Pharaoh of Free Enterprise

In the Egyptian port of Alexandria, a band struck up the national anthem, and Egypt's flag was hoisted to the mast of a spick & span ocean liner, the 15,000-ton Gumhuriyat Misr ("Republic of Egypt"). There to welcome the British-built vessel, along with her sister ship Mecca, to the Egyptian merchant fleet was President Mohammed Naguib. Gesturing to a dark and dapper man in a checked tropical worsted suit and red tarboosh, Naguib paid Egypt's thanks to Ahmed Abboud, "that great and capable man who has rendered so many services to his country in the economic field."

In rendering such services, Ahmed Abboud has also done himself a few good turns. At 66, he is Egypt's pharaoh of free enterprise, with properties worth (by his estimate) $60 million. He is boss of the nation's largest shipping line (the Khedi-vial Mail Line), monopolizes the sugar-refining, fertilizer and distilling industries, and also owns or controls at least ten of Egypt's most important companies, including real estate, bus line, textile and cotton-trading interests. Altogether, Ab-boud's companies supply Egypt's leading newspapers with 60% of their advertising revenues. Last week Abboud decided to get into still another field: he will build a mill to make paper, which Egypt needs, from the waste of his refineries.

On Course. Abboud built his industrial pyramid with the calm judgment of an expert manager, the intuition of a poker player, and--according to his enemies--some of the tactics of a Washington five-percenter. He has supported some governments, worked for the fall of others he didn't get along with, and was closely allied with the corrupt Wafdist Party. When the Wafdists came to power in 1951. they quashed some 140 tax evasion suits against his interests. Nevertheless, when Strongman Naguib took over last year and was asked what he intended to do about Abboud, he replied: "Give him every possible help to go right on with what he's doing. Egypt could use three more just like him."

A graduate of Glasgow University and Scotland's Royal Technical College (thanks to the generosity of a family friend). Abboud went to work as a junior engineer on an Iraq irrigation project, soon tired of it. "I said to myself: 'Ahmed, you are meant to be more than an engineer.' " In World War I, he set up a contracting business of his own, landed big contracts with the British army in Damascus, picked up other odd jobs in Beirut, Bagdad and Haifa. Back in Egypt after the war, Abboud decided to buck the foreign businessmen who then monopolized the nation's industry. Starting with two British companies which handled all the dredging of Egypt's irrigation canals, Abboud badgered government authorities until they gave him some of this work. In six months, his company opened up 15 million. cubic meters of new irrigation, and the king awarded him the honorary title of pasha. In 1930,the British-owned Khedivial Mail Line, foundering in the Depression, invited Abboud aboard: he took over the management, made the company profitable, and has since built the fleet from six to 20 ships and bought 97% of the stock.

Sugar into Alcohol. Shortly before World War II. the French interests who controlled Egypt's sugar-refining business started selling their stock at a high price in the hope of buying it back later at a lower figure. For two years, Abboud quietly bought up all the refinery stock he could lay hands on in the Cairo and Paris exchanges, got a seat on the refinery board and took over the management.

At war's end. Abboud spotted another field that would fit nicely with his sugar business: he forced a foreign-owned distillery of industrial alcohol, the only one in Egypt, out of business and set up his own. Other postwar Abboud projects: a $7,400,000, 300,000 tons-a-year nitrate fertilizer plant financed by an Export-Import Bank loan, the first in Egypt, and a half interest in the contracting of a $10 million hydroelectric project on the Nile.

Cadillacs & Chris-Crafts. All these interests keep Abboud busy from 7 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m. (with two hours out for a midday nap). Nevertheless, he still finds time to enjoy such playthings as a stable of six Cadillacs, a string of Arab stallions, three houses (but only one swimming pool), a private plane and three Chris-Craft speedboats.

"What's the secret of my success?" muses Abboud. "It's no secret at all. Just looking around for the best opportunities and knowing when to take advantage of them. Just making it my business to know the people who count. Just keeping everlastingly on the job. That's all."

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