Word: kerzner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...decision to go ahead with the high-gloss opening, even as hotel bookings evaporate across the world, is yet another brash statement of Dubai's ambition and confidence. "In Dubai, if you have a fantasy, you don't just fantasize about it, you build it," says Sultan bin Sulayem, Kerzner's partner in the Atlantis, whose firm, Nakheel, constructed the Palm. "It's astounding," agrees Kerzner, sipping Perrier with Sultan recently in the Atlantis' lobby bar. "When I first came here, we were in the middle of the desert. You wonder how you can continue at this pace, at what...
...though, there are few better displays of Dubai's open embrace of globalization than the partnership that Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (a pioneering figure in the conservative, Muslim Arabian Peninsula) has established with Kerzner - a famously hard-working, hard-partying casino mogul who is Jewish. Starting more than a decade ago, their affiliation has matured into a full-fledged business relationship that seeks opportunities far beyond Dubai. In 2006, Istithmar, another of the "Dubai Inc." companies owned by Sheikh Mohammed's government, took a major stake in Kerzner International, which owns and operates luxury hotels from...
...child of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants to South Africa, Kerzner grew up in the back alleys of Johannesburg, and was an amateur boxer before becoming a chartered accountant. He decided to go into the inn-keeping business after his parents bought a modest hotel in the coastal resort of Durban. Still in his 20s, he built the Beverly Hills Hotel, the country's first five-star accommodation. In partnership with South African Breweries, he eventually accumulated 30 hotels stretching from Cape Town across to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius...
...Kerzner earned his rep as a world-class risk taker by building Sun City, a Las Vegas-style gambling and entertainment complex in a black "homeland" at the height of the apartheid era in South Africa. Critics argued that he was profiting from a much-criticized feature of the apartheid regime; Kerzner countered that Sun City was a place where blacks and whites broke racial barriers by partying together. Kerzner later became friends with Nelson Mandela, attending the South African hero's 90th birthday party in London in June. By the time apartheid fell, Kerzner was selling off his properties...
...Some might see a Jewish businessman investing hundreds of millions of dollars with Arab partners in the heart of the conflict-prone Middle East as a man taking the gamble of a lifetime. Not Kerzner. He came here soon after his plan to build a casino complex in the Israeli resort of Eilat fell through, and has felt at home ever since. "We are businessmen from Dubai and we look at it as business," explains bin Sulayem. "If he is the best Jewish man but has no vision, we wouldn't do business with him. But if he is from...