Samih Sawiris (brother) |
Naguib Onsi Sawiris (نجيب ساويرس; born 15 June 1954) is an Egyptian-American business executive who built Orascom Telecom Holding into one of the largest mobile operators in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, and who is chairman of Orascom Investment Holding. He is the eldest of the three sons of Onsi Sawiris, and a member of the family that is the most prominent in Egyptian business.
Sawiris joined the family firm in 1979 after training as a mechanical engineer at ETH Zurich, and worked on its railway, information technology and telecommunications businesses. When Orascom was divided into separate operating companies in the late 1990s, he took the telecommunications arm, Orascom Telecom Holding, established in 1997.
The company pursued mobile licences in markets that larger international operators regarded as too difficult — Algeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Tunisia and elsewhere — on the judgment that penetration in poor and unstable countries would rise faster than conventional analysis assumed, and that the risk was manageable by an operator prepared to be present. At its peak Orascom Telecom served more than 100 million subscribers across a footprint no Western operator had attempted.
Sawiris sold his telecommunications interests to the Russian group VimpelCom in a transaction from which he raised more than US$4 billion in 2014, after a protracted dispute with the Algerian government over its expropriation of the group's Algerian operator, Djezzy. He has since built a diversified portfolio including La Mancha Holding, a gold and mining investment vehicle, and Ora Developers, a property business with projects in Egypt, Cyprus, Grenada, Pakistan and Iraq.
He founded the Free Egyptians Party in 2011 following the fall of Hosni Mubarak, intending it as a secular liberal alternative to the Islamist parties that dominated the first post-revolutionary elections. He was dismissed from the party in February 2017 after a dispute over its governance. As a Coptic Christian who speaks publicly on Egyptian politics, on religion and on regional affairs, he is among the most visible and most contested businessmen in the Arab world.
Background
The Sawiris family
The family's business dates to Onsi Sawiris, Naguib's father, who founded a construction contractor in Upper Egypt in 1950. The business was nationalized under Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1961, and Onsi Sawiris left for Libya, returning after Nasser's death to rebuild under Anwar Sadat's infitah, the economic opening of the 1970s.
The rebuilt group, Orascom — a contraction of Onsi Sawiris and Company — expanded through construction, and later into telecommunications, tourism, technology and industry. It was divided in the late 1990s among the founder's three sons: Naguib took telecommunications, Nassef took construction and industry through Orascom Construction Industries, and Samih took tourism and hotels through Orascom Hotels and Development. All three became billionaires, an outcome without parallel in Egyptian business.
The family is Coptic Orthodox, a minority of roughly a tenth of Egypt's population, and their prominence has been both a source of pride within that community and a factor in the political hostility they have periodically attracted.
Telecommunications in emerging markets
The commercial insight underlying Orascom Telecom concerned the economics of mobile networks in poor countries.
Conventional analysis in the 1990s held that mobile telephony was a service for the affluent, and that in countries with low incomes and negligible fixed-line infrastructure, penetration would remain small. Orascom's judgment was the opposite: that the absence of fixed lines was an advantage rather than an obstacle, since mobile faced no incumbent to displace; that prepaid billing removed the credit risk that made poor customers unattractive; and that demand for communication is not a luxury good.
The judgment proved correct across the developing world, and the operators that acted on it early — Orascom, MTN of South Africa, and later Bharti Airtel — obtained positions that later entrants could not dislodge.
The associated risk was political rather than commercial. Licences in such markets are granted by governments, and an operator that becomes valuable becomes a target for renegotiation, taxation or expropriation. Orascom's history contains repeated instances, of which Algeria was the most costly.
Early life and education
Naguib Onsi Sawiris was born in Cairo on 15 June 1954 to Onsi Sawiris and Yousriya Loza Sawiris, into a Coptic Orthodox family. He is the eldest of three brothers; Nassef and Samih Sawiris are also billionaires.
He was educated at the German Evangelical School in Giza, which gave him fluent German, and studied at ETH Zurich, taking a diploma in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in technical administration.
The family's experience of nationalization under Nasser — the loss of the business his father had built, and the years in Libya — is a formative element in accounts of his outlook, and he has referred to it in explaining his political positions on property and on the role of the state.
Business career
Orascom
Sawiris joined the family business in 1979 and worked on the development of its railway, information technology and telecommunications activities.
