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• Badawi ( novel) Editions L'Harmattan (Paris, France), 1994

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  Mohed Altrad
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Mohed Altrad
  Mohed ALTRAD - riac 2012 - 20505 - 01 septembre 2012 cropped.jpg
  Born March 9, 1948 (age 69)
  Syria
  Nationality French
  Occupation Businessman, rugby chairman, writer
  Net worth $1.12 billion

  Mohed Altrad is a Syrian-born French billionaire businessman, rugby chairman and writer, born in March 1948 in the desert of Syria. His mother died on the day he was born[citation needed] and his Bedouin father gave him away to his grandparents at age 4. He was destined to be a shepherd. In 2015, he was named World Entrepreneur of the Year by EY.[1]

  Contents

  1 Youth
  2 Career
  3 Bibliography
  3.1 Novels
  3.2 Essays
  4 References

  Youth

  Mohed Altrad spent part of his youth in Raqqa, Syria.[2] He did his A levels at 17, he earned an allocation of scholarship and came up with 200 francs in Montpellier, France.[3]
  Career

  After earning a PhD in computer science at the University of Montpellier, he began working for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, from which he left to buy a scaffolding company in France in 1985. This acquisition morphed into the present-day Groupe Altrad (fr), employer of over 7,000 people, and involved in the scaffolding and cement-mixing industries. Altrad remains chairman of his namesake company, as well as the rugby club Montpellier Hérault Rugby.[4] He has also penned three acclaimed novels.,[5][6] He is unsure of his day of birth, so he recently "picked a date from a hat" in order to celebrate one.[7]
  Bibliography
  Novels

  Badawi (Actes Sud), 2002
  L’hypothèse de Dieu (Actes Sud), 2006
  La Promesse d’Annah (Actes Sud), 2012

  Essays

  Stratégie de groupe (Chotard), 1990.
  Écouter, Harmoniser, Diriger (Presses de la Cité) 1992.
  Le management d’un groupe international : vers la pensée multiple (Eska) with Carole Richard, 2008.

• Forbes - https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2015/03/02/the-face-of-frances-future/#6b2902f26172

  Mar 2, 2015 @ 07:00 AM 68,392 views
  The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
  From Bedouin To Billionaire: Meet The Man Changing What It Means To Be French After Charlie Hebdo
  Photo: Laura Stevens for Forbes

  Katia Savchuk ,

  Forbes Staff

  I write about billionaires and entrepreneurs around the world
  This story appears in the March 23, 2015 issue of Forbes. Subscribe

  Mohed Altrad doesn't know how old he is. No document recorded the day he was born into a Bedouin tribe wandering the Syrian desert. To make birthdays easier, his children recently picked Mar. 9 out of a hat. As for the birth year, he had to choose one when he came to Montpellier, France, 46 years ago to start a new life--1948 sounded about right. Altrad didn't speak French back then and survived on just one meal a day. He didn't know a soul.

  Today his name is hard to miss in Montpellier. It repeats at least a dozen times across the undulating silver walls of the city's rugby stadium, recently rechristened for Altrad and his eponymous company. From his owner's box, Altrad, bundled in a navy blue coat that complements his graying curly hair, gazes down at the seats below that often hold a crowd of 15,000. "It's strange," he says softly. "Normally people only have their names on things when they've passed away."

  Civic duty called. In 2011 Montpellier's mayor reached out to its richest resident, asking him to ensure the survival of the financially struggling 29-year-old Hérault Rugby, and so Altrad, who had never even been to a match, stepped up and bought the squad. Now the new owner goes to every game, as a red pin proudly accents his navy blazer, a symbol of the Legion of Honor, France's equivalent of knighthood, which he received in 2005.

  Altrad is France's Horatio Alger story. He overcame those extremely humble beginnings to build the Altrad Group into one of the world's leading scaffolding providers, with revenues exceeding $1 billion. Scaffolding, a low-tech industry that traces its roots to ancient Egypt, is as close to a commodity as it gets. But Altrad gooses net margins, which FORBES estimates clock in around 6%, in part by providing everything from cement mixers to wheelbarrows, and he has expanded aggressively through acquisition. After a quarter-century of steady revenue and profit growth, Altrad saw its sales double over the past five years, making his stake (he owns 80% of the company) worth an estimated $1 billion--and securing his spot as a new member of the FORBES World Billionaires list.

  Altrad's scaffolding graces construction and industrial sites in more than 100 countries, including the United States. But the majority of Altrad Group's clients are in Europe, with the largest number of those in France. Which makes him, and his billion-dollar fortune, something of a beacon in a country still saying "Je Suis Charlie." In the wake of the Paris massacres France faces some existential questions: Who exactly is French, and how can this storied country better integrate its sizable (and still largely poor) Arab population?

  Altrad offers a path forward. Greeted with anti-Arab epithets when he arrived--the Algerian war for independence fresh on the minds of his new countrymen--he learned French so well that he's become an acclaimed novelist. He then built a global company inside a country that knows its wheezing economy needs an entrepreneurial jump-start--a company, incidentally, that plays a role in maintaining French architecture, something as close to the national soul as baguettes and Bordeaux. Altrad hasn't been to Syria since 1972, when he visited his estranged father. "I quickly realized that I can't go back," he recalls. "To where? My ticket was one-way.

