This story appeared in our May 2024 issue, featuring the Middle East’s Richest Billionaires ranking.
Look up at the U.A.E.’s city skylines, and it’s hard to miss the names of the country’s most prolific property developers blazoned across the sea of towers and skyscrapers. One such developer, DAMAC Properties— the real estate arm of the multifaceted DAMAC Group—has delivered over 47,000 units in the Middle East and globally since it was established in 2002 and made its founder and chairman, Hussain Sajwani, a mogul in the process, worth $5.1 billion as of April 2024, according to Forbes.
The DAMAC Group today has a presence in more than 10 countries across the GCC, the Levant, the Middle East, Europe, Canada, Asia, the U.S., and the U.K., with businesses in real estate, facilities management, hospitality, retail and fashion, logistics, and data centers, as well as investments in capital markets and public equity. However, property remains the bulk of the group’s business, with the majority of its profits coming from its real estate operations.
In 2013, DAMAC Properties became the first real estate developer in the U.A.E. to be listed on the London Stock Exchange, and in 2015, it was also listed on the Dubai Financial Market. However, it went private in March 2022, delisting at a valuation of $2.3 billion. According to Sajwani, the decision to delist was a strategic one, and the group currently has no immediate plans to relist. In 2023, DAMAC Properties reported revenues of over $2.4 billion and profits of $1.2 billion, compared to $816.5 million and $382 million in 2022, respectively.
In Q1 2024 alone, DAMAC Properties launched two new skyscrapers in Dubai—Sapphire and Altitude—and a new DAMAC Lagoon Views apartment complex. As of December 2023, it had more than 30,000 units under construction, including a luxury resort in the Maldives, which will be run and operated by Mandarin International, and a luxury complex in Miami, designed by Zaha Hadid.
While DAMAC continues to expand its property empire, the chairman is also investing heavily in the group’s data center business, Edgnex, with plans to invest $500 million in the coming years to take it global. In February 2024, DAMAC announced plans with Vodafone to invest $100 million in building a new data center in Turkiye. “We’re looking at maybe one more in Turkiye,” Sajwani discloses. “In Asia, we’re looking at Indonesia and Thailand—we have already finalized a couple of land masses there. We’re looking at Europe. So, we want to grow that business in a big way in the coming five or six years.”
A devout family man, Sajwani has been managing, creating, and investing in businesses for most of his life, facing numerous challenges along the way. His success has undoubtedly been hard-earned, and the 68-yearold has strived to ingrain the same work ethic in his four children— Ali, Abbas, Amira, and Mehdi—all of whom are now involved in the running of DAMAC, as well as their own ventures. “When you start a business, I don’t think anybody can tell you what they think will happen in 20 years. You just see an opportunity,” explains Sajwani. “It evolves, and as you work hard, you’re smart, you have the vision, and you take the risk, you start something, and you grow it from there.”
For the chairman, this work ethos began in his childhood when his father—who ran a small store in Dubai’s old souk at the time—would train his young son in the shop every day. As his father expanded the business, Sajwani learned how to deal with suppliers, staff, and customers and run a growing enterprise. When he decided he wanted to go to university, his father resisted, but Sajwani was eventually allowed to head to Baghdad Medical College, where he spent two years before failing to complete his degree. Undeterred, he applied to study in the U.S. but was rejected for a scholarship fund. To his surprise, his father supported him. “I never thought in my imagination that he would support me in going to study when he was totally against it,” admits Sajwani. “But he gave me the money. Without that, I would have never been able to go.”
After completing his degree, Sajwani headed back to the U.A.E. and joined Abu Dhabi’s GASCO as a contracts manager before taking a role in the finance department. It was here that the idea for his first entrepreneurial venture developed. “I saw the invoices for catering companies at the time, and the prices were ridiculously high. One company was charging $100 for three meals, and I used to eat at a decent restaurant for lunch for $5. I thought this is a good business; I should get into it,” he recalls. Sajwani entered into a joint venture with a catering company, and in March 1982, he established the DAMAC Group and the food services company Global Logistics and resigned from GASCO.
As the catering company grew geographically, expanding to Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, Sajwani also looked to expand its services by venturing into the fast food business. However, while in catering he could compete and grow with minimal costs, fast food proved to be more challenging, requiring capital for premises. “At the time, a restaurant would cost you a million dirhams, so if you want to open 10, it’s 10 million, which was big money for me. I shut down after two or three years,” he admits. He also says he looked into bringing the food court concept to Dubai but was unsuccessful.
Still, Sajwani looked for opportunities to diversify. Over the years, Sajwani invested both in capital markets and in other companies, including Oman’s Al Anwar Ceramic Tiles Company, Al Jazeira Services Co. SAOG, and Al Majan College, and Bahrain’s Al Ahlia Insurance Company. In 1995, as Dubai’s tourism sector began building momentum, he began building three-star hotels in Deira, which he then leased and sold. “I made a lot of money from that,” he says.
At the same time as growing his company, Sajwani had been growing his family, and following in his father’s footsteps, he began teaching his children about business from childhood. Ali, Abbas, and Amira Sajwani all remember being taken to the office on weekends to learn about balance sheets, financial reports, and investing while spending time with each team, eventually interning at the company during school holidays.
“It was always understood that he wanted us to learn the business from a young age,” says Abbas Sajwani, Founder of AHS Properties and board member at the DAMAC Group. “From a very young age, maybe seven or eight years old, he was always taking us to the office. On the weekends, for one day, we’d have to go to the sales offices or join him on meetings after school hours.” Abbas recalls being on a trip to New York when he was 16. While there, he was tasked with seeing what the property developers were offering, how they were selling, and reporting back on their inventory.
