
Syed Basar Shueb
CEO: International Holding Company
‘IHC burst on to the scene in late 2023 when subsidiary International Resources Holding beat Zijin Mining and Sibanye-Stillwater to a 51% stake in Zambian company, Mopani Copper’
INTERNATIONAL Holding Company (IHC) is a giant of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) investment landscape with a wide range of property and industrial interests. Founded by Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and with Syed Basar Shueb as MD and CEO since 2022, its mining ambitions were somewhat less known, however. It burst onto the scene in late 2023 when subsidiary International Resources Holding (IRH) beat Zijin Mining and Sibanye-Stillwater to a 51% stake in Zambian company, Mopani Copper. As it turned out, IHC had been courting the Zambian government for two years. Since then, it has worked on strengthening the Zambian link.
Operating through IRH, there are plans for IHC to become a third shareholder in Konkola Copper Mines with the state and Vedanta, the Indian mining firm. IRH has also been connected with the takeover of former African Rainbow Minerals mine Lubambe, also in Zambia. The mine is currently owned by China’s JCHX Mining. IRH’s investments also have the more strategic among them. Johannesburg’s Jubilee Metals runs a joint venture with IRH in the processing of copper waste at Mopani. Under Shueb, who has aggressively grown IHC’s non-mining interests since his hiring, there are plans to extend IRH’s mining footprint to Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa, as well as Indonesia, Chile and Peru.
There are potential issues over governance, however. The UN questioned the due diligence obligations of Primera Group, a gold trader owned by Sibtein Alibhai who doubles as IRH’s head of strategy and which supplies Auric Hub, a gold refinery in the UAE run by IRH’s CEO Ali Alrashdi.
LIFE OF SYED
After working at UAE’s Royal Group, IHC’s largest shareholder, as a network engineer, Shueb became a founding partner and CEO of PAL Technologies with the Royal Group. Over the next 22 years Shueb helped roll out PAL Group’s investments in sectors as diverse as robotics, catering, fisheries, tourism and technology. He joined IHC in 2019. Shueb also serves as chair of Multiply Group and Chimera Investments LLC and sits on the board of Alpha Dhabi Holding and Invictus Investment Plc. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Near East University, in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.