Morocco has a new billionaire, Mohammed Bouzoubaa, with a $1.6 billion stake in TGCC

Mohammed Bouzoubaa, who started a construction company in his garage in 1991 and built it into one of Morocco's two largest contractors, owns a stake worth about $1.62 billion, a fortune absent from every major global wealth ranking.

Bouzoubaa holds 19,290,816 shares in Travaux Généraux de Construction de Casablanca, or 55.63% of the company, according to shareholding data compiled by MarketScreener. At 775 dirhams on the Casablanca Stock Exchange, that position is worth 14.95 billion dirhams, or $1.62 billion converted at 9.24 dirhams to the dollar. The valuation is a Billionaires.Africa calculation.

A Billionaires.Africa review of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes list of the world's billionaires found no entry for Bouzoubaa on either. He becomes the second Moroccan construction magnate this week to be identified as a dollar billionaire without appearing on either ranking, after M'hammed Kabbaj of rival SGTM.

From a garage to the Casablanca exchange

Bouzoubaa trained at the École des Ponts et Chaussées and spent several years working for other construction firms before striking out alone. He was 31 when he founded TGCC in 1991, working out of the garage at his house.

The first eight years were small contracts. The break came in 1999, when the company won the job to build the stadium at Fès. That contract led to others across stadiums, railway stations, hotels, airports and residential developments, and TGCC passed a billion dirhams of revenue in 2010.

International expansion followed in 2013, when Bouzoubaa took the company into Gabon, then Ivory Coast and Senegal. In 2018 he opened the capital to MC II Concrete, a special purpose vehicle controlled by the private equity firm Mediterrania Capital Partners.

TGCC listed on the Casablanca exchange on Dec. 16, 2021, in what was the only initial public offering in Morocco that year. The company raised 600 million dirhams by selling 13.94% of its post-listing capital at 136 dirhams a share, and the offering doubled as the exit for Mediterrania Capital.

The group now runs about 1,600 machines and has completed more than 1,000 projects. Its work includes the extension of Terminal 1 at Mohammed V airport, the Casa Port railway station, the grand stadium at Tangier and the Grand Théâtre de Casablanca. It also worked on the Mohammed VI Tower in Rabat through O'Tower, a vehicle 48% owned by Bank of Africa.

The deal that diluted him

Bouzoubaa's holding has been shrinking, by his own choosing rather than by force.

He sold 2,259,136 shares into the float during 2025. In July of that year TGCC raised 2.2 billion dirhams by issuing 3,034,482 new shares at 725 dirhams each, taking the share count to 34,674,332. The proceeds funded the acquisition of 60% of the STAM-VIAS group, repaid roughly 1.1 billion dirhams each of bridge and medium-term borrowing taken on for that deal, and widened the free float.

The STAM-VIAS purchase moved TGCC beyond buildings into earthworks, linear infrastructure and hydraulic works, putting it into direct competition with SGTM across a broader field.

Demand for the new shares came overwhelmingly from the public. Retail investors made up 98% of subscribers and took close to 60% of the allocation.

The dilution pushed Bouzoubaa below the 66.66% ownership threshold, triggering a declaration to the Moroccan capital markets authority on July 31, 2025. The regulator recorded him at 21,140,814 shares, or 61%. His holding has fallen further since, to the 55.63% now reported, a move that crosses none of the thresholds that would require a further filing.

What the figure does not capture

At 775 dirhams TGCC carries a market value of about 26.87 billion dirhams, or $2.91 billion. Bouzoubaa remains chairman and chief executive, and signed the attestation on the 2025 capital increase prospectus in that capacity.

The $1.62 billion is the value of one listed holding rather than a full accounting of what he owns. It excludes any other assets and makes no deduction for personal borrowing, neither of which is public. A relative, Fatima Zahra Bouzoubaa, appears separately in the company's shareholder records.

What it does establish is a floor, and one that has survived a deliberate sell-down. Bouzoubaa has reduced his position from more than two thirds of the company to a little over half across four years of listings, share sales and a capital raise, and the stake is worth more now than when he held all of it privately.