Nassef Sawiris lands in New York as his $50 billion US infrastructure bet takes shape

Nassef Sawiris flew from Inshas Air Base near Cairo to Teterboro Airport on June 9, a 10-hour, 33-minute Gulfstream G700 flight that landed just before 2:40 p.m. local time. The trip comes days after he stepped down as executive chair of OCI Global in March and raised his stake in Orascom Construction to 43.39 percent in April, per filings cited by Billionaires Africa.

The timing aligns with the next phase of Sawiris’s third empire: a merged entity combining OCI and Orascom Construction, which holds a $14 billion project backlog and a U.S. subsidiary called Weitz. The combined group is set to list on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, with Sawiris directing up to $50 billion into American infrastructure over the next decade — transport networks, data centers, large-scale construction. New York is the financial hub for that capital deployment, and Sawiris’s NNS Group now operates from Abu Dhabi after he formally closed his London family office in April, completing a UK exit triggered by the end of the non-dom tax regime.

The flight is the latest in a pattern of transatlantic movements for Sawiris, who shuttled between Colorado, New Jersey, and London in the days before this trip. His portfolio spans a near-6 percent stake in Adidas, a co-ownership of Aston Villa — now worth over £1 billion after a Europa League win — and a 6.3 percent stake in Madison Square Garden Sports. The New York area remains a recurring destination for the billionaire, whose business interests increasingly orbit American markets.