UAE-based group eyes big-ticket projects in PH

Al Ahli Holding Group (AAHG)—a multibillion dollar, highly diversified conglomerate based in the United Arab Emirates—is establishing a significant presence in the Philippines as it embarks on a series of investment projects and developments here.

Mohammed Khammas, chief executive officer of AAHG, said that the group was interested in several projects particularly in real estate, location-based destinations, intellectual property and creative industries.

“We’re looking at a lot of things and we’re going to make more announcements in the next few months. We’re looking at larger projects as far as investments are concerned. Most of these developments will kickstart next year,” Khammas said.

“It is our first time (to have a presence) here and we’re working on establishing a team that will take care of the local business for us. Within Asia, we are already present in Hong Kong, Vietnam, India and Japan,” he said.

Khammas said the series of developments that his group was planning for the Philippines could be its largest in all of Asia. “So this will be some serious development for us,” he added.

Khammas, however, declined to disclose more details on these planned investments, but noted that the group was finalizing things with various government agencies, given the scale of the projects.

“The government has been very helpful and very impressive. The turnaround has been very quick as most of the agreements we are negotiating in other parts of the world took us a year or so, and that’s already fairly quick. In the Philippines, it took us just less than six months which shows a lot of commitment from the government to do these projects,” Khammas further said.

AAHG currently has businesses in 20     countries. It is engaged in a varying industries such as real estate, turnkey construction, engineering and infrastructure, retail and trading, technology and logistics, lifestyle and fitness, entertainment, hospitality and innovate developments.

To jumpstart AAHG’s long term investment commitment in the Philippines, the conglomerate is staging Asia Pop Comic Con, an international comic and pop culture convention, in Manila next year.

This comic con, Khammas said, would be the first of its kind as it was expected to draw guests and participants from Pan Asia, Europe, Middle East, and the Americas. Most comic cons are usually local in nature and cater to a single country.

“Filipinos are huge fans of comics, animations, and toys, and they have a wide knowledge related to the pop culture, which makes the Philippines an obvious choice to host Asia Pop Comic Con 2015. This will be first of AAHG’s series of unique projects that have been customer for the Philippines, which will provide novel entertainment experience and contribute to the local economy making it a win-win proposition attracting a lot of regional and international interest in the country,” Khammas said.

Holding the Asia Pop Comic Con 2015 in Manila is expected to help boost tourism in the Philippines, elevate the country on the global entertainment map, provide an international platform to showcase Filipino talent in the creative industries, and attract international attention here, thus creating opportunities for other related businesses.

“The Philippines has one of the most impressive roster of talents, when you talk about different genres of creative arts from film to animation, gaming, comic books photography you name it. There’s a huge creative community that’s here, and this (comic con) would be a great place to launch an international chapter of comic con here with the existing pool of talent here,” Khammas said.

“There’s a robust economy and there’s a very strong commitment from the government to support the creative community and B2B relationships related to the creative community,” he added.