Egyptian IT tycoon and businessman with a lead position on the Forbes list of world billionaires, Naguib Sawiris is abandoning the business world, reports Sherine Abdel-Razek People watching televised interviews that charismatic IT mogul Naguib Sawiris gave last week were shocked. The businessman's words were more focussed on family, charity, God and heaven than the usual money talk. Fifty-five year-old Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH) chief Sawiris, whose reach extends from North Korea to sub- Saharan Africa, told his interviewers he has decided to quit all his executive roles at his businesses, and will instead spend his time on humanitarian work while retaining his position as an investor in his business empire. "I have always wanted to play a role to serve humanity. At the moment most of my time is dedicated to my businesses, while only 10 per cent is allocated to charity, social and cultural work," said Sawiris. "I want to make a shift." This move is a real change of heart for Sawiris who, just three years ago, told CNN that "Telecom is in my blood. If I ever do something I will remain in Telecom. I will never exit." The latest decision, which sounded almost like a retirement announcement, came just a few days after Sawiris agreed to sell 51 per cent of his group to Russian company VimpelCom in a $6.8 billion deal after a row concerning OTH's Algerian subsidiary Djezzy. It appears that the charismatic and outspoken company chairman knows when to cut his losses. Indeed, some analysts view the latest move as a manoeuvre to help push negotiations between VimpelCom and the Algerian government forward. "We tend to think that there will be a resolution for the Djezzy issue sooner or later, given that Mr Sawiris has effectively taken a back seat in negotiations and VimpelCom has taken the lead," according to a CI Capital Holding investment bank research note released prior to Sawiris's revelations. Sawiris cited different reasons behind his decision. "The last two to three years have been full of problems. Starting with the financial crisis, leading up to the recent dispute over Djezzy, I have found myself as a businessman facing a whole country. These problems were exhausting and made me lose my appetite for work," Sawiris told Cairo's Al-Mehwar television. According to Director of Research at CI Capital Holding Amr El-Alfi, pressures on the Algerian front were so stressful for Sawiris especially after he abandoned many administrative roles in his group in mid-2009 to concentrate purely on Algeria's operations, the group's largest revenue earner. "Now that the Algerian activity is being sold to VimpelCom, quitting makes sense," said El-Alfi. On his religious motivations, Sawiris told interviewer Lamees El-Hadidi in a television programme Men Alb Masr that what he has always dreamt of doing is to leave behind a positive imprint and to serve humanity, while not merely realising material gains. "My religion says money is the root of all evil," said Sawiris, who is a Coptic Christian. As such, whether or not the move is a reaction to problems with the Algerian project, or a decision that Sawiris will stick to, remains unclear. Also impossible to guess at this point is how his decision will affect OTH as a whole. However, OTH head of Public Relations Rasha Mohamed insists that "there is nothing different in the way the company is managed." She added that Sawiris officially abandoned the company driver's seat last year, when he promoted Khaled Bichara to become the group's CEO. The eldest of three billionaire sons of Egyptian entrepreneur Onsi Sawiris, Naguib Sawiris has always taken tough decisions when required. "I like difficult stuff, I don't like easy stuff," he told CNN in an interview in 2005. For instance, in 2002, he took the decision to sell off a number of OTH's activities in Yemen, Jordan and a number of African countries after his ambitious acquisitions of mobile licences threatened his company with insolvency. Sawiris joined his father's company in 1979, and set to work on railway, information technology and telecommunications projects. Orascom Telecom was then spun off and Sawiris turned it into the Arab world's lead mobile operator. In 1998, he launched Mobinil, Egypt's first mobile network operator, and has since expanded his activities by entering markets where other firms were reluctant to go, including Iraq and North Korea. Now Sawiris plans to expand his microfinance company and work to alleviate poverty in Egypt. Extending humanitarian aid to flood survivors in Pakistan, building schools and hospitals in Sudan and reconstruction aid in occupied Palestinian lands are on the top of his to-do list.
