CNBC International Sep 19, 2026
With Ahmed Galal Ismail, Group CEO of Majid Al Futtaim, the Dubai group that runs Mall of the Emirates and holds the exclusive Carrefour rights across 12 markets
Majid Al Futtaim reported record revenue of 35.9 billion dirhams for 2025, close to $10 billion and up 6% on the year, and then spent the first half of 2026 trading through a war with Iran that emptied the Gulf of tourists.
Most developers slow down when consumer spending drops and airport traffic falls by a third. Majid Al Futtaim kept a development pipeline the show valued at nearly $30 billion and a 5 billion dirham rebuild of its flagship mall running through the worst of it.
"We are staying the course on that. We are a developer not with cycles. We're a developer through cycles. We believe in the markets that we operate in."
Ahmed Galal Ismail, Group CEO of Majid Al Futtaim, on CNBC's Managing Middle East, runs a privately held group founded in 1992 that spans shopping malls, residential communities and hotels as well as supermarkets, cinemas and digital retail across the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. He was interviewed inside Mall of the Emirates, in the middle of the rebuild he was defending.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 12 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Strip out the days of actual hostilities and footfall was "almost been flattish" year on year
Tourism has not come back to pre-war levels; UAE residents made up the difference
First-half revenue grew 1% and EBITDA grew 11%, earnings rising faster than sales
He calls the second quarter a short demand shock followed by a rapid recovery
Technology and AI take more than a billion dirhams a year, about $270M
Quick commerce grew almost 38% last year; the retail-media arm grew almost 50%
Asked to name his biggest competitor, he named the company's own past success, not a rival or a technology
The plan is to double the equity value in five to seven years, not the size of the business
New destinations coming online over five years add "north of 100 perhaps 150 billion dirhams"
Food security never became a problem because most basic food never gets on a ship
His figures: up to 80% of dairy and 50% of fresh poultry come from local or regional supply
Every 10% rise in the oil price feeds through to roughly 0.4% food inflation, and he says the group has not passed all of it on
1. A $1.4B Mall Rebuild
The interview was recorded inside Mall of the Emirates, where the show said a $1.4 billion transformation is underway. The anchor's first observation was that the mall was busy, and that shoppers still want a physical store.
Ismail's answer was that the result is bought rather than given.
He treats footfall as the output of spending on the mall, not a trend
The formula is very simple. You invest in the experience, you do it in partnership with your brands, you put the right human capital behind it, and customers continue to reward us with better footfall and better spend.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
The project is the mall's latest reinvention, and he gave its size in dirhams rather than dollars.
The budget is 5 billion dirhams spread over five years
Yet another transformation, five billion over five years.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
That covers roads and bridges around the mall as well as the building itself.
The mall gets a tenth more space and a hundred more tenants
We're expanding the mall, adding 10% more leasable space, 100 more shops.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
He put more weight on what goes into the space than on the space itself, naming a new culture offer and a new dining offer.
The specific new format is dining that opens to the outside
For the first time, we'll have an indoor outdoor dining precinct in Mall of the Emirates.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
2. Footfall Almost Flat
Asked how footfall compares after six months of conflict, Ismail separated the days when business actually stopped from the rest of the period.
On a year-on-year basis, excluding that interruption, he said "footfall has almost been flattish." The number matters because of what sits underneath it: tourist numbers have not recovered, so residents are carrying the total.
His own reading of that number is that the tourism component has yet to return to pre-conflict levels, so the flat total is being held up by domestic demand he described as quite robust.
3. Staying the Course
The show set out the damage before asking about it. Passenger traffic on Middle Eastern airlines fell nearly 60% year on year in March, the first full month of the war, and traffic at Dubai International was down 31% across the first half of 2026.
Ismail did not dispute the environment. He argued about what the company was able to do inside it.
He accepts the environment is unpredictable and starts from the balance sheet
So, it's important to acknowledge that the current operating environment is obviously unpredictable, but we're quite fortunate that we're coming into the current situation from a extreme position of strength.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
His claim is that the half was better than survival
And what we've seen in the first half of 2026 is something that goes well beyond resilience.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
What he says that dynamism consisted of was adapting to events without stopping long-term investment, which he described as the company's posture rather than a reaction.
4. 1% Revenue, 11% EBITDA
Asked where the war actually showed up in the numbers, Ismail named the second quarter.
Consumer spending and tourism revenue both fell in the second quarter
The second quarter was quite testing for everyone. Consumer confidence, consumer spend was obviously dampened. Tourism revenues have significantly diminished.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
He was careful about the duration, and kept his own hedge on it.
