Meet The Saudi Real Estate Tycoon Partnering With The Trump Family

Forbes

17-05-2025

Donald Trump spoke at a Saudi-U.S. business investment forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, during the first official foreign trip of his second term.
Last December, Eric Trump, Donald Trump's son and the executive vice president of his Trump Organization, traveled to Saudi Arabia to announce the launch of a new Trump-branded project with Saudi real estate developer Dar Global: the Trump Tower Jeddah, a 47-floor luxury residential skyscraper on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast that's slated to cost $530 million to build. Addressing the crowd gathered below a crystal chandelier in a cavernous hotel ballroom, he made sure to thank Yousef Al Shelash, the chairman and cofounder of Dar Global's parent company, Dar Al Arkan.
'He's a man that I have such a great relationship with. We're doing so many incredible projects all over the world,' Eric, 41, gushed of Al Shelash, who was seated at the same table. 'He's truly become a member of the Trump family and somebody I truly love dearly.'
When Al Shelash took the stage three minutes later, he returned the sentiment. 'We began our relationship with the Trump Organization nearly a decade ago,' he said. 'The relationship did not start as a business relationship, but rather as a friendship, and it has continued to grow.'
Among all the businessmen the Trump Organization is partnering with during Donald Trump's second White House term—from India to Indonesia to Vietnam—Al Shelash may have paid the U.S. president more than anyone else. His firm has announced at least six Trump-branded luxury real estate deals over the past three years, in Dubai, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It's good money: Trump disclosed earning $7.85 million in licensing fees from a single Dar Global project in Oman between 2021 and early 2024, according to his two most recent financial disclosures. And with at least five other agreements set to begin, Trump is likely to earn millions more from licensing and management deals with Dar Al Arkan over the rest of his presidency.
Little-known outside of his home country, Al Shelash has managed to stay out of the headlines even as he's agreed to shell out millions to partner with the most famous politician in the world. While not as rich as Trump, who has an estimated $5.5 billion fortune, Al Shelash is wealthy in his own right. Forbes estimates he's worth $900 million, largely concentrated in shares of Dar Al Arkan, which he cofounded in 1994 alongside his brothers and five other families, and then took public on the Saudi stock exchange in 2007. He also owns 6% of SHL Finance, a publicly traded Saudi mortgage lender; 30% of Quara Finance, a Saudi consumer financing outfit that went public in 2024; and a 5.5% stake in Alkhair Holding, a Bahrain-based investment bank.
Dar Al Arkan recorded a $215 million net profit on $1 billion in revenues in 2024, up 32% and 39%, respectively, from a year earlier. A real estate developer that builds apartments, villas and residential communities, the bulk of Dar Al Arkan's 2024 revenue—nearly 83%—came from land sales, rather than from selling finished homes or apartments. While Al Shelash doesn't appear as a shareholder in the firm's public filings, a person familiar with the company told Forbes that he and members of the company's six founding families hold about 50% of the company, worth about $2.9 billion. A representative for Dar Al Arkan didn't make Al Shelash available for an interview but confirmed Al Shelash's net worth.
The close ties to Trump—which Al Shelash, a month after being called a member of the first family, downplayed to a Saudi state-owned TV channel as 'purely a business relationship'—has already been good for Al Shelash. Shares of Dar Al Arkan have risen by 75% since the firm started rolling out more deals with the Trump Organization last July. All of those agreements have been made via Dar Global, the company's international arm, which it established in 2017 to develop real estate outside of Saudi Arabia and then took public on the London Stock Exchange in February 2023. (Dar Al Arkan still owns 88% of Dar Global's shares.) Stock in Dar Global has also seen a boost, jumping nearly 140% since last July despite disappointing earnings results in 2024. The firm's two biggest stock jumps, in December and April, coincided with announcements of the Trump deals in Jeddah and Doha, respectively.
It's no surprise, then, that Al Shelash has been playing up his closeness with the 47th president on social media. In photographs posted to Dar Al Arkan's X and Instagram accounts, he smiled alongside Trump at a pre-inauguration event on January 19, and then appeared at the president's 'Make America Great Again Victory Rally' later the same night and at the Starlight inaugural ball the next day. Speaking with CNBC Arabia at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland the following week, he sounded an optimistic tone about Trump's second term, saying, 'We hope that this change in administration will bring stability to the region and the world.'
Born in 1967 in Saudi Arabia, Al Shelash's early life remains a mystery. He graduated from Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh with a bachelor's in Islamic law in 1990, then obtained a master's in law from the Institute of Public Administration in Riyadh two years later. In 1994, when he was 27 years old, he cofounded Dar Al Arkan with his brothers and five other families, the Al Hethlouls, the Al Roumis, the Al Jarallahs, the Al Qasems and the Al Babtains. By 2000, Al Shelash owned 23.5% of the business, making him the joint largest shareholder.
