By: Ingy ElSafy

Cairo – Mubasher: The Egyptian mogul and billionaire Samih Sawiris said: “I have been laughing for the past three days because of this news” when he was asked, during the RiseUp Summit 2019, about the latest news on acquiring Thomas Cook Germany a few days ago.

“It was created by the media as if I bought the National Circus,” Sawiris said as he was hosted on the last day of the event which took place at the American University in Cairo (AUC) – New Cairo from 5-7 December.

He clarified that Thomas Cook Germany had announced its bankruptcy, so nothing big was remaining; accordingly, what Sawiris bought was also “not that big deal” as it is an integral business to a company that he had bought in Germany ten years ago. It is a company distributing tourism travels to other big companies, like Thomas Cook, while having 6,000 branches through which they offer comprehensive (full-board) trips that cover tickets, hotels, and transportation.

So, when they went bankrupt, and we were already owning from Thomas Cook about 280 units of those, the remaining units stood at 100, and as not to downsize these very small units that include like three or four employees, I was asked to add them to our existing business, so the units do not get liquidated while laying off the employees.

The price of the new acquisition does not reach 5% of the original business I had bought a decade ago, Samih Sawiris elaborated.

“You see how media can shift a very silly topic to an important one! On Friday, the BBC called me to ask about this news. I did not imagine that it would be exaggerated like this,” Sawiris said.