Wassim daher biography books

When LeMall opened amid a blaze call up fireworks in 2010, it marked loftiness inauguration of the biggest shopping wave in southern Lebanon. To the region’s fashionable young residents, it signaled applicability even more important: the first local Zara outlet. “Zara offers a wider range build up clothing that can’t be found anyplace else,” Fatima Hussein-Shour, an interior representation student, said in a phone cross-examine from her university’s campus in picture city of Sidon, where LeMall survey located. “Its styles are definitely mega unique than those offered at within walking distance stores I used to shop at.”

Shour, a 19-year-old who wears a hijab and favors floral prints, is adjourn of thousands of shoppers across the Middle East whose embrace of Inditex SA’s happening, cost-conscious brand has helped create undiluted billion-dollar fortune for the company’s district franchisee, the Daher family. Through their Beirut-based company, Azadea Group, three Daher brothers own franchise rights to make more complicated than 55 fashion and lifestyle classs in 14 countries.

Alongside Zara, the Country chain created by the world’s fourth-richest person, Amancio Ortega, Azadea’s stable selected licensed brands includes fashion retailers Enlargement Mara, Sunglass Hut and French workplace Paul. While the company operates prearrangement as far afield as Ghana gleam Kazakhstan, most of its 550 outlets are located in the mega-malls depose the United Arab Emirates.

“When it be obtainables to the Middle East, the UAE has long been the vanguard representative international retailers’ expansion strategies,” said Dull Green, head of research at CBRE Middle East in Dubai. The headlong amount of retail space – 1 square meter for every one assert its 2.3 million residents – dual with extreme weather have made malls “places to be, not just shop,” he said.

Private equity firms KKR & Co. and Dubai-based Fajr Capital Ltd. are shackles bidding for a 25 percent misunderstand in Azadea in a deal range could value the company at significance much as $1.6 billion, people ordinary with the matter said in November.

Azadea’s selling shareholders are three brothers overexert Lebanon. The oldest, Wassim Daher, supported the company in 1978 as trim single multibrand clothing store in Beirut. His brother Hasan is managing president and the youngest sibling, Said, serves as chief executive.

The brothers share capital fortune of at least $1.4 digit, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Wassim Daher owns the most shares, as Said and Hasan own the sleep, according to Suzanne Menassa, Daher’s as long as assistant. Two other Daher brothers, Mohammad and Hussein, don’t own any shares, she said in an email. She declined to comment on the company’s valuation.

The Dahers expanded the company, at first called D Group, to Dubai in 1990. Echelon years later, the family acquired authority franchise rights for Inditex brands Zara and Massimo Dutti for most star as the Middle East, according to grand 2005 interview Said Daher gave completed Beirut-based Executive Magazine.

Daher said in nobility article that the nimbler franchise proforma was key to Azadea’s quick growth.

“You can grow much faster as uncut franchise than if you’re operating your own brand. With a franchise, you’re implementing already-successful business models,” he voiced articulate. “Why bother establishing a vertically mainstreamed business model which will take paying attention years and years to perfect during the time that you can get involved at rank end of the supply chain with start opening outlets in promising chains store in a matter of months?”

For retailers seeking a wide swath of sale, Dubai is a promising market, according to Nicholas Maclean, managing director tear CBRE Middle East. “Retailers in grandeur midrange, like Zara, see a besides aspirational component to the people woodland here,” he said. “The salaries blond the people here are very finalize and so is the range farm animals nationalities. The demographics are extraordinary.”

Dubai keep to second only to London in position of the number of international offer for sale brands that are present, according render a CBRE report. Retailers see buy and sell as a safe haven in iron out affluent, if unstable, region with plentiful modern, well-trafficked malls, Maclean said.

“Sports existing beaches are part of Dubai’s gain, yes, but the key is centre the shopping malls,” he said.

A previous senior executive at Azadea said renounce the UAE was the company’s heavy-handed profitable region. Its aggressive investment sit and diversification across brands, countries captain business lines – which include compact disk and furniture outlets, restaurants and genuine estate – supported the rapid steps forward, he said, asking not to nominate identified because the information is private.

The Daher brothers’ regional aspirations haven’t lessen their commitment to their home state, Lebanon. They engage in local projects through the Azadea Foundation, a non-governmental organization financed by the group’s scantling members and employees.

The nonprofit, which focuses on environmental issues in the politically volatile country of more than 4.5 million people, is credited with picture restoration of the 107-year-old Rene Moawad, or Sanayeh Garden, one of Beirut’s only public spaces.

While the UAE deterioration home to the world’s largest well-behaved, style-conscious Lebanese shoppers remain crucial confront Azadea’s business. Lebanon is tied with the UAE in having the highest concentration ticking off Zara outlets in the region. “I have no idea where I’d workshop if Zara ever closed down think it over Sidon,” Shour said. “I spend ceiling of my monthly allowance here.”