Egypt’s richest man Nassef Sawiris considers breaking up his empire

Nassef Sawiris is considering a radical overhaul of his chemicals and fertiliser empire that could include further breaking up his main holding and offloading its parts, after $7bn in asset sales over the past two months.

Egypt’s richest man, whose personal assets include English football club Aston Villa, said he was looking into a complete transformation of the business that forms the core of his fortune, Dutch-listed chemicals group OCI.

One option includes turning it into a cash-shell company that pursues acquisitions in new industries, the 63-year-old billionaire told the Financial Times in a rare interview.

“We’re evaluating what we want to do, not just with the money [from the asset sales] but as a team,” he said. “And maybe OCI stays with a piece or two pieces and it becomes a cash cow, and becomes a machine for further investment. We’re quite open-minded.”

Speaking from his offices overlooking London’s Berkeley Square, he added: “It doesn’t have to be fertiliser, doesn’t have to be chemicals. If all of OCI is sold, the core team . . . know that we are serial entrepreneurs and we’re going to do something.” 

The comments follow a flurry of deal activity at OCI in response to pressure from US activist investor Jeff Ubben, as well as within Sawiris’ NNS Group family office.

Sawiris, whose wealth Forbes estimates at more than $8bn, has quietly amassed a broad portfolio of investments through NSS that includes Aston Villa as well as stakes in German sportswear group Adidas and Denmark-headquartered café chain Joe & The Juice.

But OCI, where he holds an almost 40 per cent stake and his family a further 14 per cent, has been his focus for much of the past year.

OCI’s board in May approved a strategic review of all business lines as well as its listing venue of the Netherlands after Ubben bought a 5 per cent stake and pressed the group to explore options, including asset sales to improve shareholder returns.

By the end of the year OCI had agreed to offload two fertiliser holdings for about $3.6bn apiece, to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Koch Industries of the US.

Sawiris said Ubben, who was “not hostile at all”, had written a letter explaining how OCI’s market value was far less than the sum of its parts.

“So I told him, actually, the letter makes sense,” he said, adding that “ultimately we went along with Jeff’s recommendation. Within six months we had executed those two transactions, and there’s more to come.”

“We always say that we are builders, not holders,” Sawiris said. “We build assets. But if this asset is worth more to another party than it’s worth in the context of OCI or the public company or of myself, then that is the more deserving owner.”

Ubben told the FT that Sawiris and OCI had been penalised for investing in cleaner technologies. “It’s a really interesting, cautionary tale,” he said, adding that his relationship with Sawiris was “collaborative”.

“He’s all about what is the lowest-risk, highest-reward path and I don’t know why the market hasn’t figured that out.”

Shares in OCI have risen 50 per cent since they fell to a multiyear low before the fertiliser deals in December.

Now investors are watching to see what OCI will do with its methanol business and a low-carbon ammonia project in Texas. Alongside its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, the group said it would use the proceeds of its transactions to reduce debt and distribute at least $3bn to shareholders this year. 

The businessman is the youngest son of the late Onsi Sawiris, who founded a construction company in the 1950s and built it over decades into a large multinational corporation now called Orascom Construction.

As the business grew, the family sought ways to diversify its activities, entering the cement industry and expanding operations from Egypt into other emerging markets.

His two brothers also brought the family into new industries — the eldest, Naguib, built a telecoms empire before selling it and now invests in gold mines, while middle child Samih has invested in the tourism industry.

Orascom sold off its cement business to Lafarge in 2007 in a €10.2bn deal under which Sawiris gained a sizeable stake in the French group as well as two board seats.

The Orascom assets sold in the deal included a plant in Syria that ultimately led to hefty fines for Lafarge due to providing payments to Isis, as well as a stake in a North Korean state-owned cement plant.

The Lafarge transaction gave Sawiris a front-row seat for the French group’s 2015 merger with Swiss rival Holcim that created the world’s largest cement company. Sawiris, who had been one of the largest shareholders in the merged LafargeHolcim, sold out in 2019 after years of watching the combination fail to deliver on the promise of the tie-up.

He then shifted his attention to fertiliser, with the remainder of OCI focusing on the chemicals business.

“There is only one thing in common” between the cement and fertiliser sectors, he said. “Cheap energy helps both industries. But cement is a local business — fertiliser and chemicals are global.”

The fertiliser industry has come under scrutiny for its heavy carbon footprint. Sawiris said OCI was pursuing production of “blue ammonia”, which can vastly reduce emissions.

Sawiris recently redomiciled NNS from Luxembourg to Abu Dhabi, choosing the emirate, where he is a rare outsider to have been granted citizenship, as a base for its combination of “English law without English weather”.

“You get in democracies in Europe constant changes and all that,” he said. “I think Abu Dhabi offers stability and perfect governance.”

However, he is sensitive to the suggestion that his family is drifting away from Egypt. The Sawiris, who are Coptic Christians, were targeted with tax grabs and a travel ban under former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who swept to power in 2012 in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings but was later deposed in a coup.

Orascom remains in the family, held separately from OCI, and is Egypt’s largest private employer with more than 60,000 local staff. The construction company is one of the leading businesses contracted to build the mega-projects that have been a hallmark of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime.

From London and Abu Dhabi, Sawiris is building NNS into a holding company that can manage his various investments — including Aston Villa.

He and US billionaire Wes Edens, co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, acquired a 55 per cent stake in the club for £30mn in 2018, rescuing it from financial crisis.

A year later it was promoted to the lucrative Premier League and Sawiris has since expanded his stable of sports assets under his and Edens’ V Sports, including a stake in Portuguese club Vitória.

The group announced in December that US investor Atairos had become a minority partner in V Sports, with people familiar with the matter saying the roughly 20 per cent stake valued Aston Villa at more than £500mn.

While Sawiris’ bet appears to be paying off, he insisted he was not in Aston Villa for the money.

“Anybody who does football and says this is a pure investment, in 95 per cent of the case he’s a liar,” Sawiris said. “It’s a passion. It’s addictive. And it can ruin your weekend and go into the following week.”

He said owning the club had helped change his perspective on what it takes to be successful in business and in sport. “You really come to the conclusion that attitude and work ethic beats talent any day.”

His interest in sports extends beyond club ownership. He is a top shareholder in Adidas and a member of its supervisory board.

The German sportswear brand is recovering from its worst crisis in three decades following the termination of its highly profitable collaboration with Kanye West in 2022 after the US rapper and fashion designer made a series of antisemitic remarks.

Kanye is “a talented genius” who “unequivocally made unacceptable statements”, Sawiris said. “He apologised. It’s a very sensitive topic.”

New Adidas chief executive Bjørn Gulden has the company back on track, according to Sawiris. “By 2025, you’re going to see a company that is very resilient, sports-focused, and that gives stability to the earnings.”

While Sawiris is nearing another professional crossroads amid the strategic review at OCI, he insists that no matter the conclusion he will not be stepping back.

“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “We are not retiring.”

Additional reporting by Heba Saleh in Cairo