Chris Roberts

TBY talks to Chris Roberts is Group CEO of Eltizam Asset Management Group.

Eltizam Asset Management Group is the largest physical asset management company in the UAE, headquartered in Abu Dhabi. Which features underpin this success?

We started out in 2009 as a company seeking to do everything as one organization: managing properties and assets for lease. Until 2013, we had fallen short of our end goals. Then in early 2014, I joined the company, at which point we created Eltizam as a holding company. The concept was to have a separate company for asset management and another for the maintenance of our assets. We were generating around AED50 million in revenues at the time, with a team of about 120 staff. Fast forward some nine years, and we are now at over AED1 billion in new revenues. At the same time, we have risen to around 6,000 staff. In 2014, we had one contract, which was Marina Square, comprising 14 buildings and towers. Today, we are active in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, and throughout the UAE, with 12 companies within the group. I hope by the end of 2023 that we will be operational even further afield.

What is the main difference between Eltizam’s four holding companies?

Eltizam Group has four holding companies: EAMG Holdings is a development manager that oversees developments on behalf of its clients; iREC Holdings is the management component that manages the physical assets where we work with Colliers in the Middle East and Africa and have Kingfield, which is our owners’ association. Kingfield’s portfolio includes around 150 towers across the UAE, comprising about 70,000-80,000 units, with an additional 25,000 in Oman and Egypt that we maintain. iFM Holdings is the maintainer of our assets and this is where the bulk of the staff is and where the bulk of our revenue is generated. Then, we have EAST-O Holdings, a technology company that undertakes everything from integration systems to security cameras, integrating all related systems. It also does interesting work in terms of IoT and carbon net zero monitoring. And then, we have Propezy, which is a proptech platform for the various aspects of the business. Beneath the four holding companies are the aforementioned 12 companies, which can work in unison or independently.