Ali Sajwani, Cofounder of Amali Properties and Managing Director of Operations and Technology for DAMAC Properties, tells of how his father would keep him motivated to learn while he was in the office aged nine. “He used to test me on how to calculate margins, assets, equities, and liabilities. He gave me some money, and he said ok, invest the money, and whatever money you make, you can keep for yourself,” remembers Sajwani’s eldest son. “But in order to invest, he would first test me on the company I wanted to invest in. Only once I could justify to him why it was worth investing my money would he tell me, ok, you can now invest. That was a big learning curve.”
Sajwani’s only daughter, Amira Sajwani, Founder of PRYPCO, Cofounder of Amali Properties, and Managing Director of Sales & Development at DAMAC Properties, remembers being in the office from childhood but also how normal this life was for the family. “My dad was always very busy, but equally, he was always very involved as a dad. It was very normal for us to see him working. Always on his old Nokia phone,” she says. “One of the biggest things that he did for me in life is he never treated me differently. He treated us the same way. I had the same freedom my brothers had, and he expected the same from us. I’m a very strong person, and I give my father full credit for that.”
In 2002, Dubai issued a Freehold Decree, enabling foreign nationals to purchase, sell, lease, and rent properties under freehold ownership in designated areas. Sajwani immediately saw an opportunity and established DAMAC Properties in the same year. He recalls that he bought his first piece of land for 16 million dirhams, paying four million upfront and launching an off-plan property with a total sale price of approximately 240 million dirhams. “I received 20% upfront from the customer. So I put in four million, plus two million in marketing and branding, and I received 48 million. So then I bought the next land, the next land, the next land—and every time I launched, I cleared a huge amount of cash,” he adds.
DAMAC’s first tower was the 27-story Marina Terrace in Dubai Marina, which was completed in 2006. In 2004, it launched the 84-story Waves Tower, Ocean Heights, one of the tallest residential buildings in Dubai, which was completed in 2010. Today, DAMAC’s portfolio includes 75 towers across the Middle East and the U.K., as well as communities such as DAMAC Hills and DAMAC Hills 2, and hotels in collaboration with brands such as Radisson, Paramount, and Rotana, as well as DAMAC Maison.
Over the years, DAMAC Properties has made several moves to align itself with luxury brands. In 2010, it partnered with iconic fashion brand Versace to launch DAMAC Tower by Versace Home in Beirut. However, securing this was no easy feat. According to Sajwani, the family was on holiday in Australia in the early 2000s when they stayed at the Palazzo Versace Gold Coast Hotel. Impressed by the building, Sajwani contacted Versace, keen to create something similar in Dubai. “They wouldn’t give me an appointment. It took six years to convince Versace,” he reveals. Undeterred, he spent years following up, tracking down contacts, and going to meetings in Milan, eventually acquiring the franchise for Versace Home and opening a store in Dubai Mall. “Santos Versace came with the family to the Dubai opening. Then, they were convinced, and they gave us the first tower in Lebanon.”
In 2011, DAMAC launched residences in partnership with Versace Home in Jeddah, and in 2019, DAMAC secured $229 million in financing from Barclays Bank, Burgan Bank, and Emirates NBD to build a 50-story residential tower in London to also be designed in partnership with Versace Home. Other collaborations over the years include the launch of branded residences in Riyadh and Dubai with Fendi in 2013 and the opening of the Trump International Golf Course in Dubai in 2017, as well as the acquisition of fashion brand Robert Cavalli in 2019 and jewelry brand de Grisogono in 2022, with both brands now designing DAMAC projects currently under development.
Looking ahead, the chairman expects future growth to come from the expansion of the group’s data center business, as well as property and hospitality projects in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and internationally, saying that he believes Dubai is going to continue doing extremely well, albeit with land banks becoming more expensive as they become scarcer.
Faisal Durrani, Partner and Head of Research for MENA at Knight Frank, agrees that forecasts look good, but risks remain. “Dubai’s prime market witnessed a 26.3% price surge in the 12 months leading up to March. Looking ahead to 2024, we anticipate a further 5% increase in prime property values,” he says. “Nevertheless, factors such as a potential global economic slowdown and the resultant impact on the local economy, alongside the possibility of regional tensions, present medium to high risks.”
The next Sajwani generation also has its eyes on the future. Most recently, Amira and Ali’s joint business, Amali Properties, which they launched in 2022, unveiled Amali Island in March 2024, a community of 24 luxury three-story villas amongst Dubai’s The World Islands that are being designed to offer an exclusive resort lifestyle to residents. Abbas’s luxury property development company, AHS Properties, which he established in 2021, partnered with FENDI Casa in December 2023 to develop the $850 million ultra-luxury CASA Canal tower, also in Dubai. Meanwhile, Mehdi—a 16-year-old sports enthusiast—is the founder and chairman of the MHS Sports Academy in the DAMAC Hills community. All say they are in daily contact with their father through their work, their very active family WhatsApp group, and regular family meals, with most of the conversations involving business in some way.
Legacy is not something to be taken lightly with an empire as big as the DAMAC Group, but according to Ali—who leads DAMAC’s transformation office—a company-wide evolution is underway to ensure its future as a global corporation. “When you have such high growth and revenue, it puts a lot of strain on the company. Imagine you’re driving a car on the road, and suddenly, you have to go on the race track. The tires wear out, the engine wears out, you have to upgrade everything,” he stresses. “We’re basically trying to configure the company in a way so that in two to three years, you don’t need such heavy involvement from the family. Hopefully, we can sit on boards and take key strategic decisions instead of being so involved operationally.”
While he seems far from ready to take a step back, Sajwani seems pleased with where the next generation is heading. “I am very happy with what they have accomplished so far, and I wish them all the best,” says the chairman. “My job is to train them, show them, and explain things to them, and then they’ll find their own path. I think they’re smart, and I’ve trained them well.”
