Established in Bahrain in 1890 by Haji Yusuf Bin Ahmed Kanoo, it grew during the 1970s oil boom from a trading and shipping business into one of the most diversified companies in the region, involved in travel, holidays, machinery, oil & gas, power and industrial projects, exhibition services, logistics, and other retail and commercial activities.

Kanoo Shipping Agencies recently launched a new branch office in the booming strategic Omani port of Sohar. The Kanoo Group – or, as the company website refer to it, “The Kanoo Legend” – now has joint ventures with many international companies serving the service and industrial sectors, including Norwich Union Insurance, Maersk, BASF, Johnson Arabia, Akzo Noble and Freightworks.

Currently the family’s highest-profile member, and deputy chairman of the group is Mishal Kanoo, who – when he is not sharing his opinion on just about anything on the aforementioned company’s website – is always seeking out the next investment opportunity. Kanoo Group recently launched several investment funds in the Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Mousaed Economic City in Saudi Arabia. A valuation of its assets puts the family’s wealth at well over US$4bn – the US$400m it raised last year by the sale of a shopping centre in Sydney has been swelled by another US$200m in the last twelve months.

And the other family members are no less shy than Mishal when it comes to talking about their success. They took six years to put together their own autobiography ‘The House of Kanoo’, a book that traces the company’s roots right up to 1997, and features the current generation of family bosses. Most of the book was penned by another board member Khalid Mohammed Jassim Kanoo.