Word: egypts
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...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...
Taking risks has served Sawiris well, even if he has had to take some hard knocks, Middle East--style. One of his first ventures beyond Egypt was in strife-torn Algeria, where his successful 2001 bid for a cell-phone license turned out to be twice that of his nearest competitor, which led to the creation of an operator called Djezzy. Soon he had turned Orascom's $400 million investment into an asset worth some $4 billion. Later, in 2003, it was the same story in Iraq: Orascom set up the country's first cell-phone network, IraQna, after...
...relatively safe bet financially compared with Orascom's adventures in Syria and Yemen, where Orascom was muscled out of partnerships in both countries, says Sawiris, with the Arab regimes there affording no protection or legal recourse. That behavior won't cut it much longer, and governments like Egypt's now realize that Arab businesses have to play by a new set of rules and on a much bigger field. "We are no longer looking at Egypt as our market," says Saad Sallam, chairman of Olympic Group in Cairo, which is increasing its exports of refrigerators, stoves and other home appliances...
Sallam's father started the business in 1939 but lost everything when Egyptian industries were nationalized in 1963. The family struggled back with small enterprises, at one point transforming a waste product generated by Ideal, another nationalized appliance company, into decorative moldings. Sallam's business has been transformed with Egypt's gradual implementation of economic reform, notably since 2004, when Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif took office in a Cabinet that included leading ex-businessmen. Sallam, who retains a 52% stake in the company, credits the government's moves to devalue the Egyptian currency, reduce tariffs and slash corporate taxes with...
...kind of full-scale, multicountry war that rocked the Middle East in 1948 or 1956 or 1967 or 1973. But that's not exactly cause for comfort. The lethal exchange of firepower between Israel and Hizballah will likely not let up until someone--the U.N., nervous Arab countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia or possibly the U.S.--intervenes and persuades one or both sides to stop. A British official told TIME that Prime Minister Tony Blair is personally pressing President George W. Bush to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region to engage in Henry Kissinger-style shuttle...