Orascom's management divided the group into separate operating companies in the late 1990s: Orascom Telecom Holding, Orascom Construction Industries, Orascom Hotels and Development, and Orascom Technology Systems. Orascom Telecom Holding was established in 1997 under Naguib Sawiris.
Orascom Telecom
The company acquired mobile licences across a wide and unconventional footprint.
In Egypt it operated Mobinil, in partnership with France Télécom. In Algeria it built Djezzy, which became the country's leading operator and the group's most profitable asset. In Pakistan it operated Mobilink, for a period the largest operator in that market; in Bangladesh, Banglalink; in Tunisia, Tunisiana; and it held interests in Iraq, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Burundi, Namibia and elsewhere.
In 2008 Orascom Telecom signed an agreement to build and operate the first mobile network in North Korea, through the joint venture Koryolink — a transaction unavailable to Western operators for legal and reputational reasons, which acquired several hundred thousand subscribers before the group's ability to repatriate profits proved illusory. Sawiris visited Pyongyang and met senior officials, and the venture became the most frequently cited illustration of his appetite for markets others avoided.
At its height the group served more than 100 million subscribers.
Weather Investments and the VimpelCom transaction
Sawiris assembled the European operator Wind Telecomunicazioni in Italy and Wind Hellas in Greece through the holding company Weather Investments, financed with substantial debt.
In 2011 Weather Investments and Orascom Telecom's assets were combined with the Russian operator VimpelCom in a transaction that made VimpelCom one of the largest mobile groups in the world and gave Sawiris a significant shareholding in it. He sold his stake in the telecommunications companies to VimpelCom in 2014, raising more than US$4 billion.
The residual Egyptian and other assets were retained in Orascom Telecom Media and Technology, established in 2011 and later renamed Orascom Investment Holding.
The Algerian dispute
The most damaging episode of Sawiris's career concerned Djezzy, the Algerian operator that was Orascom Telecom's most valuable asset.
Relations between Orascom and the Algerian government deteriorated from 2008, in a dispute that took the form of tax assessments running into billions of dollars, restrictions on the repatriation of profits, a bar on importing equipment, and a prohibition on the sale of the company to a third party. The government asserted a right of pre-emption and pursued acquisition of the business on its own terms.
Sawiris has consistently characterized the episode as expropriation. It contributed directly to the decision to exit telecommunications, and the Algerian state ultimately acquired a controlling interest in Djezzy through its sovereign fund in a settlement concluded in 2014.
The dispute is frequently cited in analysis of political risk in emerging market telecommunications as the clearest instance of the vulnerability an operator accepts when it builds a valuable asset under a licence a government can revisit.
Later ventures
Sawiris resigned as chief executive of Orascom Telecom Media and Technology in December 2016. He is chairman of Orascom Investment Holding.
He was appointed chairman of La Mancha Holding in August 2012, a mining investment company through which he has invested in gold, with interests in Africa, Canada and Côte d'Ivoire and a stated strategy of acquiring and financing mining assets to benefit from the rising value of gold. In 2023 he was reported to be considering an investment in Barrick Gold's Reko Diq copper and gold project in Pakistan, valued at about US$7 billion.
Ora Developers, launched in 2016 as Gemini Global Development, holds a property portfolio reported at US$2.5 billion including the Silver Sands mixed-use development in Grenada, the Ayia Napa Marina in Cyprus and the Eighteen residential project in Islamabad, alongside substantial Egyptian developments.
On 31 January 2024 the Iraqi government signed a contract with Ora Developers to build the largest residential city in Iraq, named Ali Al-Wardi City after the Iraqi sociologist. Located about 25 kilometres south-east of Baghdad and covering 61 million square metres, the project is planned to comprise 120,000 housing units with green space, urban amenities and smart-city systems, and is intended to relieve population pressure on Baghdad.
Media
Sawiris acquired a majority stake in the pan-European television channel Euronews in early 2015, remaining its principal shareholder until beginning a sale to Alpac Capital in December 2021.
He founded the Egyptian channel ONTV, which became among the more prominent private broadcasters in the country during and after the 2011 revolution, and sold his stake in May 2016 to Ahmed Abou Hashima.
Politics
The Free Egyptians Party
Following the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, Sawiris founded the Free Egyptians Party, intended as a secular, liberal and pro-market alternative in a political landscape in which the organized alternatives to the former regime were principally Islamist.
