Onsi Sawiris

Onsies Sawiris (* 1930) ( uncertainty Sawires, Arabic: أنسي ساويريس ) is an Egyptian businessman, founder and head of the largest Egyptian company Orascom group, whose family fortune is estimated by Forbes to 9.1 billion U.S. dollars.

Life

He is the son of a lawyer from Upper Egypt. Sawiris is a practicing Coptic Christian.

During his studies ( agriculture or engineering ) he founded in 1950 with some friends a construction company and initially made a fortune. After the military coup in Egypt in 1952 under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Arab Socialism was the introduction of the 1961 expropriation of Sawiris and the nationalization of its contractors.

Sawiris went to Libya and founded a new construction company, which he lost after the seizure of power by Muammar al - Gaddafi.

Orascom

In 1972 he returned to Egypt and founded with five employees Orascom.

Other companies that he owned or belong, are " El- Gouna spirits", a production and trading company for alcoholic beverages, which was later bought by Heineken, and Orascom Trading. Orascom is engaged in the development of tourism, telecommunications, with construction companies and other business units. A portion of the assets is in a joint venture with the Swiss cement company Holcim. As a result, his group Orascom Construction controlled over 15 % of the Egyptian cement market.

The mid-1990s, as the internationally active Orascom conglomerate was the largest private company in Egypt, Sawiris is pulled back from operations and informed the family empire to his three sons:

• Naguib (born 1954 ); studied mechanical engineering at the ETH in Zurich; is considered the most ambitious and risikofreudigste of the three brothers; took over the area of ​​telecommunications with Orascom Telecom
• Samih (* 1957): sold as a 16- year-old in the school holidays, boat engines, studied at the Technical University in Berlin and built while in Egypt on a boat factory for 10 years, until the abolition of import restrictions, flourished; took over the field of tourism with Orascom Hotel and Development (OHD ) and founded on the Red Sea resort of El Gouna (German lagoon ).
• Nassef (* 1961 ); studied at the University of Chicago, took over the now highly expansionary territory cement production and construction with Orascom Construction Industries ( OCI), which currently has 40,000 employees; has currently the tallest building in the world built in Dubai - Burj Khalifa.