  "If you read articles about me, they always say, 'He's French of Syrian origin.' " He pauses. "Why do they need to say that?"

  ALTRAD RARELY TALKS about his past, and it's easy to see why. When he was around 4, his teenage mother fell ill and died. His father, a powerful tribal leader who had raped her, disowned him. And Altrad's only brother, who lived with their father, died from abuse. Young Mohed was raised by his grandmother in a tent that moved with the tribe, following the rains that created oases of grazing land for their goats, sheep and camels. Altrad's grandmother refused to let him go to school, insisting that shepherds had no need for books. He attended anyway, sneaking away before she woke, walking barefoot for an hour across the dunes. Getting an education was worth bearing her wrath, he believed, not to mention the constant taunts of classmates. He was an outcast even by Bedouin standards.

  "It was an instinct," Altrad says. "I knew that I was condemned, and my only chance was school."

  When he was 7 Altrad's father reappeared long enough to buy him a bicycle, a rare treasure in the desert. In his first entrepreneurial venture, he rented out the bike to other young boys and used the money for school supplies.

  A few years later he went to live with another relative near Raqqa, now the headquarters of the so-called Islamic State. He earned a baccalaureate, graduating first in the region and earning a scholarship from the Syrian government to study in France.

  "I had no special dream at the time," he says. "Only the ambition not to accept my initial destiny."

  In 1969 Altrad arrived in Montpellier, a city near the Mediterranean that sits at a midpoint between the borders with Spain and Italy. He spent a few months learning French, but when he started his studies in physics and math at the University of Montpellier, he could understand only one-tenth of what the professors said. By the time Altrad moved to Paris in the early '70s to earn his Ph.D. in computer science, he had become fluent enough to meet and marry a Frenchwoman who was also at the university. While studying he worked as an engineer for technology firms, which helped him qualify for citizenship.

  He later spent four years in Abu Dhabi, working for the national oil company. With low taxes and not much to do, he was able to save several hundred thousand dollars by the time his contract ended in 1984. Back in Paris he and three friends founded and quickly sold a startup that made portable computers. Altrad netted almost $600,000, but he had no idea what to do with it.

  In August 1985, while Altrad was on a holiday in Florensac, his wife's native village in southern France, a neighbor asked if he would be interested in acquiring a failing scaffolding manufacturer. The 200-person firm, Méfran, was bleeding several hundred thousand dollars a year, and debt to the banks was piling up. Though he didn't know the industry, basic accounting principles or even the French word for "scaffolding," Altrad decided to buy the company with Richard Alcock, a British friend from Abu Dhabi who'd been a partner in his computer startup. They paid one French franc--and assumed a slew of liabilities--with Altrad owning 90%.

  "It was an intuitive thing," Altrad says. "I saw that the product was very useful, since you need scaffolding in every sector: construction, refineries, airports."

  He immediately cut costs and layered in more incentive-based pay, methods the French workforce bought into because the boss had serious skin in the game. "I told people that I was putting in all the money I'd earned in five years. They thought, 'He believes in us.' "

  Within a year the company was making a small profit and launching subsidiaries in Spain and Italy. "He never talked about his ambitions," Alcock recalls. "The goal was just to get bigger."

  That aim quickly met roadblocks. Altrad decided to diversify by buying a French company that made surgical gloves. "Very quickly, I understood it was a mistake," he says. "One of our strengths is to be really focused on our core business." He sold the firm, branching out instead into concrete mixers, construction tools and other products that attract the same customers as scaffolding. Then, during the recession of the early 1990s, the fledgling company lost a quarter of its revenues in six months. What saved it, Altrad says, was that he'd seen the downturn coming half a year earlier and cut 30% of the workforce.

  Emerging from the crisis, Altrad found that banks wouldn't lend to a Syrian-born entrepreneur without industry experience, regardless of what the balance sheets said. So Altrad had to grow in the same manner that he had started in the business--buying smaller competitors in distress for very little cash and then slowly wringing new efficiencies from them. "I struggled a lot in the period," he says, "and wasted a lot of time because they didn't trust me."

  A turning point came in 2003. By then his company had a solid base, with 21 subsidiaries bringing in $130 million. It made its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up well-regarded German competitor Plettac. The purchase gave Altrad Group continentwide visibility and positioned it to compete for industrial contracts, as well as move more aggressively into higher-margin offerings, such as leasing and installation services. Consolidation across Europe followed, with Altrad averaging three acquisitions a year. Every single one, he claims, has ended up being profitable.

  0228_mohed-altrad-2_1200x675

  ALTRAD GROUP'S HEADQUARTERS sit on a narrow alleyway in a sleepy, residential neighborhood in Montpellier; the CEO decided to relocate to the first city where he truly felt at home, establishing one of the largest companies in the country based outside Paris. The offices are a short walk from Altrad's century-old mansion, quaintly dubbed "Le Cottage." He has three swimming pools, and a Ferrari and Lamborghini are parked side-by-side in the yard. The company's staff is installed in what were once servants' quarters. Altrad's office used to be the stables.

  The bucolic setting seems implausible for the headquarters of a firm with 1 million customers and 7,000 employees. Only 25 people work there, and Altrad doesn't even have an assistant. He says the company's success has much to do with this decentralized structure: a streamlined holding company and semiautonomous subsidiaries. When he buys a company, Altrad imposes a minimum of rules, leaving most of the workforce and culture intact.

