Granted British government Egyptian-born businessman and British citizen Mohamed Mansour received a knighthood award, among several figures whose honors were announced on Friday.
The choice was triggered Rishi SunakMansour, the British Prime Minister, has received widespread controversy as he is one of the largest donors For the Conservative Party, to which Sunak belongs, and is its treasurer. Mansour donated £5 million to the Conservative Party last year, but the party attributed his selection to his services to business, charity and politics. Labor said donors should not get an “automatic pass” to the honors system.
Mansour received a knighthood alongside Agriculture Minister Mark Spencer and Shipley Conservative MP Philip Davies, in addition to former ministers Tracey Crouch and Harriet Baldwin.
Sunak recommended the honor to the king, but there were also questions about the unconventional timing of the announcement as Parliament begins its Easter recess, when lists of people receiving the honor are usually published in the New Year and on the King’s official birthday in June.
Mansour is an Egyptian businessman and former politician. He chairs the board of directors of the Mansour Group, which is valued at six billion dollars and is the second largest company in Egypt in terms of revenues. In 2019, Forbes magazine estimated Mansour’s wealth at 3.3 billion US dollars.
Mansour is 76 years old. He studied in the United States and obtained a bachelor’s degree in textile engineering from the University of North Carolina in 1968, then a master’s in business administration from the University of Oregon in 1971. He took over the Egyptian Ministry of Transport during the period between 2005 and 2009, before He was dismissed after the Al-Ayat train accident, which was the third train accident in less than two years.
Some members of Mansour’s family and some of his partners faced accusations of corruption after the outbreak of the January Revolution in Egypt in 2011.
Mansour had no connection to the world of transportation for which he became responsible for his ministry, according to the Encyclopedic Knowledge website, which indicated the possibility that his position at the head of this ministry came from his being the owner of the most famous American road equipment and transportation vehicle agencies in Egypt.
Mansour chaired the board of directors of Mansour Chevrolet after his father’s death in 1976, so that the name of the American car was linked to the family, in a phenomenon that was the first of its kind in Egypt. Furthermore, the Mansour family owns about 15% of General Motors Egypt.
Mansour was born into a wealthy aristocratic family, but former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser confiscated the family’s wealth and nationalized the cotton company he owned. At that time, Mansour, who was studying in America, was forced to live in crowded housing outside the university campus, and lived on bread and eggs only for half a year, before he found a job with the minimum wage in a restaurant, which enabled him to complete his studies and make a real shift in his life.
Immediately after graduating from university, Mansour was diagnosed with kidney cancer, which few people survived at the time. But the rapid removal of the organ and radiation treatment helped him recover from the disease.
The Mansour family was able to resume the cotton export business under the rule of former President Mohamed Anwar Sadat, and then launched a subsidiary of car distribution, a nascent enterprise that the 28-year-old ran with his brothers after his father’s death in 1976, before assuming full responsibility in the 1980s. .
Mansour and his family developed the Cairo-based group into a multi-billion-dollar empire, active in many fields. The group has won lucrative contracts from the American automobile company General Motors and construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, and is now one of the largest distributors of General Motors vehicles in the world.
After moving to the United Kingdom, where he still lives, Mansour founded his family’s private equity firm, Man Capital. This investment currently represents nearly a third of his $3.3 billion fortune, with the Caterpillar Mantrak dealership representing another quarter of his wealth, while the remaining portion is in other assets including Mansour Automotive Company and Man Foods, which operates McDonald’s restaurants in Egypt. Mansour’s brothers, Youssef and Yassin, manage parts of the group, and they are also billionaires, with the former’s wealth estimated at about $1.3 billion, while the latter’s wealth does not exceed $1.2 billion.