Emaar was my first client at my first job out of university (a consulting gig at Andersen). The company had launched with a heavily oversubscribed IPO based on nothing but vague plans to develop Dubai‘s ‘High Growth Corridor’, now better known as New Dubai and the backing of the government and then crown prince Sheikh Mohamed.

Shiekh Mohamed had recently spent a few hundred million dollars building the iconic Burj AlArab and the Emirates Towers and it had become very obvious very quickly that he was in charge of the city and that he was on an ambitious mission to transform it much as his father had in the 70s and 80s.

Emaar was a tiny company at the time, with an executive team of about a dozen people working out of temporary offices in the Dubai World Trade Center complex (that Emaar CEO Mohammed AlAbbar used to run. In a classic Dubai development, AlAbbar was relieved of all duties related to companies – DWTC, Dubal etc – officially overseen by Sheikh Hamdan, Sheikh Mohamed’s older brother. This was one of the first of many falling outs between AlAbbar and eminent political figures in the region).

Our engagement team at Andersen was small and working out of the Emaar offices, we had constant access to the firm’s senior management. Mohamed AlAbbar was still at the helm of the Department of Economic Development, where he first established himself as a force in the local business community. He would come into Emaar in the afternoons after the DED had closed for the day. The firm’s initial strategy was focused on super-luxurious master-planned gated-communities. They had launched Emirates Hills but sales were slow and the company was trying to figure out how to spur growth. The launch of its Dubai Marina development (the world’s largest man-made marina) was an initial step in the direction that lead to Emaar’s astounding success: opening up sales to foreigners and catering to the city’s burgeoning middle-classes. Emaar’s management team were a mixed bag in terms of abilities and experience, one of the company’s major challenges in those days was recruiting and retaining world-class talent, Dubai was still very much off the global radar at the time. But even in those early days AlAbbar was obviously a serious talent. Super-charismatic, strategically brilliant and shrewd as needed. There’s no doubt in my mind that the history books will identify him as one of the most visionary Emiratis of his generation. Most of Dubai’s recent successes can be traced back to him. Most of Dubai’s missteps to his rivals.

Burj AlArab was announced in 1994 and was completed in 2000. Its success as with so many projects completed in the Dubai Decade (the naughty noughties) took even Dubai’s leaders by surprise. Initially planned as a monument to put Dubai on the map, it did more than that becoming a viable business – thanks in no small part to the newly minted Russian super-rich and their love of our ostentatious and sunny little-city-state- and helping to launch one of Dubai’s best companies – Jumeirah. Each success egged on the ruling classes to take bigger and brasher (and it must be said sillier) gambles. Early on in the decade Sheikh Mohamed, advised by McKinsey and former McKinsey-ites, launched important and strategically sound projects that aimed to make Dubai the regional hub for media, technology, healthcare, finance and tourism. Unfortunately the implementation on many of these strategic initiatives left lots to be desired (Dubailand in particular, planned as Dubai’s answer to Disneyland was stupendously mismanaged). Still there were plenty of definite successes including Dubai Media and Internet Cities, the Jumeirah hotels, and decent enough starts for Dubai Healthcare City and the Dubai International Financial Center.
Over time though the small circle of advisers to the rulers grew and combined with more liquidity than anyone knew what to do with (thanks to high oil-prices and low US interest rates – both a byproduct of China’s economic emergence), announced projects got more and more outlandish: The world’s biggest hotel, a Las Vegas strip without the gambling, 3 giant palm-shaped islands, The World islands, rotating ski slopes in the desert etc.

Emaar saw the Dubai bubble bursting earlier than others leading it on to geographic diversification (some – India, Egypt, and most importantly Saudi, more successful than others – its US foray was terribly mistimed leading to a bankruptcy filing). But the secret of the company’s success and profits was tied to the model of receiving free or dirt-cheap land from the Dubai government and developing highly-profitable developments that simultaneously helped Dubai reach its regional hub goal. Hence the Burj Dubai launch. Over the last few years Emaar was a client of the marketing agency I co-founded in Dubai and within the company they would refer to the Downtown Dubai project as Mohamed AlAbbar’s Mona Lisa – his masterpiece. He was so involved in the project that even the Ramadan tent we designed and operated for Emaar had to have his sign-off before we could get the go-ahead. My friends at the company would tell me how he was involved in even the choice of tiles used in the Armani residences that would occupy the first few floors of the world’s tallest building (alongside the world’s first Armani Hotel).
Whatever your opinion on his leadership style, there can be no doubting AlAbbar’s achievements at Emaar. While his domestic rivals piled on enough debt to bankrupt the city-state, Emaar delivered world-class projects, consistently impressive profits and a world-class organization. It just takes a short walk around the Downtown Dubai development to appreciate its corporate excellence.
Still the launch of Burj Dubai marked the frothiness era of the Dubai Decade. We allowed the Anything is Possible outlook to become our strategy.

As any student of recent history will tell you, the world’s tallest building almost always opens after the bubble that produced it has burst (Empire State, Petronas Towers – see The Economist chart below that compares economic growth of the relevant country when a tower was opened, with the respective annual growth rate enjoyed half a decade earlier). And so we have the unfortunately and unsexily rechristened Burj Khalifa that officially opened yesterday marking an era of living in Abu Dhabi‘s shadow and under its wings (Check this BBC video of the opening fireworks).

Dubai had an incredible run and it is mission accomplished in terms of paving a way for a modern Middle Eastern city. Its influence (good and bad) is visible throughout the troubled region and Doha and Abu Dhabi (the two cities that will share this new decade) will become greater cities thanks to the experimentation and mistakes made on our watch.

So congratulations are in order for Dubai, Emaar, SHeikh Mohamed and Mohamed AlAbbar on the spectacular launch of the Burj Khalifa. Lets see what Doha and Abu Dhabi have in store for tens.

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