Mohammed Alabbar sits atop a 35 billion-dollar company called the Emaar Group. The outfit owns, among other top notch properties, the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa; the biggest shopping mall in the world, the Dubai Shopping Mall; one of the biggest water fountains in the world and one of the best hotel chains in the Middle-East, the Address Hotel and Apartments. He told OKORIE UGURU how he started one of the world’s biggest business empires and his plans to invest in Nigeria. Excerpts:
How long have you been in business?
We started our development business about 18 years ago. They call us a developing country but we are not really a developing country. We are a young country. This country (UAE) is about 45 years old. So, when I compare ourselves with the city of London that is 400 years old, and New York that is 200 years old, we are babies.
Of course, we are behind. Our people just want to live a normal life. They just want to stay in a comfortable place, civilised. Apart from the kids having their bicycle routes, we want to make sure we have electricity and running water. We want to make economic progress and safety and have a little bit of hope.
I spent seven years of my life in Singapore, I was in Singapore originally, but I came back to Dubai in 1992. I did a little bit of what some will call economic development for seven to eight years. I was doing a lot of business relations, stuffs like that. I had a lot of young people, about 200 of us. We really did an incredible job. We had so much fun.
After seven to eight years, I decided that I could see progress in the city and infrastructure was important. When I started the company, I had no money. That was the challenge. I drew a business plan and people believed in it and, I think, my credibility, based on the work I had done. So, investors put in about $15 million. The rules allowed me to go public at that time and I raised another $15 million from the market. But I never thought it was going to be this big. I really like to do things well.
We started development and drew up designs. I really like to do things well. I like reputation. I just believed I was in a business where if anybody wanted to buy a home from me, it was the most important decision in one’s life; and that is the biggest chunk of investment for anyone. You’re buying a house for investment or you are buying it to live in, that is the most incredible moment of your life.
What would you say has been your business philosophy?
Our philosophy here, me and my staff, is to do a good job. While we want to make profit, we still want to do fabulous jobs. Instead of making three dollars, because we wanted to do things well, we ended up making five dollars. People paid us more than we thought in our financial feasibility because they wanted to trust someone. We started that way and we continued.
We got lucky. We like to do large projects. We did 2,000,000 square meters, 4,000,000, and this is our third largest project that we have done (Downtown Dubai), and this is huge. We had done Dubai Marina, which is 6,000,000 square metres. We finished that and we came to town. This is about 3,000,000 square metres.
But all along we see ourselves and all of you travelling to London, Paris, New York, Kuala Lumpur and we say ‘Waoh! What beautiful places you have there. I get quite annoyed. I think they are good, but can’t we be just as good? We want to be proud of ourselves. We want to make some money while we are doing business, but can we do things right? This (last) year, we will finish with 80,000,000 visitors. I never believed that this would happen in my lifetime.
We have 1,500 sensors, so, I can tell you exactly how many visitors we have every day. And we are growing at about 10 per cent. But we control it. We manage the roads. We manage the flowers. We clean the bathrooms, the parking lot. Every day, we add one security. Everything is totally managed by us. We are so lucky to be trusted to do this. That in my life time I am able to build a monument like this or a large mall (Dubai Shopping Mall), the one I am doing in Cairo, it is such a great gift and we should be able to do a good job.
Don’t you think you can replicate these in Nigeria?
We are a young country and need to do more of the same thing in Nigeria. There is so much we can do. If we are making two dollars, why not do a good job? Isn’t that nice? To have a good brand, a good name is very critical for us. I am sure there are a lot of young people and older people in Nigeria who are probably doing the same thing. They are doing good quality work in technology, banking, real estate and so on. So, I think we are just being passionate about what we do.
But when you look at Nigeria, you look at Africa, there is so much that can be done in Nigeria. People complain about power supply issues and all that. I know it is a problem, but as we progress, it will be solved. We once had power cuts in the city (Dubai) too. This is a growing thing. We are very lucky. We are only 1.5 million people. Nigeria is about 170 million people; that is a different scale. I am sure it can be fixed and I wish it can be fixed as soon as possible. We can’t wait too long because we are all connected to technology. We are connected to the television. We see how other people lived everywhere and we just want to live as good. Whether we are practising democracy or whatever, we want decent life for our families.
I am in the business of providing reasonable, comfortable quality life. If it is the house you live in, how the road is laid, how it is maintained, how the playground of your kids is done, how the clinic is put there for your service, the nursery and school for your kids and the office building’s design, that is the business we are into. This site alone contributes four per cent of Dubai GDP. You know the velocity of business is so much. We are a big tourist attraction by the way.
Would you attribute all this to good planning?
Yes, we planned well, but we never knew it was going to be as big as this. We planned it by studying Las Vegas. There is a fabulous stuff in Vegas. We studied Paris, London and New York and we saw the fabulous stuff they had done, and we tried to go and talk to these people. For example, we have the Three Crown Boulevard here. We brought in the people who are working in museums and we said: ‘Let’s talk about designs.’ More importantly we told them: ‘Can we talk about mistakes? What are the mistakes we have in Chancery Museum? They said very simple: we have problems with parking because Chancery Museum does not have any parking space. We said okay, but what do you suggest we do? They said we think you should put the parking first and put your boulevard on top. We made space for 5,000 car parks, and then put a boulevard on top.
