Top 100 Powerful Arabs 2013

The region’s most authoritative business list is here…

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, founder and chairman of Saudi’s Kingdom Holding Company, tops the second annual list of the world’s 100 most powerful Arabs, published by Gulf Business magazine.

The Prince enjoyed an extraordinary year as his share price more than doubled in 2012 and profits leapt by 10.6 per cent for the year to SAR707.1 million.

Emirates airline and Emirates NBD chairman Sheikh Ahmed ranks second, followed in third place by Khalid Al-Falih, who resides over Saudi oil firm Aramco, thought to be the world’s most valuable unlisted company.

This year’s list saw 25 new entrants, with the highest new entries from three women: women’s rights advocate Reem Asaad and Olympic athletes Sarah Attar and Wodjan Ali Seraj Shaherkani.

Methodology

Gulf Business assembled a team of experts from within Motivate Publishing’s broad business division, including the Gulf Business team itself, which has decades of experience working with the Arab business community and reporting on regional news.

The team looked at the events of 2012 and judged each individual case on power merit.

We weighted our criteria on a points system across the following spheres of influence, with a particular emphasis on finance:

– Financial capital
– Human capital
– Expansion plans
– Personal fame levels.

In general, Gulf Business has excluded politicians and royalty, unless the contenders have a strong leaning towards business activity. We have included Arabs from across the world.