Naguib Sawiris, the chairman of Orascom Telecom, re-launched his property unit Gemini as Ora Developers at Cityscape Global in Dubai this week Diego Levy/Bloomberg
Naguib Sawiris, the chairman of Orascom Telecom, re-launched his property unit Gemini as Ora Developers at Cityscape Global in Dubai this week Diego Levy/Bloomberg
Naguib Sawiris, the chairman of Orascom Telecom, re-launched his property unit Gemini as Ora Developers at Cityscape Global in Dubai this week Diego Levy/Bloomberg
Naguib Sawiris, the chairman of Orascom Telecom, re-launched his property unit Gemini as Ora Developers at Cityscape Global in Dubai this week Diego Levy/Bloomberg

Property

Egypt’s Sawiris re-launches property unit with $2bn build target

Ora Developers to build mixed-use projects across the Middle East and Europe

Sarah Townsend

October 03, 2018

  • English
  • Arabic

Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris has re-launched his real estate entity Gemini Global Development, forming a new venture called Ora Developers with a target to build $2 billion (Dh7.34bn) of property in the coming five years, its chief operating officer said.

"Our target is to construct $2bn of property across the Middle East in the next three to five years," Haitham Mohamed, who is also a board member at Ora Developers, told The National during the Cityscape Global conference in Dubai on Tuesday.

“The developments will be based on our lifestyle destinations model and have the same standards of design and construction as our current projects.”

As Gemini, the company launched in 2016 and has a $2.5bn global real estate portfolio comprising the Silver Sands mixed-use scheme in Grenada, Ayia Napa Marina in Cyrus, and the Eighteen luxury residential project in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The portfolio includes a total of 2,500 homes, three hotels, retail facilities and a marina and the company has several schemes in the pipeline in Egypt.

As chairman and chief executive of Ora Developers, Mr Sawiris intends to re-position the company as a creator of high-quality lifestyle destinations. “We want our new brand to be seen as a stamp of excellence for our existing and future developments,” he said in a statement to media on Tuesday.

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Mr Sawiris is the former chief executive of Orascom Telecom Media and Technology – he stepped down in 2017 but remains as the company’s chairman – and the Sawiris family-owned Orascom conglomerate spans construction, tourism, manufacturing and technology, as well as telecoms.

Ora Developers’ planned projects in the Middle East are likely to include a mix of holiday resorts, residences, villas and marinas built in locations of “natural beauty”, with cultural and heritage elements, according to the company.

The first project the company unveiled as Ora Developers was the Eighteen Islamabad project earlier this year, targeted at wealthy overseas Pakistanis.

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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

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