CAIRO, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Onsi Sawiris, the patriarch of a family of billionaire businessmen who launched a group of multinational companies under the Orascom umbrella, died on Tuesday at the age of 90, chairman of Coptic Christian General Authority Sherif Doss announced on Facebook.
Onsi Sawiris received an engineering degree from Cairo University and started his construction firm in 1950. In 1976, he established the Orascom General Contracting and Trade company, which later became Orascom Construction Industries.
His conglomerate is one of the country's largest contractors for building roads and waterways. It was expanded in the 1980s and 1990s by working in tourism, hotels, computer and mobile phone services.
Onsi Sawiris is the father of famous Egyptian businessmen Naguib, Nassef, and Samih. According to Forbes, Onsi Sawiris's net wealth is estimated at 993.8 million U.S. dollars while his son Nassef is Egypt's richest person with 7.1 billion U.S. dollars fortune. Enditem
