Breaking the glass ceiling

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Shahira Zeid, CEO of MZ Investments, one of Egypt’s most enterprising PE firms tells Arabian Business why women and a more educated workforce are key to the future.

Nescafé is the most important thing in the morning,” laughs Shahira Zeid, raising her cup of coffee as she takes a seat in her office on Cairo’s bustling corniche, on the banks of the River Nile. “I tell people it’s the most important thing on my desk.”

It is disarming bonhomie; it is also difficult to believe. Coffee mugs may be an ever-present on Zeid’s desk, but it’s the multitude of papers and reports upon which they rest that tell the true story of her manifold responsibilities.

Zeid is the vice chairman and CEO of MZ Investments, a private equity group with direct investments in more than 50 companies that span the fields of tourism, hotels, marine services, oil, transport, freight forwarding, foodstuffs and agriculture.

She is also one of the leading lights of a new generation of Egyptian women making their own mark in what has long been a male-dominated business community. It is an achievement of which she is proud, yet the mother of two feels she was marked for from a young age.

“At the beginning it was very difficult to balance work with family, but I believe that when a person is successful in one thing, they can be successful in all things,” Zeid insists.

“Obviously in the Arab world men look at women in a different way,” she continues. “It’s true in boardrooms across the Arab world, and this is something I grew up with. But I have to admit I never had problems; it came very naturally to me. People respect me because I have a mind of my own.”

Such drive has dovetailed nicely with the ambitions of her father Magdy Zeid, the company’s founder and chairman, and Shahira’s “mentor and advisor”. Before 1982 and Shahira’s graduation from the American University of Cairo, Magdy had concentrated the family firm’s efforts on oil and shipping, building a strong base across two of the region’s most established sectors.

With Shahira came diversification into a series of tourism and hospitality projects, as well as real estate. And the benefits of such a shift are readily apparent; today MZ Investments boasts an annual turnover close to $1.5bn, and tie-ups with a number of international firms. Magdy — now 77 years of age — has a daughter with a keen sense for new markets and fresh opportunities.

“Now we’re concentrating on China,” she reveals. “We’re the only Egyptians to have significant investments in China, where we have a factory building hybrid cars, and we are also producing a material that will be used for the construction of low cost housing.

“It is difficult to get a licence to produce cars, so we bought the licence from a Chinese partner and are producing hybrid cars and motorcycles,” she explains. “We shall be selling to different manufacturers, both the components and entire cars, to other companies, from next year.”

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