If you drive by the boulevard, there is actually a kingdom underground. We said okay, what is the other shortfall? They said it is very embarrassing that toilet is a problem; that with all these tourists, there is no place to go to toilet. We said waoh! So, we have 55 toilets underground and we make sure they are clean. Of course they want security and technology and we put those that in. But for us from the Middle East, I can’t put a mosque in this congested area. So, in our car parks, we have five mosques for men, five mosques for women.
Are you also making money from the parking space?
No we are not. But if we want to succeed, if we want to have a good environment, we have to provide these services and we make money from the real estate. We installed our fountain for 180 million Euros. You think I can charge people for the fountain? No, I can’t. But we discovered that every building that we have built with a view to the fountain, we make more money from the building than we paid for the fountain. I never knew that.
At the same time, we made mistakes. We adjusted some, and some we could not adjust. Today, we would like to take this experience to countries all around us. We are taking this to Nigeria. We will build one in Abuja and one in Lagos. These are great cities in the world, not only in Africa. In my job, I follow up designs in detail, and the marketing. I have got a strong team who manages the finance. We make sure that we do things right and there is always money in the bank. So, we’ve got a good team that manages that side. I manage the design, marketing and strategy sides.
Is your background in design and architecture?
No, my background is science. It is interesting. My parents and I lived in a government-owned house. When I got a job, the first thing I did was to borrow money and renovated my mother’s house, which was our house. I remember in those days, I think I liked designs, I like adjustments. So, I changed that government house that we lived in to something smart. I think design and construction is something that I like.
Where did you pick that skill from?
I don’t know. My grandfather, my uncles are all mathematicians and they are really into designs. They are quite good. Maybe it is something in the DNA. A lot of times, things in our DNA affect how we behave.
What was your first vision?
When I was in Singapore, I was flying back and forth. In Singapore, when you open the newspaper, the biggest news was always Mr. X,Y, Z, owner of a real estate doing this or that. Property was always the big news. When I came back to Dubai, it was still growing but not as much as now. Then you had one building built by Mr. Abdullah, one by Mr. John, and in between, you had maybe road, maybe not. I said it would be nice to do things right; plan the roads, landscape the roads, make sure the road and buildings are designed well and in harmony. I said it would be nice for someone to do this with a development company that has comprehensive planning. That was how it all started. I was lucky because Dubai was moving forward. That was pure luck.
What would you say has been your driving force?
When I started, as I said, I didn’t know it was going to get this big. There are two elements: one, because we became public. I live in a society that when I go public, I take your money and invest. In our society, and I am sure in Africa, the business that I take your money to invest and I don’t make money for you is unheard of; or I take your money and I lose it. No way. That is just not acceptable in my society. Now, maybe some people did lose money, but ethically, the home I come from and the society too, I think taking people’s money, it was a lot of pressure, unbelievable pressure up till this moment.
Number two, today we’ve got to the size where we are. We’ve got about $35 billion company. We are profitable. Do we need to run around to do projects in Morocco or do project in Nigeria? I don’t have to, but I think we need to enrich the world and enrich ourselves. These are opportunities. Okay, we are a company, we make money, but we need to come and make a change. For me, I am so excited to participate because Dubai is not as big as Nigeria, a huge country such as Nigeria needs business partners; it needs good, decent hotels. It needs beautiful neighborhood for people to live in. It needs a downtown for people. It is just common sense for me. But on top of that, I am very passionate about designing new neigbourhoods.
Funny enough, I don’t know how I did it. My first project was 500 homes. The site was about 400 hectares. Why I started that way and why I like big size? Because I like to control the environment and control what happens in it, good or bad. It has worked.
In some countries, if you hear a person talk like this, you would say he has a political ambition…
No, I don’t. Being a public company is enough pain for me.
How do you expect to sustain this?
You should have an open mind. You look at the world, look at the market you are in, and you always search for opportunities, surround yourself with good people. Make sure you have good business principles as you do your business, and one of them is that we want people to trust us. We have to have discipline, without discipline you cannot do a thing. You can’t.
You have the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. You also have the biggest shopping mall in the world. Did you set out with projects like this in mind?
At the beginning, we just wanted to make sure that in the first two years, we succeeded. No clue at the beginning of what we wanted to do, to be honest with you. But we tried to do things and it is working and we say let’s push the boundary, let’s get bigger, let’s do things well. You know as you do this, you make mistakes, you learn, you become better. And then after, you say well, I can do bigger things because I have done this, I have done that, I have enough people, I have knowledge, I have ability. The original thinking was very simple: how can I do this business? I barely have money to start the company. And how can I make money for myself while I am becoming successful? It is really a very simple vision.
Now, as this comes up, till today, it doesn’t make a difference. What makes the difference is what we’ve been able to achieve. We’ve been able to add value to our society, to our investors. We built quality structures, we have good reputation.