He calls it short and sharp rather than a change in trend
So obviously there was a short but very noticeable, I would say, demand shock.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
What followed was a fast bounce, on his account
What we've seen is actually quite a rapid recovery.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
Group revenue grew 1% year on year in the first half, which he called "still positive growth in a very challenging environment." EBITDA grew 11%. Earnings grew faster than the top line, and he said the group was able to absorb the shock and rebound from it quickly. He credited the spread of businesses inside the UAE alone.
5. Domestic Demand Held Up
The anchor said he had read that airport traffic fell about 30% in the first half, and asked how much of the domestic business depends on people who do not live in the UAE.
Ismail started with the wider economy and gave a figure for how much of it is oil.
He puts oil at under half of UAE output and falling
Oil represents less than 50% of GDP and declining.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
The vast majority of demand for the group's shopping, retail and entertainment businesses is domestic, he said, and that demand behaved better than tourist demand.
Residents proved the steadier customer
And domestic demand has actually proven to be a lot more resilient than tourism demand.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
Customers did change what they bought. He said some delayed major non-food or elective purchases, and others traded down within the weekly shop.
The trade-down showed up inside the basket
We've seen customers economize on their basket.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
The recovery in resident spending is the part he sounds most confident about
But we've seen a steady and I would say quite reassuring recovery in domestic demand.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
6. $270M a Year on Tech
The show said the group invests more than a billion dirhams a year in technology and AI, roughly $270 million, and that some of its fastest-growing businesses are now digital rather than physical.
He says the spending is validated by the growth rates it produced
We'll continue to double down on that type of investment and the proof is actually in the performance also of the business.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
The clearest example he gave was rapid grocery delivery, which grew through both the supply disruption and the demand shock.
Quick commerce grew almost 38% and kept growing through the war
So our quick commerce business grew almost 38% last year in the first half of the year despite supply chain disruptions availability and other demand shocks has grown double digits.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
The other example was the group's first digitally native, AI-enabled business — the retail-media network Precision Media, which sells advertising against Carrefour shopper data. He said it grew almost 50% last year and is growing at a high double-digit rate again this year.
7. 40,000 MAFers, Then What
Asked which technologies will reshape retail over the coming decades, Ismail refused the timeframe before answering.
He will not forecast decades in a market moving this fast
I'm quite cautious about making predictions for decades to come. I think in this fast-paced environment, it's very difficult to make predictions.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
AI is transforming businesses, he said, and the group has seen a good return on its AI spending — but he described the spending as deliberately disciplined, because the technology is expensive.
Ahmed Galal Ismail on AI: it does not work everywhere, and not on its own
You cannot use AI everywhere and you cannot use AI in isolation of human ingenuity.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
He then applied the question to headcount. Majid Al Futtaim calls its employees MAFers.
He will not put a number on how many AI co-workers the group ends up with
So we think about our workforce we have 40,000 MAFers like myself. Are we going to have 10,000 20,000 40,000 co-MAFers within 2 or 3 years? I don't know.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
What he said he does know is that the group's future depends on making its own staff as good as they can be while equipping them with the agents now available to them.
8. The Rival Is Past Success
Asked to name the company's biggest competitor, Ismail did not name a company or a technology. He named the record the group is coming off.
Three strong years are the risk, because they invite complacency
We've had fantastic three-year run, record profitability, the strongest balance sheet we've had in a decade.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
Complacency turns a company's attention inward
The biggest risk to us is complacency and complacency then drives us to focus more internally, focus on competitors and lose focus on customers.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
9. Doubling Value, Not Size
The group is still planning multi-billion-dollar developments in the UAE and Egypt, plus further growth in Saudi Arabia and East Africa. Asked which of its markets is changing fastest, Ismail said the UAE is a market where the competition is global rather than local, and that being anchored there is what lets the group move quickly and compete abroad.
He then ranked the rest. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are the two biggest markets. Egypt is the long-held position.
Egypt is a 25-year investment, not a new one
We see tremendous growth opportunities in Egypt where we've invested for close to 25 years and we have a great track record with all of our businesses.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
East Africa already employs 3,000 people
And East Africa for us is a new growth horizon. We have 3,000 colleagues who work in East Africa.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
Looking five to seven years out, he said there is a genuine opportunity to double the value of the group over that horizon, and put a figure on what the new projects add.
New destinations over five years add 100 to 150 billion dirhams
I think when you add all of our new destinations that are coming online over the coming 5 years that probably adds north of 100 perhaps 150 billion dirhams.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
That is between roughly $27 billion and $41 billion at the dirham's fixed rate, against the nearly $30 billion pipeline the show cited. Asked directly whether he expects to double the size of the business, he corrected the question.
