{"id":2459,"date":"2007-12-13T16:13:38","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T16:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=2459"},"modified":"2007-12-13T16:13:38","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T16:13:38","slug":"2007-12-13-enter-nassef-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=2459","title":{"rendered":"Enter Nassef"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-src=\"v5\">Finally, Nassef Sawiris has moved out of the shadow of his brothers who made a lot of headlines with their emerging markets  telecoms empire (Naguib) and Swiss alpine village (Samih), while Nassef\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) maintained such a low profile it could (reportedly) do business with the Pentagon and North Korea at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>Now, France\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Lafarge has bought OCI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cement operations in a 14.9 billion dollar deal, and in return Nassef gets an 11.4 pct stake in Lafarge plus two seats on the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s board of directors.<\/p>\n<p>Analysts say OCI wants to focus on construction and infrastructure, but \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as you can never quite separate business from politics in the Middle East \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wondering whether the Sawiris\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 truly believe the Middle Eastern cement boom is over or whether we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re rather seeing a long-term strategy of the three brothers to move part of their assets away from Egypt (and the Middle East).<\/p>\n<p>Their relations with the ruling family don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to be as strong as in the case of other Egyptian business tycoons (which means the impact of Mubarak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death will not be as strong), but I guess we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to wait for the full picture (on this one as on so many other things) until the Pharao has moved on to another life.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, the proceeds from the sale will be paid out to shareholders as special dividend \u00e2\u20ac\u201c i.e. mostly to the Sawiris themselves. <\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wondering what the brothers are up to with so much cash.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div data-src=\"v5\">Finally, Nassef Sawiris has moved out of the shadow of his brothers who made a lot of headlines with their emerging markets  telecoms empire (Naguib) and Swiss alpine village (Samih), while Nassef\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) maintained such a low profile it could (reportedly) do business with the Pentagon and North Korea at the same time.<br \/>\nNow, France\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Lafarge has bought OCI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cement operations in a 14.9 billion dollar deal, and in return Nassef gets an 11.4 pct stake in Lafarge plus two seats on the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s board of directors.<br \/>\nAnalysts say OCI wants to focus on construction and infrastructure, but \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as you can never quite separate business from politics in the Middle East \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wondering whether the Sawiris\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 truly believe the Middle Eastern cement boom is over or whether we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re rather seeing a long-term strategy of the three brothers to move part of their assets away from Egypt (and the Middle East).<br \/>\nTheir relations with the ruling family don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to be as strong as in the case of other Egyptian business tycoons (which means the impact of Mubarak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death will not be as strong), but I guess we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to wait for the full picture (on this one as on so many other things) until the Pharao has moved on to another life.<br \/>\nIn any case, the proceeds from the sale will be paid out to shareholders as special dividend \u00e2\u20ac\u201c i.e. mostly to the Sawiris themselves.<br \/>\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wondering what the brothers are up to with so much cash.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[82,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}