Touring the upscale Egyptian beach resort that has taken him more than a decade to build, the Gulf’s most prolific billionaire businessman frequently has to pause for curious guests seeking selfies.
Mohamed Alabbar’s rising profile outside his native United Arab Emirates points to a new phase for the 68-year-old behind the world’s biggest shopping centre and its tallest skyscraper, Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa, respectively.
Credited with a key role in building modern Dubai, the hard-charging founder of state-backed developer Emaar has embarked on a renewed international expansion. Although his attempted overseas forays in the early 2000s hit snags, Alabbar’s empire of influence now stretches from the vast Marassi development on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast to Serbia and even Madagascar, mirroring the UAE’s push beyond its borders.
“We are a small country,” Alabbar told the Financial Times. But by investing in countries often overlooked by western investors, he added, “can we have a one-billion population economy?”
For his second act, the real estate mogul is leading another development company: Eagle Hills, a private investment fund backed by wealthy Abu Dhabi families.
Meanwhile, he and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund own a majority stake in the region’s biggest fast food group, Americana, and, in 2016, Alabbar launched ecommerce company Noon to compete with Amazon in the Middle East. Alabbar chairs UAE digital lender Zand Bank and oversees Emaar — which is listed and also operates malls and hotels — as the group’s managing director.
Although seen as a maverick, few non-royals in the region enjoy Alabbar’s proximity to power. A lieutenant to Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, he has also forged ties with Abu Dhabi’s royal family and regularly accompanies UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan on overseas visits.
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Armani chief executive Giuseppe Marsocci, with whom Alabbar has worked on branded residences and hotels, described him as “culturally open-minded” with “very detailed attention” to projects. “He doesn’t accept the first idea,” he added. “He wants to go deeper”.
Alabbar and Dubai have been buoyed by a property boom fuelled by unprecedented population growth as foreigners flock to the safe, low-tax UAE.
But he had modest beginnings: the son of a twice-shipwrecked dhow captain and one of 13 children, Alabbar grew up in a two-room state-provided home that he also shared with two cows. He despises the billionaire label, considering it “impolite” for reserved Emirati culture. “I came from social housing,” he said. “I belong there.”
After graduating in 1981 from Seattle University on a UAE government scholarship, Alabbar worked at the central bank before being made director of a Dubai investment company in Singapore, whose mall holdings exposed him to the Asian financial hub’s cut-throat retail market. He returned to Dubai in the early 1990s to found a new government department dedicated to economic development, and oversaw several other state-owned companies.
As development surged after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum became Dubai’s crown prince and de facto ruler in 1995, Alabbar started raising money for a real estate company. With the venture blessed by Sheikh Mohammed in 1997, Emaar was given prime land, which was ultimately swapped for a stake in the company that the Dubai government still holds.
The exclusive 7km beachfront of Egypt’s Marassi resort has been derided by some as a ‘copy and paste’ of Dubai © Sarah ElMasry/FT
Emaar and Alabbar were roiled by Dubai’s first spectacular property crash, triggered by the global financial crisis, while he lost millions in US property and mining ventures in Africa. And Alabbar has his detractors: not everyone in the Dubai market approves of his fast-talking style and pushy approach.
His management style is that of a “megalomaniac”, according to one executive who has worked with Alabbar.
But the businessman has maintained a reputation for rapid completion, which is important currency in an oil-rich region with huge ambitions.
“His track record of project delivery was much stronger than his rivals’,” said Jim Krane, author of Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City, and he “retained credibility after the crash”.
Alabbar said that during “20 years of experience, I made a few mistakes. Maybe I’m a better manager now”.
He has now set his sights beyond the UAE. Emaar has operations in countries including Egypt and India, while Eagle Hills is working on multibillion-dollar waterfront developments in Belgrade and Riga, as well as on a beachfront and marina on Albania’s Adriatic coast. It also owns hotels in Croatia, Munich and Muscat, and in September announced a planned $5.5bn investment in Georgia for two developments, including in the capital Tbilisi.
The developer’s appetite for new projects is ferocious.
Mohamed Alabbar argues that developments such as Marassi, although designed for the rich, help to create employment and boost tax revenues © Sarah ElMasry/FT
“I want to build my own Bali,” Alabbar enthused about a resort he is designing in Madagascar. In Montenegro, he plans “something really large”, while he said land had been earmarked for Eagle Hills in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje, and that he was also exploring a hill town in the country for a summer resort.