  "I love freedom and want the people working for me to be free," he says. "We agree on something, and it's up to everybody to do it in his own way but coordinating with others."

  Altrad's aversion to hierarchy is spelled out in the company's 605-page charter (featuring both French and English), which sometimes reads like a manifesto. But it works. The subsidiaries, which now number 92 globally, operate like agile, entrepreneurial businesses, each with its pulse on the local market, while also tapping the cash, products and cost efficiencies of a multinational.

  It's a formula that's been fueled by a $100 million investment, four years ago, led by a French state-owned fund. Since 2011 the Altrad Group has made 22 acquisitions, including firms in Qatar and Morocco, with the intention of rolling up as much of this worldwide business as possible. The U.S. may be next: Altrad, which has just a small sales office here, says he's negotiating a significant acquisition, though this market, which has entrenched competitors and favors less-expensive Chinese scaffolding, could prove tougher. Either way, Altrad says not to expect a public offering, which would impinge on the corporate freedom he cherishes.

  Says his old partner Alcock (who sold out in 2008): "I can't actually see him ever letting go."

  As an executive, Altrad takes transparency literally. Two of the walls in his office are floor-to-ceiling glass, so employees see him when they get to work. Sunlight spills over coral walls and a spacious tile floor. His desk chair is almost thronelike, with black leather and ornate gold trim. A heavy chandelier hangs from the ceiling. The regal display is grounded by dozens of family photographs, featuring his five children and his partner of 13 years, a British-French lawyer (he and his wife divorced in 1995).

  The only sign of his past is a book framed on the wall. It's a novel he wrote called Badawi ("Bedouin"), published in 1994 and revised in 2002. "Largely, it's true," says Altrad. Badawi is less a celebration of rags-to-riches success than a story about the pain of being caught between two worlds. He often writes before dawn, when he can't sleep. "Sometimes life is difficult," Altrad says. "Some people do sports, make love or drink. I need to write." It was well received by critics and won a literary prize in 2003. In 2012 the Academy of Montpellier recommended the novel for its curriculum in regional schools.

  "It's a true piece of literature," says Françoise Nyssen, director of Actes Sud, his Arles-based publisher. "He's smart enough to realize that life is about something deeper than just making money and modest enough to know that literary success can't be bought."

  Altrad's two later novels, framed alongside the first, aren't exactly lighter fare. One explores whether God exists, and the other is about love. The latter ends with a story about Jews and Palestinians--a tale that carries extra poignancy for France, given the renewed rise of anti-Semitism there, especially from members of the Arab community. Altrad, who rarely talks about his faith and says he doesn't know whether he considers himself a Muslim, recalls that his Syrian schooling taught him that he should hate and strive to kill Jews. It's an experience he's long reflected on.

  "If you believe that there's incompatibility, that's a real disaster. That means men cannot live together. That means war. This is just not human," he says. "If you want to live in peace, just start talking."

  It's an outlook that his countrymen would do well to embrace. "When you've known solitude, suffering, hunger, humiliation, there's potential for extraordinary development," says François Léotard, a former French minister of culture and of defense, who counts Altrad as a friend. "I think he's had a sort of revenge on his youth. If the group continues to grow, and it will, it's because for a man of the desert there aren't any limits. He always looks beyond the horizon."

  Follow me on Twitter @katiasav.

  Mohed Altrad
  Real Time Net Worth — as of 3/23/17
  $1.63 B
  When Mohed Altrad immigrated to France from Syria in 1969, he didn't speak French and survived on one meal a day. Now he heads Montpellier-based Altrad Group, one of the world's leading manufacturers of scaffolding and cement mixers, with $2.4 billion in revenues and more than 21,000 employees. Altrad's current station is a world away from his beginnings as an orphaned Bedouin in the Syrian desert. Altrad's mother died when he was around 4, and his father disowned him. He was raised by his grandmother, who banned him from going to school. He attended anyway, eventually winning a scholarship to study in France, where he earned an undergraduate degree in physics and math and a Ph.D. in computer science. After stints at tech firms and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, he bought a bankrupt scaffolding manufacturer in southern France with a partner in 1985. Despite knowing nothing about the industry, he led the firm to turn a profit and has expanded ever since. Altrad also owns a majority stake in Montpellier Hérault Rugby and has written three novels, including semi-autobiographical Badawi. Altrad was named Ernst & Young's World Entrepreneur of the Year in 2016.

• BBC - http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33068445

  Entrepreneur of the year: a Bedouin turned businessman
  Peter Day Global business correspondent

  10 June 2015
  From the section Business comments

  Share
  Image copyright AFP
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  Are economics degrees fit for purpose?

  Don't ask Mohed Altrad how old he is. He may be a billionaire, but he doesn't know his age. No records. He's round about 65, perhaps.

  Mr Altrad told me his astonishing story in the unlikely surroundings of one of the poshest hotels in that nest of posh, Monte Carlo.

  Last year he was chosen as French Entrepreneur of the Year. The other day he went to Monte Carlo and - out of 52 national award winners - won the title World Entrepreneur of the Year in the annual contest organised by the international business services giant Ernst and Young.

  An extraordinary rags to riches journey. He told me about it. Mohed Altrad speaks considered English, slowly, fluently. He doesn't sleep much. He thinks a lot and writes a lot. About that past of his, and his present.

