The head of the $6 billion Mansour family was once penniless. Now he's on top of the world.
by monica hunter hart,Contributor
RFrom poverty to rags to riches. The life of Egyptian investment billionaire Mohamed Mansour depicts the miraculous twists of fortune typical of Victorian novels.
When he was 10 years old, his older brother hit him with a car and nearly had his leg amputated. The surgeon ignored his doctor's advice and refused to amputate his limb. Mansour was bedridden for three years, but slowly recovered until he was able to walk again.
Mansour was born into a wealthy aristocratic family. But while Mansour was attending North Carolina State University, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser confiscated his family's property and nationalized the cotton company, leaving Mansour suddenly penniless. At 18, he moved out of his fraternity house, moved into crowded off-campus housing, lived on bread and eggs for six months, and found a minimum wage job at a restaurant that helped him make ends meet. Ta. Remaining time at school.
At the age of 20, shortly after completing his degree, Mansour was diagnosed with kidney cancer. At that time, only a few people survived this disease. However, with the quick removal of his organs and radiation therapy, he recovered and has not had cancer since.
His family managed to restart the cotton export business under a new president, and later, at the age of 28, after his father's death in 1976, he opened an early business, an affiliated car dealership, that he ran with his brothers. It was launched and then taken over in the 1980s. Mansour and his family grew the Cairo-based Mansour Group, of which he is chairman, into a multibillion-dollar empire, including General Motors (now one of the world's largest GM distributors). and construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar.
In 2009, Mr. Mansour invested $20 million in pre-IPO Facebook at $18 per share. He declined to say when he sold the shares, saying only that “it was a good investment.” Shortly after moving to the UK the following year, where he still lives, he founded Man Capital, a private equity firm run by his family. These days, it accounts for almost a third of his $3.3 billion fortune, with another quarter coming from Caterpillar dealer Mantrac, and the rest from personal wealth and companies like Mansour Automotive and Manfoods (Egypt). Mansour's other businesses include McDonald's Restaurant Management Company. His two surviving brothers Youssef and Yasseen, who run parts of the conglomerate, are also billionaires, worth $1.3 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively.
Mansour, who served as President Hosni Mubarak's transport minister from 2006 to 2009 and turns 76 on Tuesday, has entered a period of introspection in his life that prompted him to write his autobiography. Commitment to success will be published by Penguin in December and available for purchase on Amazon.
Fifty-eight years after losing everything, Mansour said: forbes He discusses his decades in business and the lessons he has learned from his many adversities.
1. Under-promised and over-delivered.
When Mr. Mansour started entering the car sales industry, he was little known. GM trusted his late father, but knew little about his father. Egypt's private sector was opening up under the new regime, but foreign importers were cautious following Nasser's nationalization plans. He knew he couldn't risk even a small reputational hit. “I would underestimate it,” Mansour says of his commitment to then-GM. “If I knew I was going to build 100 cars, I'd say 50.” Now that the business is established and Egypt's economic climate is unrecognizable, Mansour still follows the same mantra.
2. Look for gaps in the market and fill them.
When designing your business, first figure out what's missing in the market. Identify what you are in a position to do that others cannot do, or learn how to do what others cannot do. When Mr. Mansour started his career in the mid-1970s, his years of living in the United States made him well suited to trade goods between the United States and Egypt. “At that time, no one except my three brothers could speak the language or understand the American way of doing business in Egypt,” he says. However, they were able to succeed while other Egyptian businessmen faced language and cultural barriers.
3. Don't sit at the head of the table.
“When you sit in a boardroom, you don't sit at the head of the table,” Mansour says. In fact, no one is sitting there. “Your head is empty.” This fosters a sense of teamwork and loyalty among colleagues, he says. Although he may lead the business, he does not consider himself to be organizing the business and relies heavily on the insight of those around him. “I'm more of a thinker. I don't talk much,” Mansour says. “I have very good people around me. People I know will tell me the truth. And they're probably smarter than me.”
4. Don't “live in your own shadow.”
As a business matures, there is a tendency to get caught up in familiar thought patterns and ways of doing things, and to become attached to the old company and original goals. That's exactly what Mansour is trying to avoid. “I never live in my own shadow,” Mansour says. “That's an expression I use a lot.” He prioritizes innovation and exploring new frontiers. That's what motivates him to invest in forward-looking initiatives like technology.Overcoming cancer and a serious injury at a young age made him more risk-averse: But Mansour says it made him risk-averse. hug Take risks and never leave an opportunity. To that end, he always surrounds himself with younger colleagues who are attuned to trends and new ideas. They will give us advice. ”
5. You can only be friends with employees outside of work.
When Mr. Mansour took over part of the business after his father's death, he was faced with a choice: Or a trusted friend? ”He chose his second option, and for a while it worked. He had an open door policy at the office, sharing warm friendships with his colleagues during the day and being sociable at night. But one day, when he caught them playing soccer in the middle of the office, he realized he had taken things too far. “I learned from my mistakes. I said, 'It's either work or fun.' We're friends. outside of the office. And I started to retreat. I closed the door and that's how I differentiated myself. ” Setting boundaries at work eventually became second nature to him.
6. Don't underestimate macroeconomic factors.
“Macroeconomics is the key,” Mansour said. He said this is a US election year and businesses need to consider “what impact that will have on the US economy, inflation, the Federal Reserve and interest rates.” He has made mistakes in the past by not paying enough attention to how major political and economic changes would affect his business. He did not foresee the depreciation of the Egyptian currency starting in the late 1970s (he had been prejudiced against the strength of the Egyptian currency since his youth). The fall in the value of the pound made it increasingly difficult to import new cars and repay debts. To make matters worse, the Egyptian government temporarily banned many imports, including foreign cars, to deal with the crisis. Mansour was on the verge of bankruptcy.
7. Use adversity to your advantage.
Before his childhood car accident, Mansour's biggest passion was sports. As he became bedridden, he was forced to give up athletics and spent long hours alone with little entertainment. “There were no PlayStations or televisions back then,” he says. But it helped him grow in other ways. I learned to be a thinker. ” Mansour “learned the value of money” when his family lost property due to Nasser's program. This made him reluctant to borrow money in the future and helped him better rebuild his finances during the Egyptian economic crisis of the 1980s. “Did it make me a better man?” Mansour says of his financial woes. “Absolutely.”
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