From shaping Dubai’s physical landscape to powering the region’s digital landscape, we pay tribute to Emaar Chairman and entrepreneur Mohamed Ali Alabbar
Few business leaders have made as much impression on their home nation as Mohamed Ali Alabbar has on the United Arab Emirates – and especially the city of Dubai.
The 67-year-old, multi-faceted entrepreneur made his name working for the Dubai government, as the founding director general of the Department of Economic Development (DED) in the early nineties.
But it was the next stage in his stellar career that really changed the Dubai landscape – literally.
As the founder (1997) and Chairman of world-leading developer Emaar Properties, Alabbar was behind landmark developments that have shaped the city and turned it from a trading hub into a global tourism and real estate hotspot.
First came waterfront mixed development Dubai Marina, announced in 2000, and then the iconic Downtown Dubai – launched in 2003 and featuring Dubai Mall (the world’s biggest) and of course Burj Khalifa – the world’s tallest building.
Opened with great fanfare in 2010 while the rest of the world was still reeling from the financial crisis, the 828-m Burj Khalifa and development around it – which Alabbar once described as the “most prestigious square-kilometre on earth” – remains a statement of Dubai’s vision and ambition, and is testament to Alabbar’s own bold and visionary leadership skills.
