History risen

Alabbar: Dubai is successful and sexy, it has all the glitter and the glamour. It is newsworthy, with good days and bad days.

By Anil Bhoyrul

We are standing on the balcony of Mohamed Alabbar’s private office, admiring the world’s tallest building a few yards in front of us. The chairman of Emaar is putting the final touches to its grand inauguration, just a few hours away. And as always with Alabbar, nothing is being left to chance. 

“Sheikh Mohammed is my boss, and I want him to look at it and smile and say well done. And I want my people in the city to say; ‘yeah, yeah, that’s ok.’ Because this building is theirs, it’s not ours anymore,” he says.

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The chances are Alabbar will get more than a few pats on the back from his boss, not to mention millions around the globe. Barely six years since breaking ground, the Burj Khalifa is a reality. It is here, it is real. Alabbar has, once again, delivered.

For Alabbar more than most, it has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Eighteen months ago, speculators queued through the night, outside the very building we are standing in, desperate to get a slice of the property pie as Dubai’s boom looked unstoppable.

Then came Lehmann Brothers. Then came the crash. Then came the recession. Then came the Dubai debt crisis.

But as the new decade begins, both the Burj Dubai and Alabbar are still standing – and like the original plans for the tower, which were far less grand, Alabbar has undergone a transformation.

“Am I a different kind of leader now? Without a doubt. I got better in many things along the way. I’m sure I made valuable mistakes, but I am becoming more emotional. I don’t know if it’s age or what. Or so much beating by the shareholders,” he says wryly.

So is this a new, softer Alabbar we are seeing? No, not quite.

“I’m a harder leader now, you know,” he admits.

“I mean, I’m a hard leader anyway…On the boss side, I am much tougher. Some people who got a job from me four years ago wouldn’t get it today. It’s [been] proven that so many people don’t actually work.

"Productivity of people is pretty bad. In those market conditions [before the crash], everyone was employed and spoilt. So I laid off a little bit, and then discovered there are mistakes – so now I am back in the same style.”