When he’s not partying on his 40-foot yacht that’s permanently moored in St Tropez or buying up European castles for his wife, Basil El-Baz is perpetually on holiday looking for ways to spend his vast fortune. Having built one of the world’s largest facilities for producing hydrocarbon commodities, Basil El-Baz, son of one of the most influential politicians in Egypt, has retired from his day job at the young age of 34, saying, “It was all too easy. What did you expect?”
Okay so I made most of that up. Is that not what you’d expect to read about Basil El-Baz – Egyptian political royalty with a Harvard education and a hefty industrial fortune gathering zeros in a bank account somewhere in Zurich? Perhaps, but it’s not true. Here are the facts: Basil El-Baz is in fact the son of one of Egypt’s most influential politicians. As a senior advisor to President Hosni Mubarak and former ambassador for Anwar Sadat during the Middle East peace process in 1977, Osama El-Baz cuts a leviathan figure in Egyptian political history. Fact two, Basil has built one of the world’s largest facilities for the production of ammonia and petrochemical products in the world. Today, Egypt Basic Industries Company is the largest ammonia-producing complex in Africa, and Basil as its ceo and chairman is only 34.
So when I first get on the phone to Basil, I’m expecting to speak to a haughty tycoon with a golf appointment to get to and little time for an interview. “Firstly, let me apologise for not getting back to you sooner,” he begins. Calling me from Boston for a lengthy interview and with an apology is not the behaviour I’m used to from a multi-millionaire. But over the next hour, Basil El-Baz is humility, politeness, charm and modesty personified. Calm, collected and grounded, Basil’s polished Middle Eastern tones come over the crackly line with a hint of an American twang.
“These days I’m thinking about what’s next,” says Basil modestly. “As we speak, I’m working on starting three large scale projects within the oil and petrochemicals industry. I plan to replicate the same method and business model I used the first time around. Except this time, I’m hopeful that it won’t be as difficult to convince people to come on board.”
Difficult the first time round? Come on. Surely it was just a matter of flipping the Rolodex and making a few international phonecalls? Cue some juicy multimillion dollar contracts and the MTV Cribs lifestyle. Surely Basil El-Baz is just Paris Hilton in Donald Trump’s clothing, right? Wrong.
“It took me eight long years to get the funding, the financiers, the contractors and the approvals together for this transaction,” says Basil sounding somewhat exhausted by the mere thought of it. “I was 21, cold calling some of the largest banks and contractors in the world saying I had a plan to build a petrochemical facility in Egypt. I had no experience in the industry, no financing in place, no immediate plot of land to build the facility. So you can imagine how they responded.” In the long pause that followed, I imagined a variety of colourful responses. Then Basil finished with a polite, “They said, ‘Thank you very much’...’’
Questions about his father’s influence in his business success must crop up often for Basil. But his response in this regard is earthy and sincere. “The details of my family were irrelevant in all this. My father does not help me with the business side of things. And remember, this was not a local project. I was putting together a full scale, world-class facility with global ramifications. It all boiled down to dollars and cents and I had to justify how I was going to honour my obligations as a debtor.”
As a wide-eyed 21-year returning from the US in 1997, Basil El-Baz came home to an Egypt full of possibilities. Having studied “economics and government with a focus on industrial economics” at Harvard, Basil had a plan for building Egypt’s first major hydrocarbon facility. “I have always been convinced that Egypt’s future lies in industrialisation,” he asserts. “The success of every nation has been underpinned by heavy industrialisation. In Egypt, there was a huge under-utilisation of the country’s oil and gas resources. To me, this presented a very interesting opportunity.”
So how did his father help? “My father has had a profound impact on me. He always taught me that anything could be accomplished. Nothing was too large, nothing was impossible. It was just that some things were more difficult than others. The ability to converse with others and convince them of a position is something my father is very experienced at, and this is the most valuable lesson I learned from him.”
It was this perseverance and dedication he’d learnt as a child that would help Basil El-Baz make his dream of building a petro-commodity industry a reality. By 2001 Basil had managed to get one company to believe in his vision for Egypt. “An American company called KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root) shared the same interest and enthusiasm I had for this project. They thought, ‘What do we have to lose by seeing how far this goes?’ And so, they said yes to me and showed an interest in developing my proposal with a small pre-feasibility study. The results turned out to be quite promising.”