But Alabbar’s global expansion has also drawn criticism. The exclusive 7km beachfront of Emaar’s Marassi, derided by some as a “copy and paste” of Dubai, is part of what some Egyptians have nicknamed “the evil coast” for pricing out most of the public. Similar accusations of building an elitist enclave have followed the Serbian development.
Alabbar stressed that he wanted to undertake projects that were welcomed by local communities. While acknowledging that developments such as Marassi and Belgrade’s waterfront were designed for the rich, he argued that they created employment, boosted tax revenues and gave wealthy people an option to spend money at home rather than abroad.
“People have luxury living in Singapore, Beijing, Beverly Hills, Mayfair,” he said. “Why can’t we, in Egypt, have a Mayfair? Give us a piece of the rich people here.”
Meanwhile, activists in Serbia have criticised the award of the huge Belgrade waterfront project to Eagle Hills, alleging that the process was not transparent. Albania’s Durrës port project, which also had no public tender and was initially linked to Emaar, has come under fire from opposition lawmakers. Other critics argue that Emaar and Eagle Hills act as tools of UAE soft power, spreading the country’s influence abroad.
Dubai Mall, the world’s biggest shopping centre, is owned by Emaar © Christopher Pike/Bloomberg
But Alabbar insisted independent auditors had drawn up the Serbian and Albanian contracts, while arguing that Albania had been unable to find other investors willing to take on the port development. And he contended that singling out the UAE for leveraging commercial clout abroad was unfair, citing Donald Trump’s demand that a US company take control of the Panama Canal.
Emirati businesses “are not directed by the government to go buy a port from the Chinese”, Alabbar insisted. “We never behave like that”.
While he linked Emaar and Eagle Hills’ willingness to do business in often underinvested markets to the UAE’s own experience of rapid growth, he said they existed to make a profit.
“Forty years ago . . . we wanted somebody to come and do development in our country,” he said, and Emiratis now felt “emotional” to be able to say “we will help you” to the people of Serbia. “But please, we have to make some money.”
Since unifying in 1971 after discovering oil in the late 1950s, the UAE has ascended from relative impoverishment at breakneck speed. The country “is only 50 years old”, said Alabbar. “We’re young, we have to work day and night to make it.”
Longtime business associate Ramesh Prabhakar, vice-chair and managing partner of Dubai-based luxury group Rivoli, said Alabbar was “impatient”. But “in an emerging market . . . there’s no tomorrow. You’ve got to get it done today”.
Resort villas and palm trees line a winding waterway at Marassi © Sarah ElMasry/FT
Given his reputation as a demanding boss, some candidates invited to interview for roles at Emaar did not even turn up, Alabbar said. He described his management style as loyal and generous but conceded he could be harsh. When executives made mistakes, he said, “I don’t give two chances”.
He “will not tolerate fools”, said Prabhakar. “There is only one captain of the ship.”
Alabbar’s vaulting expansionism contrasts with a micro-managerial obsession with cost-cutting. He recently slashed Emaar’s office tea selection from three types to one, and to improve productivity, he banned meetings at the group during September — although he said staff could request permission for meetings from the group’s chief executive.
“When things are going well, I squeeze efficiency ratios to the max . . . in case something happens, we’re fit”, he said, adding: “I’m a paranoid guy.” Alabbar credited this impulse to his experience in Singapore and his work with executives from the cost-conscious Indian market.
Although Alabbar accepts he is profit-driven, Prabhakar said the real estate tycoon had in recent years developed “a more human element” and now considered business from the standpoint of “a larger good”. In his foreign ventures, Prabhakar said, Alabbar wanted to “lift communities and bring in some islands of excellence”.
Standing on top of one of Marassi’s many luxury hotels, offering a view of the turquoise Mediterranean and a villa where Egypt’s president sometimes stays, Alabbar scanned the sprawling property for potential improvements. He said he had changed the flowers across the entire resort a few weeks earlier, judging the previous blooms insufficiently colourful. He had arrived by private jet from Angola, where an Emirati delegation had inked business deals.
But despite his apparent restlessness, Alabbar said he was enjoying a career high: “I open my iPad and it’s about Madagascar . . . it’s about Noon, autonomous vehicles. And then it’s about Montenegro. What a lucky man I am.”