Arabian Business have released their World’s 50 Richest Arabs list for 2016 and Kuwait made the list three times:
10- The Al Kharafi Family
11- The Bukhamseen Family
26- The Alghanim Family
The richest Arab is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud from Saudi Arabia but thats not a surprise. What is a surprise to me at least is that 7 people from Lebanon made the list including Joseph Safra whom I hadn’t heard of before coming in 2nd place. Due to the amount of wealth in Kuwait I just expected more people from Kuwait to make the list although a lot of Kuwaitis are not on the list like Mohammed Alshaya because Alshaya is a private and family-owned business and so their finances are a secret.
Check out the full list [Here]
26 replies on “World’s 50 Richest Arabs 2016”
just like you said, most families in kuwait and the gulf keep their net worth a secret and maintain a low-profile, which is a good thing to be honest.
I think one’s riches are their own business none else’s. Personally I would never tell anyone how much my Net worth is no matter how much or little it may be.
exactly
*high five*
You may not have heard of Safra because he doesn’t operate in our region. In fact his Wiki page says he’s Brazilian of Lebanese Jewish origin
https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-joseph-safra-the-richest-banker-on-the-planet-2012-3
Why would someone want to disclose their worth ? a lot of people here are afraid of the evil eye so do it? what’s the purpose of telling everyone how much you have?
I agree with you K and Sulaiman.
Alghanim Industries is a private family company too. As for Alshaya, Mark, I think you mean Abdulaziz, Mohammed’s father.
Lack of credibility I guess for Ab, Couz without any investigation we know that alshaya family owns the major shares in Mabani whichs around 1 billion Kuwaiti dinars “thats an easy 3b dollars”, also they have alshaya company nobody knows the revenue but we know it’s own every Starbucks in the Middle East, and they also own many hotels,real estate and factories. So I’m sure some of these things are enough to put them on the top of that list. Btw There are many families on that list I don’t know why they are there. $$ marking maybe
Well they don’t own every Starbucks in the middle east. There isn’t like a monopoly on these brands in the whole region, think Futtaim, he has a larger retail portfolio than Alshaya. But yeah he’s definitely a billionaire.
Doesn’t Alshaya own EVERY Starbucks in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia?
Mark, I think you seem to confuse the chairman of Alshaya with its CEO.
I’m talking about Alshaya the company not a specific person…
He own every Starbucks even in India, they told him we want you to manage turkey and India, because he done a great job in the Middle East. When I visited Starbucks in Istanbul I saw his name on the receipt #Mashallah
Sam..Starbucks India is owned by Tatas.
To all those who commented about privacy, its not like these people are saying “hey look at me! this is my bank balance”.
There are other ways of calculating a person’s net worth and I’m guessing that’s what most of the business magazines do.
Example. If I know the trading price of a company X’s shares and I know the family owns 51% shares. I could do a very simple calculation to see how much they would get if they sold all their shares and minus their liabilities to arrive at their ‘net worth’. I may have oversimplified it but you get the idea.
I think you are either not reading fully or maybe not understanding fully. But you did one of those two.
When a company is private AKA it does not have stocks. Which is what Mark said…….
That is why you cant calculate.
But then you say you can calculate net worth by calculating stock and how much they own.
But then Marks point is that the companies these familys own are sometimes PRIVATE.
and il explain again, when a company is private, that means it does not have stocks since it is family owned, and does not trade stocks, and is not listed in the stock exchange. Which is why mark said some families have net worth unknown.
This is because the families have companies that are Private.
Im sure you understand now, that is if you read my reply, which i made repetative incase you missed it.
But some families in kuwait have net worth that is unknown.
Usualy this is because they own companies that are private.
Private companies dont have stocks.
You cant trade stocks of a private company, because private companies dont have stocks
And these private companies that dont have stocks, are owned by families who have a net worth that people dont know.
This is becuase we dont know the financials of the companie becuase they dont release it to the public quarterly or etc.
You cant calculate thier net worth becuase you cant calculate the worth of thier stocks, becuase they dont have stocks since thier companies are private.
Lol seriously? You spent all that time on effort on this reply?
Well it certainly was helpful! Haha Thanks @plsthink
Wow talk about being condescending.
Privates companies do have shares divided between shareholders. It’s just that those shares are not bought/sold publicly on the stock market. And by the way, privately-owned does not necessarily mean family-owned.
As for estimating the net worth of private companies, Forbes magazine, for example, has constantly provided estimates for the net worth of Donald Trump, whose companies are mostly private.
It will be interesting to see how well off the employees are of these Rich Arabs because most of the time the owners are very tight with money when it comes to paying off employees.
isn’t that the case everywhere? There is a huge discussion right now in the UFC with the fighters being underpaid as well.
A UFC fighter and a poor worker in Kharafi National (who has to hand-in his passport to the company) are world’s apart my friend.
Clearly
But don’t UFC fighters have advertising contracts and merchandise deals? I thought there was big money in UFC.
With the new Reebok deal they’ve been losing a lot of sponsorship money. Plus a ton of guys get like $6,000 to show and another $6,000 if they win. How many times do they fight a year? 2? 3? That’s not a lot of money to last a year considering u need to pay your manager, your gym, your coaches etc..