Donald Trump, eat your heart out.
 
While less well-known than the brash American developer’s company, Qatari Diar has quietly grown in just its first two years to become one of the biggest real estate companies in the world, with properties from London to Cuba.
 
The value of its portfolio? Nearly $40 billion.
 
Leading this new real estate powerhouse is Nasser Hassan Al-Ansari, who, at 40, is representative of a new generation of Persian Gulf business leaders. Educated in the United States and Europe, they have greater financial sophistication and more-global ambitions than their predecessors.

“We’re engaged in institution building in a country that is engaged in nation building,” Al-Ansari says. “I count myself fortunate to be able to witness the transformation of my society within just one generation.”
 
Qatari Diar was launched in 2005 with a capitalization of more than $1 billion to be the real estate investment arm of the oil- and natural-gas-rich Persian Gulf emirate. It is now building resorts in Morocco, Syria, Egypt, Oman, Sudan, Seychelles, Mauretania, and Mauritius, and even developing tourism properties in Cuba, as well as projects on its home soil.
 
Earlier this year, Qatari Diar, along with British luxury-property design firm Candy & Candy, bought the Chelsea Barracks, a 13-acre complex in West London, from the British Ministry of Defense for a reported $2 billion. The developers are planning to build nearly 2,000 homes and office buildings on the site.
 
“I want to build a global machine,” Al-Ansari says. “I want Qatari Diar to be the Rolls-Royce of real estate development. A worldwide brand—this is what I want us to become. But we’re only 20 percent there.”

At home, Qatari Diar is building a $2 billion, 26-mile bridge—one of the longest in the world—that will link Qatar with Bahrain. A more ambitious project is the $7 billion Lusail Development, which involves creating a sister city to Doha, Qatar’s capital. According to the chairman of Qatari Diar, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani—who is also the country’s prime minister, foreign minister, and an influential member of the ruling family—Lusail will be home to 200,000 people. That would double Doha’s current population and would most likely raise Qatar’s overall population to nearly a million (80 percent of whom are foreign workers, including both unskilled laborers and executives). The project will contain an entertainment area modeled after Piccadilly Circus in London, with theaters, museums, and brand-name shops.
 

Al-Ansari says he is not daunted by the challenges. “My college experience in America taught me to deal with different cultures and societies,” he says. “I learned how to deal with all kinds of people without being scared about the outcome.”
 
One of Al-Ansari’s previous jobs was with the Qatari Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture as a coordinator for construction projects. He rose rapidly through the bureaucracy and soon found himself as project manager for the new Doha International Airport, Doha Port, and the West Bay Lagoon, a development involving extensive land reclamation and maritime engineering.
 
It was there that his work caught the eye of the ruling family. Not long afterward, Al-Ansari was appointed by Sheik Hamad to be a technical adviser in the office of the then-first deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. When Qatari Diar began operations, in November 2005, Al-Ansari was named its C.E.O. It was a propitious time to head such a company.

With soaring oil prices, Qatar—which produces nearly 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day—decided to channel more and more of its funds into infrastructure, real estate, and foreign investment. The result is Qatari Diar, which is fully owned by the government’s Qatar Investment Authority. It was founded to support Qatar’s rapidly expanding economy and to provide structure and quality control for the country’s real estate development priorities.
 
The country’s annual growth rate is estimated at close to 8 percent, and Al-Ansari’s sector—real estate—is a major contributor.
 
Starting with fewer than 100 employees, Qatari Diar has quickly expanded to 300 at present. Al-Ansari says that he always seeks to put Qataris in top management positions, although his right-hand man is Lebanese-born John Ward, also a product of the American educational system.
 
“I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time,” Al-Ansari says. “My skills were my tools. And the fact that Sheik Hamad was always accessible proved to be a great asset. We wondered why things weren’t moving faster in our country. We looked at neighboring Dubai and said, ‘So why not such development here in Doha?’ But we also understood that nation building wasn’t just about real estate and construction. We needed to emphasize education, the participation of women in the economy, and the promotion of culture and history.”

One of Al-Ansari’s projects was the restoration of some of Doha’s oldest neighborhoods. He has also supported the creation and expansion of an Islamic museum.
 
“There’s a new Arab society being created in Qatar,” Al-Ansari says. “There’s a degree of social and economic egalitarianism here that you won’t find in too many places in our region. The royal family sets an example by its own involvement and participation in day-to-day nation building. This is hands-on leadership, not leadership by remote control. That explains our rapid growth.”