Africa’s 15th richest businessman and former executive chairman of Wind Telecom and Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH), Naguib Sawiris has expressed interests in investing in the largest Italian telecommunications company, Telecom Italia.
Italian Deputy Industry Minister Antonio Catricala, in response to the development, said at a conference in Rome that the Egyptian billionaire is welcome to make investments in the economy.
Naguib Sawiris, the eldest son of Onsi Sawiris, the founding patriarch of the Orascom conglomerate, built Orascom Telecom Holding into Egypt’s largest mobile telecoms operator.
In 2005, he founded Weather Investments (later called WIND Telecom) to serve as the holding company of OTH and Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA, the third largest mobile operator in Italy.
In 2010, Naguib merged WIND Telecom with Russia’s VimpelCom in a $6.5 billion transaction.