The foot in the door with KBR was the first step on the right track for Basil. Another win with the US government’s Trade and Development Agency led to a sponsored and longer feasibility study for Basil’s proposal for Egypt’s first petrochemical plant. With the fortune-auguring stamp of the USTDA on his proposal and the might of an industrial player like KBR behind him, one might have expected the rest to be history, right? Wrong again. Basil spent another four years trying to convince banks around the world to help finance the project. “I call them my years of solitude,” he says philosophically. “I was the sole employee of the company and there were more downs than ups in those years. Only in 2005 did I manage to convince a consortium of five banks to finance the idea.”
By now the US Export-Import Bank had also weighed in, offering to underwrite a loan guarantee of 275 million USD for Egypt Basic Industries Company. The consortium put in an additional 125 million USD. By age 28, Basil El-Baz had not only fought for a dream tooth and nail, he was also responsible for starting the first Egyptian company that had secured a loan guarantee from the US EXIM Bank, that was also the first to be funded solely by international finance. “Not one local or regional bank was involved. And we secured complete product and commodity purchases up until 2035. And this is why it took a very long time – because of the complexity of the finance. But in the end, this was the only option available to me.” If Basil is upbeat about his achievements, he is circumspect when relating them. “I just kept telling myself to keep my head high and to keep pushing forward. I have my father to thank for that. He taught me to keep going no matter what.”
On his bumpy road to success, Basil’s encounters with a swathe of naysayers also led to a deliciously karmic experience. “I remember being surprised by all the letters I would receive from consultants telling me how my idea wouldn’t work,” he says cheerfully. “In fact, one bank sent me a 25-page letter detailing why I would fail! I also remember potential investors telling me they would rather invest in Yahoo or Google to double their money in a week. This was the time of the dotcom boom. Then the bubble burst and everyone I had spoken to lost his or her money. I have since also bumped into those consultants. They didn’t remember me, but I remembered them. When you’re starting out, you remember every single negative experience. But those were tremendously important years for me because I learnt a lot. And it’s interesting how life takes you full circle.” With some perfect opportunities to gloat, Basil maintains a judicious professionalism throughout our interview. I imagine him pumping his fists silently on the other end of the phone, but I doubt that’s how he operates.
So what’s the secret to all this industry building? “Till today I maintain an almost simplistic and basic view of how to build a business. I look at it as a puzzle. You just have to collect all the pieces and make them fit. From the land for the facility, to the financing, the contractors and the customers – it’s just one big puzzle.” Basil’s sincerity is pretty convincing and makes for life-coach-like mentor speak. Does he believe the Middle East can churn out more business hotshots like him? “The infrastructure for a good business education is either in place or being put into place. My advice to the next generation of businessmen and women is to persevere. Don’t give up. You can always get a job with a great multinational, but why not put that on hold for a year or two and try to do something yourself. The worst that can happen is you’ll fail. But you won’t always be young and willing to rough it out and take some risks. I’ve found that people who try to become entrepreneurs after working in the corporate world don’t have what it takes to think like an entrepreneur.” Inspirational words from an inspirational modern day Midas.
Basil’s ease in formulating pithy sentences seems markedly informed by his family upbringing. Speaking of which, how does he manage it all? He’s been married close to two years, is a rising star industrialist and has just become father to Osama El-Baz II (named in honour of Basil’s father). “Family to me is the most important element of my life. I always wondered how I would balance it all, but it’s pretty straightforward.” So what about all this extravagant holidaying and money squandering he’s meant to be engaging in? “We’re not the vacation-type of family,” he says, laughing. “I get extremely restless if I don’t work for 48 hours. Work is my form of relaxation. Even if we get to the point where we have to take a holiday, I find myself making excuses to get straight back to the office.”
So no MTV Cribs episode just yet. For his pedigree, his rise to the big leagues and his estimated worth, Basil El-Baz is certainly not what you would expect of a 34-year-old industrial tycoon. He’s down-to-earth, polite and seemingly ever-ready to roll up his sleeves to get stuck into work. In an age where entrepreneurs often inherit their success rather than achieve it, Basil El-Baz is a rare breed indeed. And long may his star continue to rise.
