When Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani casually mentioned to his business partner Donald Trump over dinner that he intended to expand into US data centers, the president-elect sensed an opportunity.
“He said, 'I have a press conference in a few days, and I'd like to announce it,'” Sajwani said in an interview with the Financial Times last week at his villa on Dubai's industrial Palm – a symbol of over-commercialization. And its appeal to the world's millionaires, from footballers to former warlords.
At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago this month, the world's most powerful man described Sajwani as a “great investor,” as the two men stood side by side to announce a planned $20 billion investment. This has put the global spotlight on the Emirati businessman, who started out in the food services business and has built vast swathes of the Middle East's glitzy mall through his company Damac, Dubai's largest private residential developer.
The plan to spend $20 billion over four years seems ambitious. Sajwani's data center company Edgnex has no contracts with tenants for its planned 2,000-megawatt U.S. data centers. The company, which was founded in 2021, is close to having 15 megawatts of operational data centers in Saudi Arabia and Thailand. The investment would be a large sum for Damac, which had $5 billion in cash on its balance sheet as of June last year.
Sajwani says he expects to rely largely on bank loans to fund the plans, adding that the $20 billion figure was estimated from “the amount we think we can get from management time, land acquisition, and our own capabilities on our balance sheet.”
Sometimes called the “Donald of Dubai”, Sajwani is seen as an outsider in the city's business community. He belongs to the Shiite Muslim minority, and is seen as a hard-line risk-taker who has clung to the fluctuations of Dubai's boom-and-bust real estate market. “The old families (in Dubai) don’t really like him,” said a Dubai-based executive who worked with Sajwani.
Instead, the real estate tycoon found an ally in the United States. Sajwani and Trump have known each other since 2011 when Damac and the Trump Organization built the first Trump-branded golf course in the Middle East.
Sajwani said plans to establish a second Tiger Woods-designed link in Dubai have stalled, although the project remains on the Trump Organization's website. However, the families have kept in touch: Trump's sons attended Sajwani's daughter's wedding, and Sajwani said their wives have become friends.
The Emirati businessman has connections elsewhere in Trump's inner circle. He has invested in SpaceX and Elon Musks' xAI. The 72-year-old was photographed alongside the two men at Trump's New Year's Eve celebration.
Since opening the Trump International Golf Course in Dubai, the Trump Organization has sold its name to development projects with other partners in the region: a resort in Amman is under construction, while two towers are planned — one in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second-largest city, and the other in Dubai. .
These business relationships in the Middle East have raised questions about the president-elect's potential conflicts of interest, despite his withdrawal from the Trump Organization.
Trump's sons, who run the group, hope to benefit from strong post-Covid economic growth in the authoritarian, oil-and-gas-rich Gulf region. “If you're a developer, Dubai is almost like a playground for you,” Eric Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times last year, describing growth in the region as “explosive.”
The recent boom in Dubai has led to an increase in Damac's sales. Revenue for the six months to June 2024, the most recent Damac Properties calculations available, was $1.4 billion, more than doubling from $690 million for the same period a year earlier. Profit before taxes jumped to $456 million, compared to $297 million.
The soft-spoken Sajwani, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes magazine at more than $5 billion, is the son of a market trader and a door-to-door saleswoman. Local businessmen remember his first venture in the 1980s as a fast food restaurant in a mall. Sajwani then set up an industrial catering company, purchasing land and real estate in Dubai as it was establishing itself as a regional hub in the 1990s. He founded Damac in 2002.
The company barely survived the 2008 global financial crisis and the bursting of Dubai's real estate bubble. “We were struggling to pay salaries,” Sajwani recalls. “I went to the banks in November 2008 and told them all that I was in a very bad state.” He said bankers restructured his debts while he negotiated with landlords and clients.
“The man has nine lives,” said a Dubai-based international banker. “He came close to collapsing several times.”
The company has promoted its buildings from China to India, in an attempt to attract new buyers to Dubai's volatile real estate market. But its reputation suffered from its association with poor quality construction work. “We faced a challenge in 2011 and 2010,” Sajwani said. “We launched some products (…) in a modest location. We sold them at a very cheap price.” He insisted that the quality matched the price but admitted buyers might have expected better.
“Were we perfect?” No. There were buildings, and I agree, we could have done a much better job,” admitted Sajwani. “We have learned our lesson. . . If you look at our buildings, which have been recently delivered in the last few years, I don't think we've had a quality issue.
Privately owned Damac's reckless marketing techniques have shaken a real estate market dominated by state-backed developers such as Nakheel and Emaar. In addition to complementary flights to Dubai for potential investors, Damac promised free luxury cars to apartment buyers.
It was such promotions Criticized as 'unethical' In 2014 by Mohamed Alabbar, chairman of rival Emaar. But Sajwani described the gifts as “the best and greatest idea.”
Damac has expanded beyond Dubai, with projects from Miami to the Maldives. However, Sajwani's foreign adventures initially proved difficult: a 2006 land purchase in Egypt ended in a legal battle with the state after the overthrow of dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Sajwani was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison on corruption charges in 2011, although The Egyptian Public Prosecutor later suspended the ruling. Sajwani said the trial was politically motivated.
“After that, I stopped investing in countries where there would be challenges,” Sajwani said.
The businessman has not always endeared himself to outside investors. In 2022, he removed Damac shares from the Dubai Stock Exchange, regaining full control. Some investors complained that they had financed the company through a market downturn and were pushed out as the stock price turned in their favor.
Sajwani denied that he had timed the deal to reap rewards, and said that “speculators” in the market had pushed the decision: “We did not see that going public with the company’s shares would benefit us. We were receiving a lot of negativity from the speculators.”
US data centers are the latest risky bet. Edgnex said it initially plans to form joint ventures with established players or purchase existing facilities and land intended for development. However, reaching its goal of producing 2,000 megawatts of U.S. power will be difficult in such a crowded market, analysts said.
“Once you find the strength, as a developer, and especially as someone new to the field, the challenge is finding a place in the queue to get all the equipment you need,” said Pat Lynch, head of the Real Estate Advisor Data Center at CBRE. Solutions team.
“Often, the largest developers and huge (technology) companies have bought their way into waiting lists for several years.”
Even a $20 billion investment is unlikely to make a dent, one industry executive said: “In the context of data centers, it's almost a yawn.”
Skeptics are unlikely to bother Sajwani. Like his presidential business partner, Sajwani insists that his critics are uncomfortable with his role as a disruptor: “People will tell you: Hussain Sajwani… He is a difficult man. What successful man is easy?”
