How Samih Sawiris turned a Red Sea desert into a city and built a $1.4 billion empire

There is a moment in every Samih Sawiris story that stops people. It is not the billion-dollar valuation, not the integrated resort towns stretched across four countries, not even the Swiss alpine city he conjured from a near-empty valley in Andermatt. It is this: before any of it, he was a waiter.

Sawiris spent part of his student years in Berlin waiting tables to supplement his living expenses while completing an engineering diploma at the Technical University of Berlin in 1980. He was the middle son of Onsi Sawiris, the Egyptian construction magnate who built and lost and rebuilt his business empire more than once, and whose family would eventually split the Orascom Group among three sons, each carving a separate domain. Naguib took telecoms. Nassef took construction and chemicals. Samih took something nobody had tried before: building entire cities from nothing, in the desert, and selling people a life inside them.

Samih's first venture after Berlin was not glamorous. He founded a boat manufacturing factory in Egypt, learning the mechanics of production and logistics in an industry that had nothing to do with tourism. It was a practical apprenticeship in building things from scratch. In the early 1990s, a stretch of Red Sea coastline north of Hurghada caught his attention. It was desert, largely undeveloped and far from any existing infrastructure. Most developers would have looked elsewhere.

Sawiris did not look elsewhere. In 1996, he founded Orascom Projects for Touristic Development and began building what would become El Gouna, a purpose-built resort town with its own water treatment facilities, power supply, airport connection, schools, hospitals, hotels and residential communities. El Gouna was never intended to be a hotel. It was designed as a place people could actually live. By the time it matured into one of Egypt's most recognized coastal destinations, it had become something rarer: a fully functional private city on the Red Sea, drawing residents, retirees and remote workers alongside tourists.

He later founded Orascom Hotels and Development in 1998, and the two companies merged to form Orascom Development Holding AG, listed on the Egyptian Exchange with a secondary listing in Switzerland. By 2026, Orascom Development operated eight integrated destinations across Egypt, Switzerland, Oman and the UAE, owning 35 hotels with more than 8,000 guest rooms.

El Gouna proved the model. Andermatt proved it could travel. In 2007, Sawiris announced plans to transform Andermatt, a quiet Swiss mountain village struggling economically despite its alpine setting, into a year-round resort destination. The project drew initial skepticism from locals and Swiss authorities unused to foreign-driven development at that scale. Sawiris negotiated directly with the Swiss government, securing special legislative exceptions to allow foreign nationals to purchase property in Andermatt, a right otherwise restricted under Swiss law.

The investment ran to over $1.2 billion. Andermatt Swiss Alps now includes luxury hotels, residential chalets, a golf course, conference facilities and a ski infrastructure expansion that transformed the valley's economic profile. The project is considered one of the most significant private tourism investments in Swiss history and turned Sawiris into a figure respected and studied in European resort development circles.

Beyond those two flagship projects, Orascom Development expanded into Oman, developing Jebel Sifah and Salalah Beach as integrated communities, and into the UAE with The Cove Rotana in Ras Al Khaimah.

In December 2021, Sawiris stepped down as executive chairman and CEO of Orascom Development Holding, handing the reins to his son Naguib Samih Sawiris. In October 2025, he completed the generational handover by transferring all his remaining shares in the company to his son, ending more than two decades of direct executive control.

Beyond his core business, Sawiris holds stakes in Orascom Construction Industries, Swiss football club FC Luzern, and Bidroom, an online hotel booking platform. He acquired Thomas Cook Germany in December 2019 through his Raiffeisen Touristik Group.

Sawiris holds dual Egyptian and Montenegrin citizenship, acquired in 2011. He is a Coptic Christian, a member of Egypt's most prominent Christian business family. His net worth stands at approximately $1.4 billion, making him the fifth-wealthiest individual in Egypt and one of Africa's top 25 richest people. Together with his brothers, Naguib and Nassef, the Sawiris family commands a combined fortune of approximately $16.6 billion, making them Africa's most significant business dynasty.

He once described El Gouna as something that was only ever meant to be a side project, built to cater to friends and family. The side project became a city. That tendency, to build something for one purpose and watch it become something larger, has defined every chapter of Samih Sawiris's career.