Steel businessman Abou Hashima on Entrepreneur magazine cover

CAIRO – 26 July 2017: Egyptian businessman Ahmed Abou Hashima, CEO of Egyptian Steel, was featured on the July issue cover of Entrepreneur Middle East magazine for his record time achievements and remarkable corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

The article highlighted his journey as he founded Egyptian Steel few month after the eruption of January 25 Revolution, which has caused turmoil in the country and lay-offs of employees from many enterprises, which is a scenario never happened in Abou Hashima’s establishment.

“Egyptian Steel did not lay off a single employee throughout these tough times,” the businessman stressed. “Our strategy has been to always invest in our people, believe in them, and make them understand that they are the source of power for this company.”

Abou Hashima gave credit to his partners who did not run away from the challenge, sharing his vision of persisting to grow and expand the projects.

The Egyptian Steel establishment is evolving to become a one-stop shop for building materials. The first venture in that aspect is Egyptian Cement.

Abou Hashima stressed that one of the most important factors of his company’s success was the “recruitment of talent”, explaining that he can spend billions on steel, “but with an inefficient team, they’d waste all the investments.”

As for his management of the corporation, the businessman clarified that he allocates the right calibers to fitting positions and have confidence in them. “I don’t believe in a one-man show method in running a business. Not every single detail must go through me, this will elongate procedures, waste time, and it will demotivate members of the team,” Abou Hashima said.

The businessman has been giving special care to Upper Egypt where poverty and unemployment are widespread, so as he founded in April the first steel factory there in the governorate of Beni Suef to operate in modern technology by Danieli Group.

Abou Hashima created a concept called ‘socially responsible capitalism,’ which emphasizes that the civil society has rights that should be fulfilled.

The businessman stopped ads for two years since 2014 to direct the budget to renovating and revamping Egypt’s 20 most impoverished villages. Ads were back last month to shed light on the recent Beni Suef project.

“Yet this did not affect our CSR plans, which are continuing as usual. In fact, we have expanded our CSR activities to include paying debts of impoverished prisoners who were sentenced time for owing money (and not for any criminal offences) so that they are now free to go back to their families, and helping specific cases of ill people who cannot afford their treatment,” Abou Hashima said.

Here is the full article on Entrepreneur Middle East magazine.