Lunch with the FT: Sheikh Hamad Bin-Jaber al-Thani - FT.com

Lunch with the FT: Sheikh Hamad Bin-Jaber al-Thani - FT.com:

"One of the richest men in Qatar, and the world, Sheikh Hamad Bin-Jaber al-Thani has been the face of the small emirate’s property-buying frenzy in London, either splashing his own family’s wealth or that of the state. You name it, and he’s been involved in buying a stake in it: One Hyde Park, in which he keeps an apartment; Harrods; the Shard; Chelsea Barracks; Canary Wharf; the London Stock Exchange; the Berkeley and the Connaught. So it’s hardly surprising that Fera, the Michelin-star restaurant we meet at, is in Claridge’s, another luxury hotel owned by the Qatari royal.
It is three years since HBJ, as he is known in London’s financial circles, stepped down as prime minister of the small state of Qatar, part of a deal in which Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the ruler at the time, abdicated in favour of his son Tamim. So powerful was HBJ that the only way for the new emir to rule was for both his father and the prime minister to exit.
From 2007 to 2013, HBJ was not your typical prime minister. The former emir once said that while he ran the country it was HBJ who owned it. In government as foreign minister for two decades, a post he kept when he took the helm of government, HBJ was known for his willingness to speak his mind, to swing unabashedly from one policy to another. As prime minister he also enjoyed the state’s financial muscle, heading the $250bn Qatar Investment Authority, the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund, generating many of its highest-profile deals but making enemies in the process."



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