Naguib Sawiris is the eldest of three brothers. His brothers are Nassef Sawiris and Samih Sawiris. He is the son of Onsi Sawiris who established the Orascom Group.
Since joining Orascom, the family business in 1979, Sawiris has contributed to the growth and diversification of the company into what it is today one of Egypt's largest and most diversified conglomerates and the country's largest private sector employer. Sawiris built the railway, information technology, and telecommunications sectors of Orascom. Management decided to split Orascom into separate operating companies in the late 90s: Orascom Telecom Holding, Orascom Construction Industries, Orascom Hotels & Development and Orascom Technology Systems. As the founder of OTH, Sawiris has led the growth of the company, culminating in the merger deal between Wind Telecom, the parent company of Orascom Telecom Holding and VimpelCom Ltd. in April 2011. At the time, the merger created the world's sixth largest mobile telecommunications provider by number of subscribers with operations in 20 countries serving 181 million customers. As part of the merger deal, Sawiris spun off Orascom Telecom’s non-gsm operations and Egyptian-based telecom assets into Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding of which he is chairman. Sawiris led the acquisition of La Mancha Resources Inc through a tender offer launched by Weather Investments II. La Mancha Resources Inc. is an international gold producer based in Canada with operations, development projects and exploration activities in Africa, Australia and Argentina. In August 2012, Sawiris was appointed chairman. In September 2015, he offered to buy an island off Greece or Italy to help hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict. However, he conceded the plan could face challenges in terms of jurisdictions and customs regulation. In 2019, Sawiris praised U.S. President Donald Trump's administration for standing up to China on predatory actions in trade and backed the U.S. in its security concerns about Chinese tech giant Huawei.
Personal life
Sawiris is married, with four children and lives in Cairo. He speaks Arabic, English, German and French. In 2015 Sawiris was listed in Forbes magazine as the 577th richest person in the world, with a personal wealth of $3.1 billion. As of September 2019, he was rated by Forbes as the seventh richest African with a net worth of $2.9 billion. Sawiris is an Egyptian Christian following the teachings of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
