Nassef Sawiris (Net worth: $6.3 B)
Nassef Sawiris is Egypt’s richest man with a fortune Forbes estimates at $7.2 billion. 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. He owns 30 percent of OCI, a Geleen, Netherlands-based contractor which was formed out of a demerger from his family’s original business, Orascom Contruction. His holdings include stakes in cement giant Lafarge Holcim and Adidas. Last July, he teamed up with Fortress Investment Group’s Wes Edens to purchase a majority stake in Aston Villa Football Club.
Here is how his story to riches panned out:
His father founded a construction company in 1950. By the time Sawiris was eight years old, it had become one of Egypt’s largest contractors, building roads and waterways along Egypt’s upper Nile region. The business was nationalized in 1961 by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and renamed El Nasr Civil Works Company.
After a couple of years, his dad founded a new company called Orascom Construction Industries. Nassef, who left for college in the U.S. returned in 1982 with a degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He rejoined his father and two older brothers at OCI, which by that time had diversified into communications and real estate. By the end of the decade, the company had split into three separate entities: Orascom Telecom, helmed by the oldest brother Naguib; Orascom Hotels and Development, headed by the middle brother Samih; and Orascom Construction, now led by Nassef. As CEO, he focused on expanding the business abroad and into a new sector — cement and building materials — a division he sold to Lafarge in 2008 for $12.8 billion.
That same year, he entered the fertilizer business with the purchase of Egyptian Fertilizer Company. Through the expansion of its own operations and acquisitions, Orascom’s fertilizer operation grew to become the world’s third-largest nitrogen-based fertilizer producer.
In January 2013, a consortium of investors led by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, invested $1 billion in Orascom Construction Industries to help the Sawiris family transfer the company’s listing from the Cairo Stock Exchange to NYSE Euronext Amsterdam. The company, renamed OCI, started trading in Amsterdam on Jan. 25, 2013. Two years later, OCI spun off its construction business into a separate company, dual-listed on the Dubai and Cairo stock exchanges.
