Saad Group
The Saad Group (Arabic: مجموعة سعد), formed in 1980, is a Saudi Arabian based privately owned conglomerate with operations in construction & engineering, real estate development, tourism, medical services, financial services, investments, and education. The group reported unaudited assets in 2006 exceeding $6 billion with over 10,000 employees.
Maan Abdul Wahed Al-Sanea, a former air force pilot of Kuwaiti origin and his socially conscientious wife, Sana bint Abdul Aziz Al Gosaibi (of the regionally prominent Al Gosaibi merchant family), jointly founded the company, naming it after their eldest son who later died in a 1989 traffic accident. Seeded by their joint inheritances and the support of Sana's father, the extremely wealthy & powerful Abdul Aziz Hamad Al Gosaibi, Al-Sanea initially began as a senior manager of the Ahmad Hamad Al Gosaibi & Brothers Money Exchange Bureau in Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia, before venturing into civil engineering and contracting extensively with the rebuilding of Jeddah's infrastructure and its beautification. Expanding into medical care, education, real estate development and finance, and continuing a mutually profitable relationship with the financially astute and highly influential Abdul Aziz Hamad Al Gosaibi until his death in 2002, the Saad Group began investing internationally, most notably in Britain where they are a substantial equity holder in home builder and real estate developer Berkeley Group Holdings and one of the biggest shareholders in HSBC, Europe's largest banking group. Taking substantial equity positions in a myriad of Saudi publicly traded companies such as Nama Chemicals and the Samba Financial Group, the Saad Group also founded the Awal Bank, a wholly owned, well funded wholesale bank in Bahrain which it uses as the conduit for its financial operations.
In May of 2004, terrorism[1] at the Saad Group's Oasis residential compound in Alkhobar, targeted foreigners taking 50 hostages and eventually leaving 22 dead before the Saudi security forces were able to overcome the antagonists. Many of the dead were Saad employees, and in a gesture that heightened Al-Sanea's local profile, and mirrored his wife's reputation for social responsibility, the Saad Group guaranteed a lifetime payment of salaries to the families of those who had lost their lives.