Said Khoury established Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) in Beirut in the early 1950s alongside his cousin and brother-in-law Hasib Sabbagh. The firm —which has built landmarks from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison (built in 1969, before the ascent of Saddam Hussein to the presidency of the country) to the Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington DC — has made him one of the kingdom’s wealthiest entrepreneurs with an estimated net worth of $6bn.

Born in 1923 in Safad, Palestine, to a wealthy landowner father who held fishing rights for the Sea of Galilee, Khoury returned to Safad after graduating in 1946 to start his own construction company but was forced to leave in May 1948, when hostilities in the country broke out.

The success of CCC is rooted in the early 1960s, with Sabbagh and Khoury securing a contract related to oil pipe storage facilities for the Iraq Petroleum Company, which entailed working with the Bechtel Group, the world’s largest construction company.

That deal cemented a long and lasting relationship between CCC and Bechtel and defined CCC’s scale of operations. In addition to securing this relationship, Khoury and Sabbagh built strategic partnerships with other important players in the markets they entered as the company expanded.

Khoury, who owns 60 percent of CCC, and Sabbagh, who owns the rest, took a $37.5m dividend in 2004, leaving $462m of shareholder equity in the company.

Kamel Abdul Rahman, CCC’s third founder who died in 1980, sold his stake to his partners before retiring. Khoury is known for developing CCC’s family corporate culture in hugely successful construction projects throughout the region and is also a significant supporter of philanthropic activities in Palestine.