Sheik Ali Al Sabah

THE BIGGEST BOSSES 48. ALI KHALIFA AL-SABAH KUWAIT PETROLEUM DEALMAKER FOR A DYNASTY

By - Shawn Tully August 3, 1987 (FORTUNE Magazine) – Seemingly born to dealmaking as much as to royalty, Sheikh Ali Khalifa Al- Sabah, 41, a member of the dynasty that founded Kuwait in 1756, has built state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. into the Middle East's only integrated, multinational oil company. It explores, drills, and refines oil, and sells gasoline through more than 4,000 service stations in Europe. The stations' clever name: Q8. Sheikh Ali, who serves as minister of oil, plays a vital role in Kuwait's economy. He shuns exercise, explaining, I'm bad at sports, but loves technology. He spends weekends devouring technical journals. At the oil company operations in the city of Ahmadi, he installed a sprawling computer center for employees' children. Like most members of his family, the sheikh was groomed for a big government job. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and statistics from the University of San Francisco and a master's in economics from the University of London. Put in charge of oil in 1978, he pulled together the country's fragmented operations to form the company, then launched a whirlwind expansion drive. The Q8 refineries and stations provide an outlet for much of Kuwait's crude oil production of one million barrels a day. Says Sheikh Ali: The margins that used to go to middlemen now go to the company.