Billionaire Naguib Sawiris pours another $400 million into gold as geopolitical tensions push him to cut Egypt real estate

Naguib Sawiris has added $400 million to his gold mining investments since the current wave of geopolitical tensions began, he told Alarabiya Business, cementing a portfolio shift that has seen Egypt's richest man move capital away from domestic real estate and toward assets he describes as safe havens he does not intend to leave.

Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Investment Holding, said the $400 million was channeled into a gold mining company in which he already holds a significant stake. He did not identify the specific vehicle in the Alarabiya Business interview, but his gold exposure runs primarily through La Mancha Resources, the Luxembourg-based mining investment firm he acquired in 2012 for $492 million, which holds substantial stakes in Endeavour Mining, listed in London, and Evolution Mining, listed in Australia.

Alongside the gold move, Sawiris said he has expanded his real estate holdings in the UAE, which he views as a stable and liquid market offering the kind of security that Gulf property markets can provide during periods of global uncertainty. He said he has reduced his real estate investment in Egypt correspondingly.

"I believe the geopolitical volatility will last longer than some expect," he told Alarabiya Business, adding that while the global economic impact of the US-Iran tensions will be sharp in the short term, he sees it as temporary over a longer horizon.

Both gold and UAE real estate, he said, are core positions he plans to hold.

A gold bet years in the making

Sawiris has been building his gold position for well over a decade, and the current geopolitical environment has validated a thesis he committed to long before it became consensus. He acquired La Mancha in 2012 at a time when gold prices were pulling back from their post-financial crisis highs and the mining sector was deeply unloved by institutional investors. He kept buying through the volatility.

By 2024, Sawiris had disclosed that his total gold mining investments had reached $1.5 billion. Through La Mancha, his stake in Endeavour Mining had more than doubled from $500 million to $1.32 billion by September 2025, while his Evolution Mining position climbed from $150 million to $375 million over the same period. Gold has risen more than 50% since the start of 2025, driven by central bank accumulation, safe haven demand from institutional and retail investors, and the supply bottleneck created by the long lead times required to bring new mines into production. Sawiris has pointed to that supply dynamic repeatedly, noting that it can take up to 6 years for a newly discovered deposit to reach production, creating a structural floor under prices regardless of short-term sentiment.

His Egyptian gold exposure extends beyond La Mancha. Through AKH Gold, a subsidiary majority-owned by Sawiris, he signed exploration contracts for 9 blocks in Egypt's eastern desert and acquired additional exploration licences in Uzbekistan. He has also publicly flagged Sudan as a market he intends to enter once the conflict there ends, pointing to what he sees as significant untapped potential.

The man behind the bet

Sawiris, 71, is the eldest of the 3 sons of the late Onsi Sawiris, who built the Orascom Group from scratch. He studied mechanical engineering and earned a master's in technical administration from ETH Zurich, one of Europe's top technical universities. He joined the family business in 1979 and spent the next 3 decades building Orascom Telecom into a global company, penetrating markets that larger operators considered too risky or too poor: Iraq, Bangladesh, North Korea, Algeria and Pakistan.

His most ambitious move came in 2005, when he led a $15 billion leveraged buyout of Italy's Wind Telecomunicazioni through a vehicle called Weather Investments, funded partly with his Orascom Telecom stake. In 2010, he merged Wind Telecom with Russia's Vimpelcom, creating the world's 6th largest mobile telecommunications provider at the time. The Vimpelcom transactions, spread across 2011 and 2012, generated approximately $4.3 billion for him and provided the capital base for the portfolio he runs today.

That capital went into gold, real estate, media and philanthropy. He bought a majority stake in Euronews in 2015, held it for 6 years and sold to Alpac Capital in December 2021. He co-founded the Free Egyptians Party in 2011, advocating a secular and free-market platform, before eventually breaking with the organisation in 2017. More recently, he committed $100 million to BluEV, a Moroccan electric two- and three-wheeler company operating as a subsidiary of Orascom Investment Holding, signaling his interest in Africa's clean transport market.

His net worth reached $10 billion in October 2025, making him the first Egyptian to cross that threshold on Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. The figure has since fluctuated with gold prices. As of his most recent Bloomberg ranking, his fortune sits at approximately $9.83 billion, placing him among the top 400 richest people in the world. Forbes values his wealth lower, at approximately $5 billion, reflecting differences in how each methodology handles his privately held assets.

What the shift signals

The pattern Sawiris is describing is not unique to him. Capital across the Middle East and North Africa is becoming more selective about where it sits. Gulf real estate, particularly in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has absorbed significant inflows from investors seeking markets with liquid assets, predictable regulation and limited exposure to the kind of geopolitical disruption now affecting large parts of the region. Gold, historically the refuge of last resort, has regained its status as a core allocation for investors who believe the current volatility cycle is structural rather than temporary.

Sawiris has been early to both themes. His La Mancha position, built when gold was cheap and unloved, is now one of the largest personal gold mining stakes held by any individual investor in the world. His UAE real estate expansion, through Ora Developers, is following the same capital flows that are reshaping property markets across the Gulf.

The $400 million he has added since the current tensions began is not a panic move. It is the continuation of a long-held conviction, accelerated by a moment that has made that conviction look prescient.