Has Saudi Government taken over the Saudi Binladin Group?

Saudi Binladin Group is a multinational and multi-billion construction Company of Saudi Arabia and the second largest company in the world. This company had several government projects since last one decade.  One of them is furbishing the mosques of Makkah and Madina.

This company is a private firm but a few days earlier, some unconfirmed reports were issued by media sources which stated that the Kingdom’s government will soon take over the Saudi Binladin Group (SBG). 

SBG is said to be the Construction Giant of Saudi Arabia and has worked on many megaprojects and is still contributing towards the betterment of the Kingdom. It is known as the biggest builder in Saudi Arabia which has more than 100,000 employees.

Now, what is the reality? Is this true that SBG is going to become a Government company? This Saturday, SBG announced that it will remain a private company owned by its shareholders.

It also said that it has contracted works with the government and some of the work is still ongoing which includes Zamzam rehabilitation project and some refurbishing projects in the two Holy Mosques.

According to some of the information from SBG management, some shareholders made a settlement to transfer some of the shares to the Saudi Government against outstanding dues.

According to the Group’s management and administration, the firm is making reforms and changes in their governance and executive management team in order to do better and meet their commitments towards everyone related to the group.

The efforts to reform and restructuring were initiated a couple of years ago in order to make the management better by setting aside the ownership of administrative matters.

This matters a lot to a company because the owners may not be able to oversee each and every decision in accordance with technical and marketing point of view.     

It said a supervisory committee was created to restructure the group and enable the management to succeed in leading the projects and new challenges.

This committee consisted of five members, including three independent members DR.Abdul Rahman Hamad AL-Harkan, Dr.Khaled Hamza Nahas and Khaled Mohammad Al-Khowaiter, and two shareholder group members, Yahya Mohammad Binladin and Abdullah Mohammad Binladin.

It is expected that this committee will help the company to become a profitable company again. After the fall in the oil prices in Saudi Arabia, this company suffered a lot and its most of the Government projects were delayed. This company faced a big loss and abstained its thousands of workers.

After the crane incident that happened in Makkah Grand mosque, the contractors too suffered a lot as Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz punished this group by excluding it from new public projects. Now the company is making efforts to stand again and lead as a profitable company.

I sincerely hope that the SBG will stand up on its feet again. Recently, they have made several payments to their employees who had been terminated 2,3 years ago which shows their commitment to their employees.

Source: Arab News