  Mohed Altrad was born in the Syrian desert, a Bedouin. His father was the leader of the tribe. His mother was poor, disregarded. His father raped his mother, twice. The result of this impulsive relationship: two sons. Mohed Altrad's elder brother died, killed by his father.

  His mother died on the day he was born.
  Image copyright Reuters
  Image caption Mr Altrad spent part of his youth in Raqqa, Syria, now an ISIS stronghold

  He was brought up by his grandmother in poverty. She assumed he would be a shepherd. No need for school. But the curious boy was intrigued when he saw the others were being taught. He peeped into the class through a crack in the wall and glimpsed calligraphy on the blackboard, something of course, that he could not understand.

  Eventually he persisted and got to the school. He was a clever boy; he did well. So well that his classmates revolted when the shepherd boy came out top of the class. They carried him off and dug a hole in the desert, shoved him into it head first and and ran off.

  Somehow Mohed Altrad wriggled out, and escaped. "The instinct of life," he calls it. And his luck began to turn. A childless local couple took him under their wing. He went to school, did well. In Raqqa, the city that is now capital of the ISIS, the Islamic state, a takeover that saddens him.

  Sixty years ago the position of Syria was also complicated: a military dictatorship under the influence of France and the Soviet Union. Mr Altrad won a place at a university in Kiev, only to be told the course was full.

  Instead he was sent off to one of the oldest universities in Europe, Montpellier in France. He arrived late one chilly November evening, not knowing any French.

  But that did not hold him back for long. Eventually he got a PhD in computer science. He worked for some leading French companies, became a French citizen, and then worked for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, where there was nothing to spend his earnings on. He saved money.

  He itched to be in charge of his own destiny. Back in France he co-founded a company making portable computers...suitcase-sized, he says. When it was sold, he had more capital.

  Eventually Mr Altrad and a partner bought a small French scaffolding business. For one franc and lots of liabilities. It was bleeding money.

  Not high tech, but scaffolding is always needed, he thought. And the small contractors buying or renting his steel poles also needed wheelbarrows and cement mixers. Another leg for the business.

  The new owners turned it round, incentivising staff with performance bonuses. It started generating cash.

  Mr Altrad used the money to expand, by buying other companies in what was a fragmented, local industry undergoing widespread consolidation. He tried to treat his employees well, asking them to respect a sheet of principles they were shown when they joined the firm.

  He began to expand abroad, sticking to the same business and to similar principles. He added to scaffolding the things builders needed. And over 30 years, this small business grew to encompass 170 companies under the Altrad umbrella. Seventeen thousand people, $2bn (£1.3bn) turnover, $200m annual profit.

  He has just doubled the size of the company by buying a Dutch rival.
  Image copyright AFP
  Image caption Mr Altrad is president and part owner of the rugby team in his adopted home: Montpellier

  Despite the fact that he had such success, and won such acclaim, Mohed Altrad remains a quiet and thoughtful leader.

  "You can ask why I am doing this," he says. "It has never been for money. I am trying to develop a humanistic venture to make the people who work for me happy."

  "If they are happy, they are more efficient, better performers, they have a better life." That—he says—is what companies ought to aim for. "If I am happy, I work well."

  Mohed Altrad believes in financing business growth out of cash flow. "If you go to the financial markets," he says, "you are a prisoner of the banks. We reinvest our earnings."

  Altrad, the company, has been taking part in a great consolidation of a very fragmented, locally-based industry. Even so, it strives not to behave as a monolith.

  "A company is an identity, a piece of history; its products, clients," he says. "The general tendency of big groups like us is to reshape [the companies they buy] and make them more or less standard. This is absolutely against my concept." So Altrad companies keep their own names, and their own identities.

  But there is what Mr Altrad calls a charter of shared values for all the companies, which new recruits are asked to read, subscribe to... or improve. "It's a human venture," he says.

  "If you are interested in a woman," he told me, "and your first reflex is to say don't dress like this, don't use this make-up, then what are you doing? It is precisely the same thing when you buy a company."

  He uses his sleepless nights to write books... some of them about economics. He has also written an autobiographical novel; Bedouin is how the title translates into English.

  It has been chosen by French education officials to be read in schools, in millions of copies. His story goes on having resonance in a Europe where immigration is a big issue.

  "I am here in front of you," he said to me, "but you can say I have a life of three thousand years. This life of the desert, it has its own rules, which started 3,000 years ago. Talking to you here in this nice place, to me it's very strange to do that; that [feeling of strangeness] is in my blood, in my everyday life."

  Mohed Altrad is always aware that something (like being buried alive in the desert) can happen, always a bit scared. "So this feeling of freedom is always here as well," he says.

  I asked him if he was now happy. Not really, he says.

  "I have a debt in life that I know I will never be able to reimburse. This is to give life again to my mother who has no life. She had a very short life... 12 or 13 years. She was twice abused. She saw her son die. She died immediately the day I came."

  To keep the spirit of his mother alive is the extraordinary motivation of Mohed Altrad, Entrepreneur of the Year.

  Peter Day's interview with Mohed Altred will be broadcast on Global Business on the BBC World Service on 11 June.

