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The president-elect got his chance when Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani suddenly announced plans to expand into US data centers at a dinner party for his longtime business partner Donald Trump.
“He says he has a press conference in a few days,” Sajvani told the Financial Times in an interview at his man-made palm-lined villa in Dubai last week. And it appealed to international millionaires, from footballers to former warlords.
At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago this month, the world’s most powerful man described Sajavani as a “great investor” as the pair stood side by side for a planned $20 billion investment. This has brought global attention to the Emirati entrepreneur, who started out in food service and built the Middle East’s glittering commercial hub through his company Damac, Dubai’s largest private residential developer.
The plan to spend $20 billion over four years seems ambitious. Sajvani data center company Edgnex does not yet have any contracts with tenants for its planned 2,000MW US data centers. In the year Established in 2021, the company has nearly 15 MW of operational data centers in Saudi Arabia and Thailand. The investment will be a huge sum for Damac, which had $5 billion in cash on its balance sheet in June last year.
Sajavani said he would rely mostly on bank loans to fund the plans, adding that the $20 billion figure was estimated “from management time, land acquisition and how much we think we can take on our own balance sheet.”
Sometimes referred to as the “Donald of Dubai”, Sajvani is considered an outsider by the city’s business community. Along with our Shia Muslim minority, he is seen as a staunch risk-taker, clinging to Dubai’s wholesale and retail property market. “The old (Dubai) families don’t like him,” said a Dubai-based executive who worked with Sajwani.
Instead, the real estate investor found an American partner. Sajwani and Trump have known each other since 2011, when Damac and the Trump Organization built the first Trump-named golf course in the Middle East.
Although the project remains on the Trump Organization’s website, links have been made to plans for a second designed by Tiger Woods in Dubai, Sajvani said. Nevertheless, the families remained in touch: the Trump children attended the wedding of Sajavani’s daughter, and Sajavani became friends with their wives.
The Emirati tycoon has connections elsewhere in Trump’s inner circle. Elon Musk has invested in SpaceX and xAI. The 72-year-old was photographed with both men at Trump’s New Year’s Eve party.
Starting with Dubai’s Trump International Golf Course, the Trump Organization has sold its name to local partners for development: a resort is under construction in Oman, and two towers — one in Saudi Arabia’s second city, Jeddah, and another in Dubai — are planned. .
Although they are out of the Trump Organization, these Middle East trade ties have raised questions about potential conflicts of interest for the president-elect.
The Trump sons, who run the conglomerate, hope to take advantage of strong post-Covid economic growth in the auto, hydrocarbon-rich Gulf region. “If you’re a developer, Dubai is going to be your playground,” Eric Trump said in an FT interview last year, calling the region’s growth “explosive.”
Dubai’s recent boom has boosted Damac’s sales volume. Revenue for the six months to June 2024, the latest DAMAC Real Estate accounts, reached $1.4bn, more than double the $690mn in the same period last year. Pre-tax profit rose to $456mn from $297mn.
The soft-spoken Sajvani is the daughter of a marketer and door-to-door saleswoman whose Forbes net worth is more than $5 billion. Local business people remember its first venture in the 1980s as a fast food outlet in a shopping mall. Sajavani then created an industrial catering company and bought land and property in Dubai in the 1990s as he established himself as a regional hub. He founded DAMAC in 2002.
The company It barely survived the 2008 global financial crisis and the bursting of the Dubai property bubble. “We were struggling to pay salaries,” Sajavani said. “In November 2008, I went to the banks and told them I was in a very bad situation.” He said the bankers restructured the debt while negotiating with landowners and customers.
“The man has nine lives,” said an international banker in Dubai. “He’s almost convinced many times.”
The company is promoting its buildings from China to India, hoping to attract new buyers to Dubai’s dynamic property market. But the name was associated with poor quality construction work. “We faced a challenge in 2011 and 2010,” Sajavani said. “We launched some products (…) in the mid-range. We also sold them very cheaply. He insisted that the quality matched the price, but admitted that buyers might have expected better.”
“Who were we perfect? No, I agree, there were buildings where we could have done a much better job,” Sajavani said. “We have learned the lesson. . . If you look at our recently commissioned buildings in the last few years, I don’t think we have any quality issues.
Privately owned Damac’s bold marketing techniques have shaken up a property market dominated by state-backed developers such as Nahel and Emaar. As well as more investor flights to Dubai, DAMAC has promised free luxury cars to apartment buyers.
There were such promotions He was criticized as “immoral”. In the year In 2014, the chairman of rival Emaar, Mohammed Albabar. But Sajvani called the gifts “a great and great idea.”
DAMAC has expanded beyond Dubai, with projects from Miami to the Maldives. However, Sajvani’s overseas adventure had a rough start: a 2006 land purchase in Egypt It ended in a legal battle with the government following the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011. In 2011, Sajwani was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison for corruption, although Egypt’s attorney general later suspended the sentence. Sajvani said the trial was politically motivated.
“After that, I stopped investing in countries where it was challenging,” says Sajvani.
The entrepreneur did not always endear himself to foreign investors. In the year In 2022, it delisted Damak’s shares from the Dubai Stock Exchange and took full control. Some investors have complained that they are being forced out of the company’s funding amid market turmoil and fluctuating stock prices.
Sajvani disputed the decision to time the deal and seek awards, saying market “speculations” had prompted the decision: “We didn’t see that going public would benefit us.” We were getting a lot of negativity from speculation.”
America’s data centers are the latest risky bet. Ednex initially plans to form joint ventures with established players or buy existing facilities and land for development, he said. Even so, analysts say reaching the 2000MW US capacity target is difficult in such a crowded market.
“Once you get the power, as a developer, especially as someone new to the space, the challenge is finding a place in the lineup to get all the tools you need,” said Pat Lynch, head of real estate consulting at CBRE Data Center. Solutions group.
“Usually the big developers and hyperscale[tech]companies have bought their queues for years.”
As one industry executive noted, even a $20 billion investment may not pay off: “It’s almost a yawn in the context of data centers.”
Doubts cannot trouble Sajavani. Like the president’s business partner, Sajvani insists that his critics are uncomfortable with his role: “People say ‘Hussein Sajvani . . . He is a difficult person. Which successful person is easy?
