RAK Properties appoints Sameh Al Muhtadi as chief executive

UAE real estate developer RAK Properties has appointed Sameh Al Muhtadi as its new chief executive, the company said on Wednesday.

Mr Al Muhtadi, who has previously worked with real estate companies in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the US, joined the company on August 22 after completing the required contractual process, RAK Properties said in a brief statement to the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, where its shares are traded.

He was the chief executive of Abu Dhabi’s Bloom Holding from 2014 to 2019 and most recently the president of Al Futtaim Contracting in Dubai, according to his LinkedIn page.

Mr Al Muhtadi was also the chief executive of Emaar in Cairo from 2007 to 2010.

The new appointment comes as the UAE’s property market rebounds from the coronavirus pandemic with property transaction numbers increasing across the country.

Pent-up demand and improved investor sentiment as well as new initiatives, such as visas for retirees and the expansion of the 10-year golden visa programme, have helped to drive property sales up.

Abu Dhabi recorded 7,474 property transactions worth more than Dh22.51 billion ($6.12bn) in the first six months of the year, data released by the emirate's Department of Municipalities and Transport last month showed.

Dubai, meanwhile, registered 25,972 property transactions in the first quarter of this year, the highest number of quarterly deals since 2010, according to Mo’asher, the emirate’s official sales price index issued by the Dubai Land Department in partnership with Property Finder.

The Dubai market also hit a 12-year high for the month of July in terms of the number of sales, a report by Property Finder showed.

RAK Properties' Mina Al Arab development in Ras Al Khaimah. Satish Kumar / The National

RAK Properties is developing the Dh10bn Mina Al Arab master development off the coast of Ras Al Khaimah as well as other projects in the emirate.

The company reported a loss of Dh4.9 million in the second quarter of this year compared with a profit of Dh55.6m during the same period last year, as a result of lower revenue, its financial statement showed.

THE BIO

Age: 33

Favourite quote: “If you’re going through hell, keep going” Winston Churchill

Favourite breed of dog: All of them. I can’t possibly pick a favourite.

Favourite place in the UAE: The Stray Dogs Centre in Umm Al Quwain. It sounds predictable, but it honestly is my favourite place to spend time. Surrounded by hundreds of dogs that love you - what could possibly be better than that?

Favourite colour: All the colours that dogs come in

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.