Moroccan canned fish billionaire Saïd Alj holds a $114 million stake in insurer Sanlam Maroc

Saïd Alj, the Moroccan industrialist whose companies make Titus, the best-known canned sardine brand on the continent, holds 384,928 shares in the insurer Sanlam Maroc worth about $114.2 million.

The stake represents 7.206% of the company. At 2,741 dirhams on the Casablanca Stock Exchange it is worth 1.06 billion dirhams, or $114.2 million converted at 9.24 dirhams to the dollar. The valuation is a Billionaires.Africa calculation.

Alj's position grew this summer without him buying anything. Sanlam Maroc absorbed Allianz Maroc in a merger the Moroccan capital markets authority approved on June 15, issuing 1,225,000 new shares at 2,090.23 dirhams on an exchange ratio of five Sanlam Maroc shares for every two in Allianz Maroc. Shareholders of both companies approved the deal on July 2 and the exchange took place on July 7, in a transaction valued at more than 2.5 billion dirhams.

His holding went from 293,574 shares before the merger to 384,928 after it, an increase of 91,354 shares worth roughly $27.1 million at the current price. His percentage barely moved, rising from 7.13% to 7.206%, because the enlarged company issued shares to Allianz Maroc's owners at the same time.

The last Moroccan at the table

The merger left Alj as the only significant Moroccan shareholder in a company that is now overwhelmingly South African.

Sanlam Emerging Markets Ireland holds 842,585 shares directly, or 15.77%, and a further 3,892,275 shares through its subsidiaries Sanlam Pan Africa Maroc and Allianz Africa Financial Services, taking its combined direct and indirect position to 4,734,860 shares, or 88.63% of the capital.

Alj has been retreating from the register for years, though never entirely. In January 2024 his vehicle Sanam Holding sold 497,573 shares into the mandatory takeover bid launched by Sanlam Emerging Markets, Allianz Europe, Sanlam Allianz Africa and Sanlam Pan Africa Maroc, crossing below the 10% threshold and triggering a declaration to the regulator. Sanam told the authority at the time that it intended to stop buying the stock and to keep its seat on the board. It also declared that it acts in concert with Alj personally.

He knows the company from the inside. Sanlam Maroc's board named him chairman in September 2018, the year the South African group completed its acquisition of Saham Finances and the Moroccan insurer began operating under the Sanlam name.

The business he part-owns traces back to 1949, when it was founded as Compagnie Nord-africaine et Intercontinentale d'Assurance. It became a subsidiary of the Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion, was sold by the state to Arab Insurance Group in 1997, renamed CNIA in 2001, merged with Es Saada in 2006 and listed in Casablanca in November 2010. It traded as Saham Assurance from 2014 until the Sanlam takeover.

Sanlam Maroc reported net income of 451 million dirhams for 2025, up 7.9%, on revenue of 6.2 billion dirhams, which slipped 1.4% as the company deliberately reshaped its life book. Non-life accounts for roughly 83% of premiums, and the company is the leading motor insurer in Morocco. At 2,741 dirhams it carries a market value of about 14.64 billion dirhams, or $1.58 billion.

Where the bigger money sits

The insurance stake is not Alj's largest listed holding, and not by a small margin.

Unimer, the Casablanca-listed food group behind Titus, disclosed its shareholder register to the regulator as of June 30. Sanam Holding held 2,781,971 shares, or 24.4%. A second vehicle, Aljia Holding, held a further 397,023 shares, or 3.5%. At Unimer's last quoted price of 894 dirhams those positions are worth about $269.2 million and $38.4 million, giving a combined $307.6 million, roughly 2.7 times the Sanlam Maroc stake.

The same register shows Sanlam Maroc itself holding 703,167 Unimer shares, or 6.2%. The insurer Alj part-owns is a shareholder in the food company he controls.

Alj built the group through acquisitions rather than from a single founding business. He took a diploma from the École des Dirigeants et Créateurs d'Entreprise in Paris, ran companies in France and Belgium, acquired Belgian nationality, then returned to Morocco and assembled holdings across sectors. Sanam Holding now spans food processing through Unimer and Uniconserves, retail through Label'Vie, consumer credit through Taslif, equipment distribution through Stokvis, real estate through several vehicles, and film production through CLA Studio and Atlas Corporation Studio.

Unimer reached its current shape in 2011, when it absorbed La Monégasque Vanelli Maroc in a capital increase priced at 1,550.77 dirhams a share, taking Sanam's holding to 38.31% and crossing four reporting thresholds at once.

Neither the Bloomberg Billionaires Index nor the Forbes list of the world's billionaires carries an entry for Alj. The two listed positions alone come to about $421.8 million, before accounting for Sanam's unlisted holdings, none of which publish figures.