The party contested the 2011–12 parliamentary elections as part of the Egyptian Bloc, and became one of the larger secular formations, though far behind the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafist Nour Party. It performed considerably better in the 2015 elections, becoming the largest party in the House of Representatives.
Sawiris's public opposition to the Brotherhood, and his financing of a secular party as a Coptic businessman, made him a target of hostility from Islamist movements. In 2011 he circulated a cartoon depicting Mickey Mouse bearded and Minnie Mouse veiled, which prompted accusations of contempt for religion, a lawsuit, and calls for a boycott of Mobinil; he apologized, saying he had not intended offence.
Removal from the party
The party's annual assembly resolved in late December 2016, in Sawiris's absence, to abolish its board of trustees, of which he was a member. The board sought a postponement of the vote and characterized it as a coup, and the party divided between supporters of Sawiris and of its president, Essam Khalil.
Sawiris was dismissed from the party in February 2017 after declining to appear before it on charges of having insulted the board of trustees. Accounts differ on his subsequent status; the party official Ragy Soliman stated that he remained a member and a trustee.
Public positions
Sawiris is among the most outspoken businessmen in the Arab world and comments frequently on politics, religion and regional affairs, principally through social media.
He supported the removal of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and the subsequent government, positions that drew criticism from those who regarded the events as a coup. He has spoken repeatedly about the position of Coptic Christians in Egypt and about sectarian violence, and has taken positions on Egyptian economic policy, currency devaluation and subsidy reform that have sometimes placed him at odds with the government he supported.
In September 2015, at the height of the movement of Syrian refugees into Europe, he publicly offered to buy an island from Greece or Italy to house several hundred thousand refugees, proposing to build housing and infrastructure and to employ the residents in constructing it. He acknowledged that the proposal faced obstacles of jurisdiction and customs regulation, and it was not pursued; the offer was widely reported and variously described as a serious humanitarian proposal and as impractical.
Wealth
Sawiris's fortune derives principally from the 2014 sale of his telecommunications interests, which raised more than US$4 billion, and subsequently from mining, property and investment holdings. He holds Egyptian and American citizenship.
He and his brothers Nassef and Samih have appeared together on international billionaire lists, an unusual concentration within one family and the basis of the family's standing in Egyptian public life.
Philanthropy
The family operates the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development, established in 2001 by Naguib's mother Yousriya Loza Sawiris, which funds education, training, healthcare and employment programmes in Egypt and is among the largest private foundations in the country.
The foundation awards the Sawiris Cultural Award, one of Egypt's more substantial literary prizes, and has funded scholarship programmes at Egyptian and foreign universities.
Personal life
Sawiris is married and has four children. He divides his time between Cairo and Europe, and is known for a direct and often combative public manner, particularly on social media, where he engages with critics personally to an extent unusual among executives of his standing.
He is a member of the Coptic Orthodox Church, and his religious identity is a recurring element in Egyptian commentary about him, both from supporters who regard him as a representative of a minority community that has been politically marginalized and from detractors who have used it against him.
Assessment
Sawiris's commercial record rests on a judgment made early and pursued consistently: that mobile telephony in poor and politically unstable countries would grow faster than the international industry expected, and that an operator willing to accept the political risk could obtain positions unavailable elsewhere. The judgment was correct, and Orascom Telecom's footprint across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia — assembled at prices no Western operator would have paid and in countries several of them would not enter — was among the more original constructions in the industry's history.
The same judgment produced the reverse. An asset that becomes valuable under a licence granted by a government in a country without reliable legal recourse is exposed to that government, and the Algerian dispute demonstrated the exposure at its fullest. The North Korean venture illustrated a related limit: subscribers were acquired and revenue was recorded, but the profits could not be extracted.
Assessments of his political role divide along the lines of Egyptian politics itself. Supporters regard the founding of a secular liberal party in 2011, at his own expense and at some personal risk, as a substantial civic act in a country where such parties had no organizational base. Critics regard his subsequent support for the government that took power in 2013 as inconsistent with the liberalism the party professed, and note that he was removed from the organization he had founded within six years.
What is not disputed is his visibility. Among Arab businessmen of comparable wealth, few speak publicly at all; Sawiris does so continuously, and the consequences, commercial and political, have followed him throughout his career.
See also
References