In the last twelve months Jameel has advanced the company’s international growth and Turkey was the latest market to be targeted with the acquisition of a 65 percent stake in the Turkish Toyota operator. “Turkey, with a GDP of about $800bn and a population of about 72 million people, is a market nobody can afford to ignore. The passenger car and light commercial vehicle market in Turkey reached 600,000 units,” Jameel says.

ALJ is also active in the fields of real estate, financing, software solutions, advertising, media, and distribution and sales of electronics and appliances. It employs more than 10,000 people worldwide with around 2,000 in the UK alone, and the group also operates Saudi’s largest consumer finance company.

Jameel has also been instrumental in trying to create jobs in the kingdom, through the setting up of the Bab Rizq Jameel (BRJ) initiative.

BRJ is seeking to create 45,000 jobs in Saudi Arabia, with ambitions to increase this number to 80,000 by the end of 2010. The programme was recently given the backing of Lars H Thunell, executive vice president and CEO of the International Finance Corporation (IFC).