An Arab can make it in France, says winning entrepreneur Altrad

The Syrian-born French billionaire Mohed Altrad was chosen “Entrepreneur of the Year” by EY.Bloomberg/ParisMohed Altrad says he’s living proof that an Arab can make it in France.The Syrian-born French billionaire nicknamed the “king of scaffoldings,” was chosen “Entrepreneur of the Year” by EY, joining the league of Canadian Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque du Soleil, India’s Narayana Murthy, who started Infosys Technologies, and Singapore’s Olivia Lum, chief executive officer of Hyflux, a water-treatment company.In spite of the rise in anti-immigrant sentiments in France after the alleged beheading this month of a man near Lyon by a suspect of Arab origins, the January killings at Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher store in Paris and the influx into Europe of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, a person with drive can succeed in the country, Altrad said in an interview in Montpellier, southern France.“It’s a bit more difficult, but possible,” he said. “There shouldn’t be a problem for somebody who feels like getting things done.”Altrad was chosen by EY for the annual award from among 65 candidates in 53 countries. A member of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest order of distinction, he is the first Frenchman to win the EY title.The businessman is at the helm of the Altrad Group, one of Europe’s largest scaffoldings and cement mixers companies, with 170 units across the continent and sales of about $2bn, including the acquisition this year of a Dutch company.The closely held group had pretax income of €200mn ($227mn) in 2014, said Altrad, who started out with his savings from working in the early 80s at the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, after a Phd in computer sciences in France.“It was an intuition, a desire to undertake, to consolidate,” he said, speaking on why he chose to go into the scaffoldings business that wasn’t his specialty at the time. “When somebody has a bit of money, he should invest it.”France is home to Europe’s largest proportion of Muslims, about 5mn out of a population of 66mn. Their numbers have been growing, with grandchildren of those who came from France’s former colonies in North Africa in the 20th century.The current anti-Arab sentiments in France are not new, Altrad says. They were already prevalent when he came to the country as a student in 1970. The Algerian war of independence was still fresh in the minds of thousands of French settlers forced to leave the ex-North African colony.The unemployment rate among non-European Union immigrants, a category that includes Africans and Middle Easterners, is about 21%, compared with 9% for the non-immigrants and a national rate of 10.5%, according to the government’s statistics office.The country, which has several stars of Arab origins in the sports and entertainment industries — from Zinedine Zidane and Karim Benzema to Jamel Debbouze and Kad Merad — it counts very few business leaders from that community.While France can help improve the situation, individuals need to take some responsibility, Altrad said.“Perhaps France can do more, and it must do more, but it’s not by sitting doing nothing that things will change,” he said.The proportion of school dropouts is higher among non-European immigrants than the rest of the population, according to a 2012 study of the national statistics office Insee that also shows that non-European immigrants are less likely to find a job after graduation.“There is peace here, there is a kind of hospitality that France isn’t obliged to extend and one has to acknowledge it,” Altrad said.Altrad was born in a Bedouin community of northern Syria around 1950 — he doesn’t know his exact birth date as tribes then didn’t record births to avoid army conscription, seen detrimental to traditional camel and sheep herding.“Deep inside, I’m very Arab,” he said. Yet he declined to speak Arabic, preferring to stick to French in the interview.Raqqa, the city where he went to school and where he met his first love — a story told in his 2002 autobiographic novel “Badawi,’ the Arabic word for Bedouin — is now under the control of the Islamic State, the group fought by a US-led coalition for human rights violations and persecution of Christians and other minorities in a territory that spans across eastern parts of Syria and northern parts of Iraq.“Syria has exploded,” Altrad said, showing the typical bedouin reserve by not being emotional. “Is it still one country, or several countries? At best, it’s a question mark.”Meanwhile, in his adopted country, he has worked on integrating. He gives his involvement in rugby, through the Montpellier Herault team that he majority-owns, as an example of his immersion in the French way of life. The sport is almost non-existent in the Arab world.“You have in the same person two strong cultures: the oriental, ancestral culture, and also the French culture,” he said. “Is it possible to be both? That’s why the word ’identity’ is troubling in my case.”