This has been a big year for Abdulaziz Al Ghurair and the bank he has helped turn into a financial behemoth. The CEO of Mashreqbank – this year rebranded as Mashreq – is one of the founding fathers of property giant Emaar, and an unlikely extreme sports fanatic too.
“I went paragliding in Hawaii, where I had to jump off a cliff 6500 feet high and float in the air for 45 minutes – if I’d hesitated I would have rolled down to sea level,” he told
Arabian Business
earlier this year. “I’ve also been bungee jumping, and I did this to challenge myself. I had my kids with me and wanted to show them not to be afraid. Be careful of life, but don’t be afraid.”
The bank, which his father Abdullah Al Ghurair, chairman, started from scratch with US$1.6m worth of investment capital 40 years ago, is Al Ghurair’s prime concern, and this year’s US$68m rebranding has proved an unmitigated success. The UAE’s fifth-largest lender by market value, was the first bank to introduce ATM machines and credit cards to the Emirates, and now has its sights firmly set on new acquisitions to expand operations across the Middle East and further afield.
Mashreq is considering potential investment targets in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, and South Asia, and Al Ghurair said in January that the bank could spend up to US$1bn to buy a lender in India or Pakistan.
As if not to be outdone, Al Ghurair’s uncle Saif owns several mega-malls across the region, his brother Essa operates the second-largest flour-milling company in the Middle East, and his grandparents didn’t do too badly either, having made a small fortune during the pearl-diving days.
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