The target is the equity value of the company, not its scale
Double the value of the business. Yeah. And that's an important distinction. The ambition is to double the equity value of the company.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
A more valuable company is not necessarily a bigger one
That does not necessarily that we're going to double the size of the business, but we're going to create a business that is a lot more fit for the future and certainly a lot more valuable.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
10. Hormuz and the Shelves
The group holds the exclusive rights to operate more than 390 Carrefour stores across 12 markets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The show set out why the Strait of Hormuz mattered to those shelves: Dubai's Jebel Ali port handles around 90% of the UAE's imported grains and oilseeds and is a gateway for food bound for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar, in a supply network serving as many as 50 million people.
Ismail's answer was that the shipping figure overstates the exposure of everyday food.
Basic food arrives by road, not by sea
So, we do imports, but we don't import everything. And a lot of the basic foods actually never get on a ship. They're delivered by road either locally or from the surrounding region.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
His numbers for dairy and poultry
Almost up to I would say 80% of dairy doesn't get on a ship or a plane. 50% of fresh poultry for instance also comes mostly from local sources. So food security has never been an issue.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
What the disruption did produce, he said, was price pressure, because a supply-chain disruption combined with a higher oil price is inflationary.
11. Oil Prices Into Food
Asked how much prices actually rose, Ismail gave the group's own rule of thumb for how oil feeds into food.
A 10% oil move shows up as roughly 0.4% food inflation
What we do know is every 10% long-term increase in oil prices leads eventually to around 0.4% food inflation.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
The group absorbed part of the increase rather than charging it
We've not passed it in full to our customers.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
He framed keeping prices down as the retailer's job, done through technology, product innovation and supply-chain investment. Where an imported brand did get more expensive, the response was to give the shopper a different product.
Local and entry-level lines are how shoppers were kept spending
So while some branded imported product prices have gone up, what we've managed to offer is local alternatives or even lower price entry-level products to help customers manage through high inflation period.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
He also points at government finances as a cushion
At a macro level, the UAE and the wider GCC have very strong fiscal buffers.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
12. Refounding, and the Name
The closing questions were personal: how six months of war changed him, and what it means to run a company that carries its founder's name.
A leader who does not change stops being relevant
So leaders who don't change become irrelevant very quickly and leaders who don't have the humility intellectually and otherwise to accept that we need to continue to grow and learn, lose touch and ultimately fail.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
His word for the process is refounding, and he applies it to himself before the company.
Refounding starts with the person running the business
I truly believe in this whole notion of refounding that you need to refound yourself first.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
Being open about shortcomings and failures, adjusting quickly and bringing the team through the same process is the rest of it.
It only works as a group exercise
because refounding is a team sport
Ahmed Galal Ismail
On the name, he said anyone who has worked for the company is proud of the association, and that the brand will keep strengthening wherever the group operates.
What he says the name buys
It is a name that inspires not just trust in the past but belief in the future.
Ahmed Galal Ismail
Bonus Insights
The scale the show put around him
Founded in 1992, Majid Al Futtaim has become one of the region's largest privately held groups, with businesses in shopping malls, residential communities and hotels as well as supermarkets, cinemas and digital retail across the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Its 2025 revenue of 35.9 billion dirhams, close to $10 billion, was a record and up 6% on 2024.
Reinvention is what he says keeps a 2005 mall relevant
Continuous reinvention and reinterpretation of the retail experience, he said, is what makes a destination like Mall of the Emirates "almost timeless."
The interview opened on an empty-mall theory that the mall itself contradicted
The anchor's opening point, standing in the mall, was that it was not empty, and that people still want to shop in a physical store. That set up the rest of the conversation: everything Ismail said afterwards about spending through the downturn rests on shoppers continuing to turn up in person.
Ismail's bottom line is that the war produced a short demand shock rather than a change of plan — residents kept spending while tourists stayed away, the 5 billion dirham mall rebuild and the rest of the pipeline stayed funded, and the doubling he is promising comes from new destinations rather than from visitors coming back.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Majid Al Futtaim (The group he runs: 35.9 billion dirhams of 2025 revenue, 40,000 staff, and a development pipeline the show valued at nearly $30 billion)
Mall of the Emirates (Where the interview was recorded, mid-way through a 5 billion dirham transformation adding 10% more leasable space, 100 shops and an indoor-outdoor dining precinct)
Carrefour (The group holds exclusive rights to more than 390 stores across 12 markets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia; the supermarkets are where the inflation and food-security questions landed)
Precision Media (The group's first digitally native, AI-enabled business, selling advertising against Carrefour shopper data; he says it grew almost 50% last year)
Dubai International Airport (Passenger traffic down 31% across the first half of 2026, the show's measure of the tourism shock)
Jebel Ali Port (Handles around 90% of the UAE's imported grains and oilseeds and feeds a network serving as many as 50 million people)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Majid Al Futtaim's H1 2026 results (The first-half figures he refers to in the interview, including the 11% EBITDA growth)
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