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| Description: Net Worth: $6.9 BILLION Industry: Construction Country of Citizenship: Egypt Age: 53 Number of Jobs Created: 29,108 The youngest of three sons of Egyptian billionaire and founder of the Orascom conglomerate, Onsi Sawiris, Nassef is not only the richest of the children but also the richest Egyptian and the richest North African on our list. He grew his fortune by $1.7 billion from last year alone. A graduate of the German International School of Cairo and the University of Chicago, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Economics, Nassef heads Orascom Construction Industries (OCI), Egypt’s most valuable company. OCI is a leading construction and fertiliser producer, with projects and investments across North Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America. It employs over 100,000 people in Egypt alone. In early 2014, the company began construction on a $1.8 billion nitrogen fertiliser plant in Iowa, a state in the central United States of America. The company also has interests in major shale gas projects in the US. In January 2013, Nassef announced that OCI would exchange all global depositary receipts of the company for newly issued shares or for cash. The overwhelming majority of the shareholders accepted the buyout offer, which led to the company’s delisting on the Egyptian Stock Exchange. Nassef is not without controversy. In July 2014 he met with the prime minister of Egypt in what many believe was a bid to settle a longstanding dispute with the Egyptian government resulting from the 2007 sale of OCI subsidiary, Orascom Cement, to French cement giant Lafarge for $12.8 billion. In September 2014, an Egyptian court upheld a three-year jail sentence issued for not paying taxes on the 2007 transaction. |
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