• Altrad Web site - http://www.altrad.com/gb/group-altrad-chairman#.WNPBFqK1vIU

  Mohed Altrad of Altrad Group from France named EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015

  MONACO, 7 JUNE 2015. Mohed Altrad, the founder and CEO of Montpelier-based Altrad Group, was last night named EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015 at an awards ceremony held in Monaco's Salle des Etoiles. Mohed was picked from among the 65 country winners from 53 countries vying for the title.

  Mohed Altrad, who was born into a Bedouin tribe in Syria, moved to France aged 17 and went on to gain a PhD in Computer Sciences. He and a partner bought a nearly bankrupt scaffolding maker in 1985 to form the basis of what is now Altrad Group. Mohed developed the company through acquisitions and organic growth and in 2014 generated nearly US$1b in sales and employed nearly 7,000 people in 110 subsidiaries throughout the world. The company, which is the world leader in cement mixers and a European leader in scaffolding and wheelbarrows, will reach US$1.13b in revenues by 2016. Mohed is also President of Montpellier Hérault Rugby Club.

  Rebecca MacDonald, founder and Executive Chair of Just Energy Group, Chair of the World Entrepreneur Of The Year judging panel says:

  "This year it was a tough but ultimately unanimous decision. Mohed has built a hugely successful, fast-growing international business having overcome a humble and very challenging upbringing. He was forbidden from going to school as a child, moved to France to set up a new life and is now one of the country's most successful entrepreneurs. The judges were impressed by his ability to build and sustain growth over 30 years and by his humility and character."

  Mohed Altrad, says: "I'm so honored to receive this prestigious award, especially as there was strong competition from such outstanding entrepreneurs around the world. I want to dedicate this award to everyone, as the objective of life is to help humanity. My story should tell anyone that you can change your destiny."

  Maria Pinelli, EY's Global Vice Chair – Strategic Growth Markets, says: "Mohed is an inspirational entrepreneur who demonstrates that determination and perseverance can overcome adversity. He has grown his businesses consistently over a long period of time and is now a beacon for other entrepreneurs in France and beyond to follow."

  Mark Weinberger, Global Chairman & CEO of EY, concludes: "Entrepreneurs are a crucial engine of economic recovery and job growth. Mohed is a truly inspiring World Entrepreneur Of The Year winner. He demonstrates the tenacity and sense of purpose that so many of our 64 other country winners possess and which helps them build a better working world."

  A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

  There are privileged moments in the life of a group, symbolic landmarks that show the progress that’s been made, give meaning to its history and offer a glimpse of a promising future ahead.

  This is the case for the year 2014/2015 in which, proud of its rich past and strengthened by its achievements, the Group celebrated thirty years of existence. At the same time, as a sign of its vitality and constantly renewed dynamism, it took a decisive step in development with the acquisition of Hertel, a worldwide leader of services to industry.

  This operation is part of a strategic rationale initiated several years ago and primarily focused on the growth opportunities offered by the rental and services business, especially internationally.

  The acquisitions in 2012 and 2013 of Generation and Trad in the United Kingdom were part of this orientation aimed at strengthening the Group's positions in Europe and benefitting from the best performing economies while reducing exposure to the market risks and economic uncertainties within its geographical sphere of influence.

  Joining with Hertel has clearly amplified this dynamic process, firstly in Europe, where Hertel’s strong positions in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom effectively complement those of Altrad, but also in the emerging markets of the Middle East, Caspian, South East Asia and Australia, giving the Altrad Group access to new territories.

  The deployment of a wide and diverse range of services, resolutely geared towards major industrial clients, considerably reinforces the areas of expertise of both groups in the service sector. Both will benefit from the competitive advantage of the integrated manufacturing operations widely deployed in the Altrad Group.

  With combined revenues of over € 1.9 billion for a full year and 17,000 employees, the Altrad-Hertel entity has become a world leader in the market, reaching a critical international size, and gaining at least 15 years on Altrad’s initial market plan.

  This great leap forward, with the air of a true epic, was only possible because the Altrad Group was able to build on its achievements and fundamental principles, both cultural and managerial, its humanistic conception of the company and of change, and its business model focus on responsiveness, operational performance and openness to the world.

  This culture based on strong values ​​can be found in the Hertel Group, proud of its history of over 120 years, prioritizing customer service, the quality and safety of its services and the expertise of its employees.

  With these convergences and joint expectations, the Altrad Group, as has always been the case in its acquisitions, will naturally be keen to respect and promote the identity and characteristics of Hertel and preserve its talents when implementing overall strategy and defining management objectives.

  Finally, I would like to underline the unwavering commitment of our financial partners and shareholders, who with renewed confidence, gave their full support to this project and the funding resources needed for its realization, thereby contributing to the sustainable and lasting development of our Group.

  This naturally sheds light on the results of the past year, which, after consolidating all our business activities, show a turnover of 1,6 billion up by 83 % for the same scope of activities and 10% on a comparable basis.

  Analysis by sector shows a slight progression for the conventional outlets, similar to last year, and at the same time a significant upsurge in the scaffolding-access solutions sector (rental and services), justifying the Group’s strategic choices for external growth.
  The markets in France and Southern Europe remain fragile and are still down compared to other European countries, largely driven again this year by the dynamism of the United Kingdom.
  The international context remains mixed today.

