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Dubai Holding 'is a sustainable business model'
Dubai Holding is a home-grown success, with a business model which was not imported from outside, Mohammad Al Gergawi, Executive Chairman and CEO of Dubai Holding, said.
- By Francis Matthew, Editor at Large
- Published: 00:11 January 28, 2008
Davos: Dubai Holding is a home-grown success, with a business model which was not imported from outside, Mohammad Al Gergawi, Executive Chairman and CEO of Dubai Holding, said.
"We needed to take an innovative approach to deal with Dubai's challenges when we set up the company," he said, speaking at a WEF session on new corporate champions.
"Ten years ago we started with a lot of disbelief around that what we were trying to do was possible, but the Dubai Holding model has now been picked up and is being replicated around the region. It is a sustainable business model," he said.
He was anxious to explain that the company has a solid business but also recognises its social role.
"Dubai Holding is a business with a cause. Our role is to change our region. As a company we are not just about making money, but we are also working to give our kids a better future," he said.
The next generation needs the assurance that it can find prosperity, he said, summing up by saying, "We are slowly building a wider middle class ready to use entrepreneurship."
Al Gergawi spoke of the importance of innovation in finding success, pointing out that it was important not only in Dubai Holding, but it was also part of how Dubai as a city as progressed.
"We in Dubai try to innovate frequently. In our government, for example, we have brought the best practice from the private sector into the public sector. We have set government departments targets, and we now rate them annually.
Mistakes
Moving on, Al Gergawi described without rancour some of the mistakes in the DP World incident, and the lessons which Dubai has learnt from that experience.
"When DP World made the P&O deal, we did not really understand that we were going into the jungle.
"We should have lobbied more as they argued about national security, or even the fact that the company was from an Arab country.
"But the incident did not stop us. We are still investing in the US. The world is flat and there are many Middle Eastern companies doing the same."
Al Gergawi described how the company had to look to the UAE's own population to find a new human resource.
"Remember that in the 1970s we only had 45 graduates in the entire country, of whom five were women. Now things have changed and 92 per cent of women school leavers move onto further education."
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