Ghazi Abu Nahl, insurance magnate, philanthropist, and father-of-five, shows few signs of slowing down. Despite turning 72 this year, his schedule sees him in a new city virtually every week. So how did a former refugee, who describes his ideal day as being at home with his wife and children, build a global business empire with more than $5 billion in assets? Alexandra Newlove reports


B ISSUE 72 | 2018


ill Gates famously spent only two years at Harvard before leaving to start work, eventually founding Microsoft. For Ghazi Abu Nahl, his tertiary education was even shorter—just 40 days.


The eldest of six brothers and five sisters, he


was sent to university in Cairo in 1960. But the young man quickly became distressed at the realisation that his parents had borrowed money to fund his studies. “I lived in Cairo for 40 days, then I went back


to [my father]. I could not swallow the food, and I realised I had to help to educate my other brothers and sisters.” Compelled by an urge to find paid work


and help his parents, the 17-year-old went to Qatar—then a British protectorate at the cusp of an oil boom—landing a job with insurance agency Arab Commercial Enterprises, where he spent the next 20 years learning about the region’s fledgling insurance industry.


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