In the firm's early years, it focused on buying up large plots of undeveloped land in central Saudi Arabia, building basic utilities including water, sewage, electricity, paved roads and sidewalks, and then selling it to other investors and developers. In the early 2000s, it expanded to the western and eastern regions of the country and slowly started developing residential units.
In 2004, the six families brought 60 new stockholders into Dar Al Arkan by selling new shares—about 19% of the company—for roughly $1.1 billion, diluting Al Shelash's direct stake to 9% and valuing the firm at $1.4 billion. That same year, Al Shelash and his Dar Al Arkan cofounders also established an investment bank named Alkhair Holding—then known as Unicorn Investment Bank—in Bahrain with $111 million in initial capital. It set up offices in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Chicago, investing in a portfolio of assisted living facilities in California.
'They're land traders. Their idea is to buy land outside of the city's boundaries, and eventually the city will grow and there will be land appreciation,' says a person familiar with Dar Al Arkan's management. 'It seems that their customers are royals or ruling family members, or just regular rich Saudis who want to buy land. They buy these plots of land from these families and then wait for years until the infrastructure reaches those plots and then sell them at a profit.'
Dar Al Arkan's first major foray into homebuilding came in 2006 with the Al Qasr project, a master-planned residential community with a shopping mall north of Riyadh. The next year the firm went public on the Saudi stock exchange at an $8.1 billion valuation. Al Shelash sold $110 million worth of shares and held onto an 8% stake worth $630 million after the listing. He'd already pocketed an estimated $77 million in dividends over the previous two years, giving him an estimated net worth of more than $800 million at the time. (He hasn't directly owned any shares since 2019, according to the firm's filings.)
Meanwhile, Al Shelash was further expanding his empire through investment bank Alkhair, putting money into businesses in Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey and the U.S., including a semiconductor design firm based in Silicon Valley. By 2007, Alkhair had $363 million in assets under management and had also expanded its investment banking business—all while growing more intertwined with Dar Al Arkan.
Alkhair owned $42 million worth of Dar Al Arkan stock at the time and also acted as the joint manager, underwriter and bookrunner for two sukuks—Islamic financial certificates similar to bonds—that Dar Al Arkan raised in 2007 with a total value of $1.6 billion. Al Shelash also ventured into mortgage lending, setting up SHL Finance the same year with his fellow Dar Al Arkan cofounders—plus outside investors including Arab National Bank and the International Finance Corporation—to take advantage of the Saudi government's move to expand access to mortgages in a country where only about 2% of homes were purchased with mortgages at the time.
Then the global financial crisis hit. Dar Al Arkan's stock plummeted by nearly 50% between September and November 2008. By October 2011, shares were 84% below their 2008 peak and the firm faced a crash crunch, with $1.3 billion in debt due in 2012. (Though the company still began work on its largest project yet, Shams Ar Riyadh, a 1,235-acre development with villas and commercial buildings that's still in the works today.)
Dar Al Arkan's headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
'The global financial crisis of 2008 and the three years that followed had a significant impact on the decline of Dar Al Arkan's shares,' a representative for Dar Al Arkan told Forbes. 'This forced [Al Shelash] to sell many investments and repay outstanding loans.'
Things got worse in 2012. An anonymous website, allegedly set up by the former CEO of Alkhair with the help of a business investigation firm, claimed that Al Shelash and the firm's founding shareholders used a web of companies—including Alkhair Holding—to invest in Dar Al Arkan's sukuk issuance, mask their ownership of Dar Al Arkan's shares and move funds between companies they controlled. Dar Al Arkan denied the allegations and then sued the former CEO and the business investigation firm in London's High Court.
Dar Al Arkan repaid its debt in 2012 and the two sides settled the lawsuit in 2015, with the company noting that the 'allegations were not proven and the claims were settled and/or abandoned.' But Dar Al Arkan's shares continued to crumble, reaching a low of 4.3 Saudi riyals ($1.15) per share in February 2016—92% below their IPO price. The company managed to turn the tide in 2017, growing revenue by 153% to $1.3 billion by stepping up its land sales, and the stock started to recover.
Dar Al Arkan has continued to tap international investors for financing in recent years, but the firm now enjoys a more stable reputation. Moody's analysts who cover its debt wrote in March that the firm's high-value land bank, projected cash flow and cash reserves of $1.8 billion meant it could 'comfortably cover' its short-term debt and other capital needs. Meanwhile, Alkhair Holding has reduced in scope, scaling back its investment banking activities and selling most of its investments, save for a warehouse provider in Jordan and a financial services firm offering Sharia-compliant investment products in Saudi Arabia.
