Beyond the Bazaar

With all the turmoil in the Middle East, few took much notice when Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris signed a deal last December involving a firm from a neighboring country. This was no routine transaction. Sawiris, CEO of Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, in Cairo, purchased 9.9% of Partner Telecommunications Co. Ltd., in Tel Aviv, considered to be the biggest investment, valued at $150 million, ever made in the Jewish state by an investor from an Arab country. Sawiris expected the rebukes he received from some fellow Arabs for doing business with Israelis even as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still rages. But he insists that such deals will benefit the region by forming business bridges. "This is a very big step," says Sawiris, sipping an espresso in his 26th-floor office overlooking downtown Cairo, the Nile River and the Giza pyramids. "I am betting that peace will prevail in the end."

That's a nice sentiment. But what mainly drove the Partner deal is Sawiris' ambition to succeed everywhere he can--Israel included--beyond the borders of the Land of the Pharaohs. He is part of a new generation of entrepreneurs that, at last, is taking Arab business global. The obstacles continue to be immense, from corrupt bureaucratic Arab regimes and regional conflicts to anti-Arab bias in the West. Arab tycoons are still seething over the way political pressure forced Dubai Ports World to abort its buyout of U.S. port operators earlier this year.

Nonetheless, more Arab businesses are breaking out of the bazaar, using know-how gained from negotiating the Middle East or simply leveraging the financial power provided by the current oil-revenue bonanza to conquer markets far from home. Whether they sell traditional carpets and inlaid furniture or deal in mega real estate developments and cell-phone services, Arabs are moving their wares across the Middle East and throughout the world. "There is no escaping it," says Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry Rachid Mohammed Rachid, a former Unilever executive and a leading Arab voice for globalization. "We have to make the region integrate with the rest of the world, and we have to be competitive."

For Rachid, Sawiris is the model Arab globalist. He is intent on making Orascom no less than the world's No. 1 cell-phone operator, a dynasty that will dominate the sector with a handful of others following the industry's inevitable consolidation. His recent investment in Israel is merely part of Orascom's $1.3 billion acquisition of a 19.3% stake in Hutchison Telecom, based in Hong Kong. Sawiris seeks to increase his stake to 51%, thereby extending Orascom's reach to Southeast Asia through Hutchison's businesses in India, Indonesia and Vietnam. From relatively small beginnings less than a decade ago, when it established Mobinil in Egypt, Orascom, which trades on the Cairo-Alexandria stock exchange but is controlled by Sawiris' Rome-based parent company, Weather Investments, became a major presence throughout the Middle East. Sawiris also moved into Pakistan and Bangladesh before he revealed the full extent of his global ambition last year with a risky, leveraged $15 billion takeover of Wind, an Italian cell-phone network--Europe's largest private-equity buyout and the biggest investment ever made on the Continent by an emerging-market dealmaker. "Globalization," he says, cocking an eyebrow to emphasize the point, "is not a one-way street."