If there’s strength in numbers, then Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi must be feeling energised after last weekend’s show of force. Heads of state and key players from the Arabian Peninsula, US Secretary of State John Kerry and chief executives were in Sharm Al Shaikh to illustrate their firm support for the Egyptian President.

Chief Executive of Siemens, Joe Kaeser, told me there was now a recognition that the country is too big to let fail. “I think the western world and even the most of the eastern world have realised that the more stable Egypt is, the more stable the region will be,” Kaeser said after signing his $10 billion(DH36.7 billion) agreement to provide 4.4GW of power.

The meeting may have looked like any other regional forum from afar, but in fact it was conducted under intense security. For three days Apache helicopters circled the conference centre, and when President Al Sissi came into the facility no one could leave for six hours.

Despite those real security concerns, the Gulf states who have firmly backed Egypt believe it was important to proceed as planned after two weeks of bombings which proceeded this event. “The fact we have been able to put everyone altogether at the same time under the same roof and for the same cause is the reason which allows me to say, in a very comfortable way, that this has been a great success for Egypt,” said Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE Minister of State.

The conference will be deemed even more of a success if the private sector can deliver on what they committed to and replace the generous handouts from the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In the past 18 months, the three countries put in $23 billion to stabilise the country and committed another $12 billion in Sharm Al Shaikh.

But after four tumultuous years that included the overthrow of two presidents, this was more than a conference and can be best described as potentially a ‘watershed moment’. All told, the government tallied up $36 billion of firm direct investments, with plenty more in the pipeline.

Dubai based developer Mohammad Alabbar unveiled a $45 billion new capital project for Cairo. Robert Dudley of BP announced a $12 billion agreement that eventually will cover a quarter of the country’s natural gas needs. The CEO of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, and the CEO of Siemens, Joe Kaeser, signed contracts for two mega power projects in the country.

But as much as everyone wants to help Egypt after just a year of stability, there are plenty of business reasons to be in this developing market of 90 million consumers.

Al Sissi is hoping in five years to have raked in $60 billion of investment, with projects that he hopes will help lift economic growth up to 7 per cent per annum in five years. But those at this meeting said implementation is mission critical, something Egypt is not known for.

Roy Haddad, Director of WPP Middle East and North Africa, said a great deal will come down to managing expectations and communicating with society, something many criticise the Mubarak government for failing to do.

“You need to explain to people how things work and how much it takes to cascade that dollar invested at the top down to the street,” said Haddad. “The Mubarak days were very clear; people thought there was an oligarchy being created and that is one impression you really need to fight.”

Al Sissi did display some of the insensitivities of yesteryears. Security was in a word suffocating at the conference hall and he had executives waiting, sometimes impatiently, for up to an hour and a half to hear him speak.

But at the same time, he seems attuned to the country’s youth. During the closing ceremony, he asked student ushers and service staff to join him on stage. He told the packed hall that all this deal-making in Sharm Al Shaikh has to eventually be for the benefit of the next generation — something the two previous presidents perhaps did not have on their political radars.

The writer is CNN’s Emerging Markets Editor.