  France is still struggling with structural weaknesses, and the construction and public works sector, essential for the industrial component of the Group, is still behind. The diversification strategy deployed by the Group has nevertheless put the impact of this unfavourable environment into perspective; this sector represents only a third of total turnover, the remaining two thirds being produced by the Services sector, which has been a timely priority for several years.
  Germany and especially the United Kingdom continue to benefit from a buoyant economic climate.

  It should also be noted that large industrial clients: petrochemicals, nuclear power plants ... now constitute direct outlets for the services sector, making the Group less vulnerable thanks to the multiannual nature of the contracts and the status of the signatories.
  They also fuel the production system and largely add to its profitability, which in turn helps to secure and optimize Group sourcing.
  The Group is of course fully committed to controlling its rapprochement with Hertel, both as regards establishing common management principles and in achieving growth and profitability targets for the new operational entity.

  The benefits of this rapprochement in terms of business and the expected synergies strengthen the Group’s faith in its future and enhance our permanent search for high-level competitiveness and profitability.

  Its strong financial position, bolstered by new financing and the reaffirmed support of its partners, its unique management system that is responsive and decentralized, the respect and appreciation of cultural differences, should enable the Group to calmly continue to expand and forge its destiny with confidence.

• Gloucester Live - http://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/who-is-mohed-altrad-the-billionaire-said-to-be-interested-in-buying-gloucester-rugby/story-29921699-detail/story.html

  Who is Mohed Altrad? The billionaire said to be interested in buying Gloucester Rugby

  By CitizenRob | Posted: December 07, 2016

  By Rob Iles @robsportstwit

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  GettyImages-483866760

  Mohed Altrad

  Mohed Altrad is trying to buy a majority share in Gloucester Rugby club.

  Read: Could Kingsholm become Altrad Stadium as billionaire confirms interest?

  But who is he and how has he made his money? Here are some things you might like to know about Altrad:

  Mohed Altrad was born in the Syrian desert but he doesn't know when his birthday is. There is no document recording the day of his birth but his children picked March 9 so he could have a day to celebrate and he guessed the year of 1948 when he first moved to France in 1969.
  Altrad has a PHD in computer science from the University of Montpellier before working for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
  He bought a scaffolding company in 1985, which later became known as Groupe Altrad. Altrad, who owns 80 per cent of the company, built it up to become one of the world's leading scaffolding providers with revenues over $1billion a year. It has construction and industrial sites in 100 countries, including 27 in the UK in places such as London, Birmingham and Bristol.
  Altrad received the Legion of Honor in France in 2005 – the equivalent to a knighthood – and was named World Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015 by Ernst and Young.
  After settling in Montpellier, he answered an SOS from the city's rugby club that was struggling for survival in 2011 and bought the club.

  Live: Gloucester Rugby team announcement ahead of La Rochelle at home

• National (Abu Dhabi) - http://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/from-bedouin-to-billionaire-how-this-entrepreneur-beat-the-odds

  From Bedouin to billionaire: how this entrepreneur beat the odds

  Colin Randall

  June 14, 2015 Updated: June 15, 2015 09:23 PM

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  Topics:

  Syria France

  One-page article

  Marseille, France // The illegitimate Syrian-born son of a Bedouin tribal leader has triumphed over a wretched start in life to be named World Entrepreneur of the Year for 2015.

  Mohed Altrad, who is around 65 but cannot be sure of his birth date, has built two prosperous businesses from scratch since arriving in France on a student scholarship.

  His Altrad group, created from the ruins of a bankrupt scaffolding supply company, now has 170 affiliates worldwide, 17,000 employees and a turnover of US$2 billion (Dh7.34bn), producing annual profits of around $200 million.

  He attributes his remarkable success in part to a business philosophy based on the belief that when workers are happy, they perform better and more efficiently. But he insists he has never forgotten his roots.

  Mr Altrad was born in the desert outside Raqqa, now — to his immense sadness — controlled by ISIL. He says his birth was the product of rape, the second time his father, leader of a Bedouin tribe and representing its only lawful authority, had forced himself on a girl barely into her teens.

  His elder brother, similarly conceived, died young. He was killed by their father’s maltreatment, according to Mr Altrad.

  Their mother was no more than 13 when she died, soon after Mohed’s birth.

  Mr Altrad knew no affection from his father and left the nomadic tribe to be brought up in poverty by his maternal grandmother in Raqqa.

  "She saw no need for me to go to school," he said, "since I was just going to be a shepherd."

  But the young Mohed Altrad was inquisitive and found a place in a local school, having been enthused when peering through cracks in the wall to see children being taught calligraphy.

  Despite his humble origins, he became a model pupil and, in a country influenced by the French mandate that ended just after the Second World War, won a scholarship for the best baccalauréat results of his year in the region.

  He was sent to the southern French city of Montpellier, unable to speak a word of French and having read only two French books, Arabic translations of an appraisal of General Charles de Gaulle, wartime leader and later president, and a Gustave Flaubert novel.

  "It was a hard time," he said. "I’d imagined France as a beautiful country of great culture and history. Arriving in Paris and continuing to Montpellier, it was very different — November with clouds, rain and cold after being in the Syrian heat a day before.

  "I started university unable to understand even 10 per cent of what was being said. Algeria had won independence from France, lots of French people had left to resettle in the south of France and there was great hatred of Arabs in general."

  Mr Altrad remembers vividly how he rose above prejudice.

