Dubai’s Alabbar leads investors behind 16.45% Aramex stake buy

Billionaire Dubai businessman Mohamed Alabbar led two investor groups that recently bought a combined 16.45 per cent stake in Dubai-based courier Aramex, a source familiar with the matter said.

The source said Alabbar was keen to harness Aramex’s footprint in logistics and transport to build an e-commerce platform across the Arab world within areas such as banking and retail.

A Dubai-based news website — known to have close ties to Alabbar — on Sunday said reports suggested that Alabbar could be planning to build a sizable stake in Aramex, with a view to taking control. It did not say where the reports came from or cite any sources, however. The source refused to be drawn on Alabbar’s intentions for further buying of Aramex.

Nobody from Aramex was immediately available to comment.

Aramex said earlier on Sunday in a bourse filing that its founder Fadi Ghandour had sold his 9.9 per cent stake held through Levant Logistics Holdings to Cayman Islands-registered Boson Ventures Corporation. The source said Alabbar was a lead investor in Boson.

Read: Aramex co-founder sells stake

The bourse filing did not give the value of the sale or elaborate further.

Alabbar was also a lead investor in Jaona Investment, which acquired a 6.55 per cent stake in Aramex through a direct trade worth Dhs 437.6m ($119m), according to a bourse statement on Thursday.

The other investors in Boson and Jaona were Gulf-based, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The Arab world’s youthful population and improving Internet access — the UAE and Saudi Arabia, for example, have smartphone penetration rates above 70 per cent — mean the region is well placed to capture the growing popularity of e-commerce.

Alabbar, chairman of Emaar Properties, the Dubai government-linked builder of the world’s tallest building, in April took a 4 percent stake in online fashion retailer Yoox Net-A-Porter (YNAP).

The Middle East accounts for 5 per cent of global sales of luxury goods and is seeing growing online sales due to increasing public investments in e-services and telecoms infrastructure, YNAP said at the time.

Alabbar is also chairman of Emaar Malls, the owner and operator of Dubai Mall, which accounts for 50 per cent of the emirate’s luxury goods spending.

This is not Alabbar’s first big play for a listed company in recent months.

Adeptio, an investment group led by Alabbar, in June agreed a $2.4bn deal to buy a majority stake in Kuwait Food Co (Americana), which owns the Middle East franchises for fast food chains KFC and Pizza Hut and also produces branded consumer foods.