The history of The Olayan Group is an integral part of the founder and chairman, Suliman Saleh Olayan. In his 55-year career as an independent businessman, he was an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist.it was under his guidance and leadership, that this company took shape. The Olayan Group is not only a leading enterprise in Saudi Arabia but also major participant in global investing.
Suliman Olayan’s entrepreneurial journey originates in the town of Unayzah in north central Saudi Arabia. For eras this town was the haven of cravans. These merchant families developed important trading links with the world outside central Arabia - the cities on the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf coast, which had ties to Africa and Asia.
Suliman proved to be an exceptional student with a prodigious memory and an uncanny ability to see things not just as they were but as they could be.
After leaving school in 1936, he went to work for The Bahrain Petroleum Company. A year later, he returned to Saudi Arabia to take a job with the California Arabian Standard Oil Company, the forerunner of the Aramco. By 1947, Suliman had risen from transportation dispatcher to a position in Government Relations.
In the wake of World War II, the oil industry was expanding rapidly. Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Suliman set out on his own in the summer of 1947. He established General Contracting Company (GCC).
GCC’s first customer was Bechtel, which was under contract to Aramco to manage the construction of the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line (Tapline), a mammoth project designed to link the oil wells in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province to a terminal in Lebanon on the Mediterranean Sea. GCC handled transportation and related services for the historic project, which established Suliman’s reputation as a dependable contractor who delivered high-quality work.
sulaiman played a role in developing Saudi Arabia’s earliest electrical power companies, founding the country’s first public utility, the National Gas Company.
In 1954, he launched General Trading Company (GTC), the Group’s food and consumer products distribution business. Also in 1954, Suliman was instrumental in introducing commercial insurance to Saudi Arabia, founding Arab Commercial Enterprises (ACE), which went on to become the largest insurance and reinsurance broker in the Middle East.
In the 1960s, Suliman turned to international equity investing, an activity which would eventually establish the Group as an influential participant in global capital markets.
Suliman was also developing business alliances, strengthening his relationship to Bechtel. Moreover, through GTC and GCC he acquired exclusive distributorships for Kimberly-Clark, General Foods, Pillsbury, Hunt Wesson, Cummins Engine, Kenworth and Atlas Copco.
In 1969, the Group obtained a license from Kimberly-Clark to construct the first paper tissue converting plant in Saudi Arabia. The same year, GTC established one of the first cold storage and meat processing plants in the Kingdom, and the Group played a leading role with other Saudi and foreign investors to establish a large factory for manufacturing plastic pipe and fittings. Other joint manufacturing ventures with major multinationals followed.
Beginning in the late 1980s, the Group embarked on a series of new activities in Saudi Arabia, focusing on light manufacturing and franchising, reaching beyond the Kingdom to other Gulf countries and the greater Middle East. At the same time, it consolidated and strengthened existing operations,.
Today the Group’s substantial international holdings include public and private equities, real estate and fixed income securities concentrated in - though not limited to - the U.S. and Europe.
Sulaiman’s values - hard work, determination, insatiable curiosity and unassailably scrupulous business practices - form the foundation on which The Olayan Group stands. The Olayan Group celebrated it’s 50th Anniversary in 1997, prompting coverage of its entrepreneurial journey in The Wall Street Journal.
King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals | Principles of Management MGT301 | Dr. Samer Hammad | Ahmad Al-Ghamdi
References
- “History.” http://www.olayan.com/history.aspx\