  "One day I decided that for me to stay, it was not France that had to change for me, but me for France."

  He mastered French and English, and committed himself to his studies, emerging with a PhD in computer science.

  Jobs in telecommunications followed and, in the early 1980s, he answered a call for qualified Arabs needed in Abu Dhabi to help with the development of Adnoc.

  "I had a salary, a car and a house and there was nothing much in those days to spend my money on except a cinema showing mostly Indian films," he said. So he saved.

  Returning to France after four years, he joined a university friend in launching a company producing computers, nominally portable but each weighing 27kg.

  The company flourished. But after devising a programme for an Arabic version of airport arrival and departure boards, which sold well to Arab countries, Mr Altrad felt he did not have the funds for the necessary business development.

  The company was sold and, with his proceeds, Mr Altrad bought a bankrupt scaffolding business – one of what he calls "life’s series of accidents".

  "My wife and I were having a break in a village near Montpellier and a neighbour told me about it," he said. Acquiring the stock and the debts cost him about €700,000 (Dh2.9m). The factory was his for a single franc, then France’s currency.

  Once he grasped the concept of scaffolding, hitherto unknown to him, he realised its universal demand. He added other building products and made numerous takeovers in a gradual expansion of the business.

  Over the years, he has also published three books, including a novel inspired by his life story.

  In 2011, he rescued his cash-strapped local rugby club, Montpellier Herault, and is a regular at its games in France’s Top 14 league, using his private plane when necessary. He has been listed as France’s 61st wealthiest person.

  Mr Altrad cares deeply about what has happened during recent years of conflict in his native country. He sympathises with the parents of young western Muslims drawn to fight with ISIL and other terrorist groups.

  And he regards as aberrations of Islam the actions of the Kouachi brothers and Mohamed Merah, French-Algerians responsible, respectively, for this year’s Charlie Hebdo murders and a 2012 wave of killings in and near the French city of Toulouse.

  As for his "world entrepreneur" award, started by the international business services firm Ernst and Young, he sees it as a victory for France, not just himself.

  "Yes I am proud," he said. "It is an honourable achievement. My mission is to make people happy. I am successful, but whether I am happy is a different question. I think the only thing that could make me truly happy would be to able to go back and revive my mother."

  foreign.desk@thenational.ae

Badawi
263.30 (July 25, 2016): p44.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/

Badawi

Mohed Altrad, trans. from the French by Adriana Hunter. Black Cat, $16 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2579-8

Altrad's autobiographical debut novel, first published in France in 2002, poetically depicts a Bedouin boy's extended coming of age and the uneasy navigation of his transition from provincial Syria to the West. After the death of his mother, young Mai'ouf must skirt the commands of his caretaker grandmother to attend school, first in his unnamed village and then in the city of Raqqa, where he proves to be a standout student. When he's offered a scholarship to attend college in France, it's less the subject, petrochemistry, that convinces him, than the chance to escape an uncertain future and make good on his potential. Sweating to return for his youthful love, Fadia, he sets off for Paris and changes his name to the aspirational Qaher ("the victorious"). But as time passes, the newfound Qaher struggles to reconcile his ambitions with a past--and a promise--that seem increasingly further away. Altrad, a construction magnate who's entered the Forbes billionaire list since the book's original publication, sketches his narrator's interior life with a sparseness that can dip into the programmatic but at its most elegant recalls Paulo Coelho. He reserves his more florid detours for the "velvet of the desert" and meditations on power and influence. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Badawi." Publishers Weekly, 25 July 2016, p. 44. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460285453&it=r&asid=023ff5c2a9b50c81500543fb437cfa47. Accessed 23 Mar. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A460285453
Badawi
Michael Cart
112.21 (July 1, 2016): p24.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm

Badawi. By Mohed Altrad. Tr. by Adriana Hunter. Sept. 2016. 240p. Black Cat, paper, $16 (9780802125798).

Born a Badawi (Bedouin) in Syria, Maiouf finds himself caught between two worlds when--against his grandmothers objections--he goes to school, ultimately moving to the region's capital city to continue his education and receiving the highest score there on his baccalaureate exam. His life changes dramatically when this boy from the desert receives a grant to study in France, becoming, in the process, further alienated, tom now between two cultures, French and Syrian. Graduating, he takes a job as an engineer with an oil company in Abu Dhabi, a foreign worker, once again feeling like a stranger to everyone but Fadia, with whom he had fallen in love as a boy but is uncertain, now, how he feels about her and his childhood home in the desert. First published in France, Altrad's autobiographical novel is the hauntingly melancholy story of a gifted young man's attempt to find a home in a roofless world. Though set in the Middle East, the story has universal applications in this age of emigrants and immigrants.--Michael Cart
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cart, Michael. "Badawi." Booklist, 1 July 2016, p. 24. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459888914&it=r&asid=fac2307ce3533c28344cc0537e33c9da. Accessed 23 Mar. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A459888914

• Counterpunch
  http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/04/review-mohed-altrads-badawi/
  Word count: 929

  November 4, 2016
  Review: Mohed Altrad’s “Badawi”

  by Charles R. Larson

  Email

  Here’s a curious situation. Mohed Altrad, a Syrian Bedouin, published Badawi, in French, in 1994, well before the Syrian debacle. Black Cat has now brought out an English translation, probably because of the recent tragic events in the author’s country of birth. The publicity for the novel includes the following statement: “As the global migrant crisis continues, and waves of refugees arrive on Europe’s shores, many of them from Altrad’s home country, Syria, this intimate, beautifully told story poses timely and important questions about a life of exile and what is lost when a place, and culture, is left behind.” Fair enough.

