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Naguib Sawiris is eleven days into the chairmanship of Orascom Investment Holding, and the company is already talking to a global airport operator about bidding to run Egyptian airports.
Chief executive Marwan Hussein told Asharq Business that Orascom Investment is in discussions with an international airport management and operations company about forming a consortium. Egypt plans to hand 11 airports to private operators, with the International Finance Corporation advising on the process.
Orascom is studying several airports that would support its tourism business. It is not pursuing Hurghada, the busiest of them, which drew 74 consortiums for tender documents and 64 bids by February.
The airports would fit a portfolio Sawiris has been assembling around a single idea, which is to own as much of a tourist's day in Egypt as possible.
The company already develops the area around the Pyramids of Giza, where occupancy and rental rates are running at about 75%, according to Hussein. It is preparing a year-round events calendar there and wants to bring in more international organisers. It signed a contract with Misr Company for Sound and Light to develop and help manage the Sound and Light shows at the Pyramids, an investment of about 200 million Egyptian pounds, roughly $22 million. Pilot operations are due in the fourth quarter of 2026, with about 75% of the capital already spent.
It runs sleeper trains through Abela, and restaurants through Egypt for Tourism Investments, whose brands include Khufu's and Pier 88. The restaurant business is being prepared for expansion into the Gulf and Europe.
Adding an airport would put the company at the point where the visitor arrives, before any of the rest of it.
Sawiris took the chairmanship of Orascom Investment on Aug. 19, in a board filing lodged with the Egyptian Exchange, alongside the appointment of Hussein as managing director representing OTMT Acquisition. Shareholders at a general assembly two days earlier elected a new board for a three-year term and approved a loan of up to $10 million from the company's principal owner. Holders of about 60.23% of the 5.25 billion shares in issue attended.
He founded the company in 1997 as Orascom Telecom Holding and built it into the leading telecoms operator in the region before the 2011 merger with VimpelCom, now VEON, which created the world's sixth largest mobile provider. It became Orascom Telecom Media and Technologies, then Orascom Investment Holding, shifting from telecoms into tourism, renewable energy and electric mobility.
The finances give the airport ambition its context. Orascom Investment reported consolidated net losses attributable to the parent of 533.775 million Egyptian pounds for 2025, deepening 18.6% from 449.999 million the year before. Hussein has attributed the losses to investments in projects still at an early stage.
The company has other things to deliver this year. Blue EV, its light mobility venture, is expanding into Morocco, and it is rolling out a vehicle business called AutroVato.
What has not been settled is which airports Orascom would target, or which operator it would partner with. Hussein named neither.
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