3. Abdullah Ali Kanoo
Chairman Yusif Bin Ahmed Kanoo
Abdulla Ali Kanoo is chairman of the Kanoo Group, Bahrain’s most trusted family enterprise, spanning a wide range of sectors and with operations across the region. Today, the group operates extensively throughout Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, Yemen and Qatar.
Yet when founder Haji Yusuf Bin Ahmed Kanoo took over the small family firm in 1890, he could not have imagined how successful the group would eventually become.
The family expanded its business in the early 1930s to Saudi Arabia, and in the early 1960s to Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. Then, as the oil boom arrived, the business grew from its early trading and shipping roots, to become one of the most diversified family conglomerates in the Gulf. Today, the Kanoo Group operates concerns in the shipping, travel and tourism, retail, IT, machinery, oil and gas, power and industrial projects, exhibition services, courier services, logistics, and chemicals sectors.