Masri holds a 5.1 percent stake in publicly traded Padico, based in Amman. This holding, along with Edgo, give him a fortune of less than $300 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Masri declines to share details about his wealth.
‘Rallying Others’
"The only thing I ask of you is, don’t call me a billionaire,” he says. “I hate it.”
Masri returned home from abroad in 1993, the year the Oslo Accords provided for the creation of an interim Palestinian self-government. Seizing on the optimism of the moment, he put together a group of wealthy diaspora Palestinians to form Padico, then a $160 million partnership designed to erect the economic foundations of a future state.
“He’s very good at rallying others,” says Kamel Husseini, who manages Ellam Tam, a public relations firm based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “He’s a wealthy guy, but he uses his wealth to position himself in the greater cause of public service. Not everyone likes it -- some people think it’s harassment -- but he’s pretty relentless in his networking.”
Crippled Economy
Padico established the Palestinian stock exchange in Nablus; Paltel Group, the territories’ first telecommunications service provider; a construction company; and a chain of luxury hotels.
“Our vision was that we would function a bit like the Jewish Agency did for Israel, helping to build up the state of Palestine with state-of-the-art companies,” Masri says, referring to the 84-year-old Jerusalem-based not-for-profit organization. “We would come to invest in areas that were seen as undesirable by other investors.”
The Palestinian economy still depends on billions of dollars in aid from the EU, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and others. Gross domestic product growth was projected to slow to 4.5 percent in 2013 from 5.9 percent in 2012, with the unemployment rate forecast to reach 24.1 percent for all of 2013, up from 23 percent the year before, according to a Sept. 12 International Monetary Fund forecast.
Beach-Side Hotel