UAE family conglomerates Al Futtaim and Al Zarooni have acquired "significant" minority stakes in lifestyle app The Entertainer and will partner with majority shareholder GFH Financial Group to expand its reach.
GFH Capital, a unit of Bahraini GFH Financial Group, has signed an investment agreement with Al Futtaim Group and Al Zarooni Emirates Investments to accelerate the app's next phase of growth, it said in a statement on Saturday. GFH and its investors aim to double The Entertainer's size over the next three years, it said, without providing specifics.
"Al Futtaim, given their network of retail and customers, will add a new scale to The Entertainer," a GFH spokesperson told The National on Saturday, declining to comment on the value or size of the stake.
The partnership will extend The Entertainer's reach across Al Futtaim's umbrella of more than 200 brands in the automotive, retail, real estate and financial services sectors spanning 29 countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The privately-held Al Futtaim group will also extend its physical store presence with access to a wider digital platform.
In May, GFH announced its acquisition of 85 per cent of the UAE-based app, where it will hold about 5 to 10 per cent of the stake and the remainder to be owned by investors and managed by GFH. The Bahrain-based company will invest up to $150 million in The Entertainer throughout the holding period.
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“With the support of GFH and our investors, we expect to accelerate plans to capture the vast potential that exists for the company both within the region and globally,” Sheikh Ahmed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, chairman of GFH Capital, said. “We are delighted to invest in the high-growth technology sector in the region.”
The Entertainer was founded in 2001 in the UAE by Australian businesswoman Donna Benton, who still owns 15 per cent of the company that Al Futtaim describes as a market leader in the Middle East.
“We see great potential in both the technology and lifestyle sectors,” Marwan Shehadeh, group director of corporate development at Al Futtaim, said. “We are confident that Al Futtaim’s strong international reach can add value to the company’s efforts to further build its customer and merchant networks throughout the Middle East and Asia, where we have long established relationships and exposure to the world’s leading lifestyle brands.”
The Entertainer offers consumers across the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa discounts on spa days, brunches, hotel stays and golf, among other deals.
The company launched an app in 2013 and has since shifted to become a data-driven tehnology set up with 38 destination-specific products and tailored B2B solutions for corporate clients with offers from over 10,000 customers.
Al Zarooni Emirates Investments, the second strategic partner with a stake in the business, is a UAE holding company managing a part of Al Zarooni’s family assets in private equity, public equity, investments funds and real estate, according to its website.
Jassim Alseddiqi, the newly appointed chairman of The Entertainer, is also the chairman of GFH and chief executive of Abu Dhabi Financial Group.
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Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech / PropTech
Initial investment: $650,000
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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