Egyptian billionaire Nagib Saviris wants to buy Telekom Srbije

Egyptian billionaire Nagib Saviris (56), the CEO of Orascom Telecom and one of the world's richest people, expressed interest in participation in the privatization of Telekom, as well as readiness to invest in Serbian infrastructure and hotel business.

This Forbes' billionaire had a meeting in Belgrade with Serbian President Boris Tadić and spoke to the group of 17 leaders of Egyptian companies and associations of entrepreneurs, led by Rashid Mohammed Rashid, the Minister of Trade and Industry of Egypt.

Saviris' Orascom participated in the auction for privatization of Mobtel in summer 2006, but it gave up in the first round, after the first starting price of 800m EUR was announced.

Nagib Saviris, of which name is on famous Forbes' list of world's richest people for years, is considered the third richest person in the Near East. His fortune is estimated at 12.7bn USD.

His father Onsi Saviris (79) founded family empire Orascom in 1950.

His three sons Nagib, Nasef and Samih, educated in Switzerland, are leading different branches of the family empire. Nagib Saviris, regular participant in panel discussions of the World Economic Forum in Davos, also invests in Egyptian media.

Ever since it was founded in 1998, Orascom Telecom is one of the biggest mobile telephony operators in the Near East, Africa and South Asia, and it did not fear entering even high-risk markets such as Iraqi, Algerian and Pakistani.

The Saviris family, among the richest in Egypt, operates on global scale, from mobile telephony in North Korea to hotel complex in Switzerland.