  His grandmother raised Altrad’s main character, Maïouf, because his mother died when he was very young. Moreover, right after his birth, the boy’s mother was immediately divorced, making her a reputed woman, because of protestations by her husband’s first wife. The boy’s grandmother expects him to become a shepherd, so he sneaks off each day to the local school for his early education. His father, in a near-by town, will have nothing to do with him, even after he excels with his education. Other students bully him, jealous no doubt because of his intellect, constantly reminding him that he is nothing more than a simple Bedouin (Badawi, means Bedouin). World literature is replete with similar stories: the child from a traditional background who overcomes enormous obstacles to gain an education.

  There’s a painful scene when Maïouf—whose only garment (an old djellaba) is literally falling off his body—decides to visit his father and ask him to pay for a new one. badawi2“Hardened by his years at school, he’d learned to tolerate the other pupils’ jeers, which luckily grew rarer as he achieved increasingly good results. That didn’t stop him feeling sensitive about his poverty. Ever since he arrived he’d been wearing the same old djellaba [which] betrayed his origins a little more blatantly each day.” His father refuses, but in an inspired moment, Maïouf goes to one of the stores where his father has an account and convinces the clerk that his father has agreed to pay for the garment. It’s the kind of assertion one would expect of him later in his life but, sadly, we never encounter another decisive move like this one.

  The rest of the story is rags to riches. Completing secondary school, Maïouf’s scores are the highest in the region. He’s given a scholarship for higher education in Montpellier, where he earns a degree in petro chemistry. In France, he takes on a new name, Qaher, meaning “the victorious,” rejecting Maïouf, “the abandoned one.” The name appears to work because four years later he acquires a high-paying position working for a UAE oil company.

  The position is a real coup for him, but there are two loose threads from the past that complicate matters. The first is his memory of his uncle’s trial for accidentally killing another person. His uncle had been so accustomed to his subservient position that he made no attempt to defend himself, resulting in years in prison. The second is his teenage crush on a young girl, named Fadia, who obviously loves him, and his inability to respond to that love once he’s gained his higher education. Both of these incidents paralyze him and make him feel “always a stranger to the people around him, ” trapped between the Bedouin past of his childhood and the cosmopolitan environment of his high-pressure job. All of this is fairly predictable story telling, in no way remarkable in the canon of non-Western literature.

  What is revealing, however, is Altrad’s own situation, which closely parallels Maïouf’s until the moment he completes his higher education. The information I summarize here comes almost exclusively from an article about Altrad in Forbes (March 2, 2015): “From Bedouin to Billionaire: Meet the Man Changing What It Means to Be French after Charlie Hebdo.” The article refers to Altrad as “France’s Horatio Alger story,” though I think the country should be identified as Syria. Altrad was “greeted with anti-Arab epithets when he arrived” in Montpellier. “He was an outcaste even by Bedouin standards.” He earned a Ph.D. in computer science and then worked for the national oil company of Abu Dhabi. With money saved from four years of work, he invested in a series of companies (mostly construction and related activities) and today is worth more than a billion dollars. Hence, the Forbes profile, which concludes with this remark: “Altrad…says he doesn’t know whether he considers himself a Muslim….”

  With such dynamic success in business (in his own life), why does the main character of Altrad’s first novel act so indecisively (except for that one early incident when he manages to get a new djellaba?) Wouldn’t the Horatio Alger story be more appealing to readers today, instead of a hackneyed story of failure? Doesn’t the republication of Badawi in English simply reinforce old stereotypes of marginalized peoples, marginalized and confused forever?

  Mohed Altrad: Badawi
  Trans. by Adriana Hunter
  Black Cat, 224 pp., $16

  Join the debate on Facebook

  Charles R. Larson is Emeritus Professor of Literature at American University, in Washington, D.C. Email = clarson@american.edu. Twitter @LarsonChuck.

• BookLoons
  http://www.bookloons.com/cgi-bin/Review.ASP?bookid=18845
  Word count: 278

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  * * Reviewed by Barbara Lingens
  Badawi is the word for Bedouin, and it is our hero's name. He is a young boy, whose ill mother has been divorced, in a society in which to be divorced is to be repudiated. After his mother's death, Badawi has to live with his grandmother, who barely tolerates him. But Badawi is curious, and he knows that schooling is the way for him to escape his tribal life.

  The author, Mohed Altrad, is a Syrian-born businessman who has written several novels. This story seems to echo his early life: he was born in the desert; his Bedouin father gave him away to his grandparents; and he was destined to be a shepherd.

  Over the years, Badawi manages to claw himself to a position with an oil company. Along the way he has met a girl, who though he is unable to acknowledge it, is very important to him, because she represents the life he thought he wanted to leave.

  Yet his new life isn't quite what he expected it would be either. And this is where we run into some problems. Badawi's youth is well described. We see, hear and smell the desert, and feel his desire for advancement. Once Badawi has a career, we are not as involved. Things and people are described more superficially, which creates kind of a rushed feel to this part of the story. The ending is very beautiful, though.