In 2017, Al Shelash saw an opportunity to grow the business outside of Saudi Arabia. Dar Al Arkan announced its first foreign development, a 34-story luxury residential tower in Dubai, and also set up Dar Global to target the luxury apartments business in Dubai—a departure from the land sales the firm had long relied on in Saudi Arabia. The company also hired Ziad El Chaar, the former CEO of Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani's Dubai-based developer DAMAC Properties, to become Dar Global's CEO. While working for Sajwani, El Chaar was the architect of several deals between DAMAC and the Trump Organization, including a Trump-branded complex with a 500-acre golf course and villas that opened a month after Trump's first inauguration in 2017.
El Chaar soon borrowed a page from his own playbook, with Dar Global announcing its first deal with the Trump Organization in March 2022 in Oman. Located on land owned by a company controlled by Oman's Ministry of Tourism, Dar Global is building a 140-room, 5-star hotel and an 18-hole golf course with luxury villas, all set to open in December 2028. The Trump Organization will also manage the hotel and the golf club for 30 years from the date they open, ensuring a steady stream of management fees for the president and his family.
At the same time, Al Shelash was tying Dar Al Arkan closer to Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who rose to power in 2015 and announced his Vision 2030 program to modernize Saudi Arabia a year later. In its annual reports, the firm committed to achieving the goals of Vision 2030, from building a "vibrant society" to fostering an "ambitious nation." But that doesn't seem to have helped it win much favor with the government: In late 2022, Saudi authorities imposed an embargo on large parts of Dar Al Arkan's Shams Ar Riyadh project because the land was close to New Murabba, a massive new development on 4,700 acres that was unveiled by the crown prince.
That same year, the crown prince estimated that Saudi Arabia would need more than 4 million residential units over the next 10 years. Yet despite its push to build more homes and apartments, Dar Al Arkan has been overtaken by much newer entrants to the Saudi real estate market. Since its inception in 1994, Dar Al Arkan has only delivered about 15,000 units—less than the 16,000 sold by rival firm Retal since it was founded in 2012.
'It's very unusual,' says the person familiar with Dar Al Arkan. 'If you're the biggest developer, you've got this huge land bank and there's this supply shortage, why aren't you able to build homes and sell?'
Al Shelash continued to focus his attention overseas. When he took Dar Global public on the London stock exchange in February 2023, it had 11 developments in the works in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dubai, Qatar, Spain, the U.K. and Oman, including the Trump project in Muscat. The IPO raised $72 million, valuing the company at around $600 million.
Then—last July, as Trump was steaming toward his election victory—Dar Global started rolling out a string of Trump-branded developments. First came the Trump Tower Jeddah and a luxury skyscraper and hotel in Dubai, followed by the announcement of two projects in Riyadh in December.
Four months later, Dar Global announced an agreement with Qatari Diar, a real estate firm owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, for a Trump-branded luxury development with an 18-hole golf course, golf club and villas on a 195-acre plot of land in Qatar. That marked the sixth publicly announced real estate project between the Trump Organization and Dar Al Arkan, and the first to be unveiled after Trump returned to the White House in January.
Dar Global had a rough 2024, with net profits falling by 82% to $15 million and revenue slumping by 33% to $240 million. The partnerships with Trump were a bright spot, per Al Shelash, who touted how the firm "enhanced [its] collaboration with the Trump Organization' in his 2024 letter to Dar Al Arkan's shareholders. And back home in Saudi Arabia, the government lifted its embargo on Shams Ar Riyadh and returned ownership of those land plots to Dar Al Arkan.
Dar Global plans to keep growing its global footprint, with developments in the works in the Maldives and Morocco. It's not done partnering with the Trumps, either: Al Shelash told CNBC Arabia in January that Dar Global was working with the Trump Organization on a seventh project, in Greece, that has not been formally announced. Expanding to the U.S. is also on the cards: 'We have studied several projects in New York, Miami and possibly Los Angeles,' Al Shelash told Al Arabiya Business in January.
It's unclear whether the U.S. developments will involve the president. In Trump's first term, the Trump Organization pledged not to enter any new foreign deals while he was in office. This time around, the company's ethics plan bars direct deals with foreign governments—but not with foreign companies. Yet the partnerships with Dar Global in Oman and Qatar, where state-owned companies own the land that the Trump-branded properties will be built on, appear to violate the pledge Trump made. A representative for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.
'The acceleration of new foreign deals in the first several months of this presidency is astounding,' says Walker Davis, deputy research director at watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. 'It's all out in the open now. It's no holds barred with this Trump administration and conflicts.'
Trump, for his part, seems excited about the wave of new construction sweeping through the region. 'The towers that I see rising [are] amazing,' he said in a speech at a U.S.-Saudi investment conference in Riyadh on Tuesday, part of the first official foreign trip of his second term. Then he listed some examples—nearly all of them cities where he's building towers and golf courses with Al Shelash. 'In places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Doha, Muscat, the transformations have been unbelievably remarkable.'