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British supermarket chain to open branch in Qatar

January 20, 2021 at 4:06 pm

Sainsbury’s Supermarket, in Chestfield, UK on 20 January 2021 [David Anstiss/Wikipedia]

Qatari Diar and Ariane Holding Group have signed an agreement to open a branch of the British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s in Qatar, Qatar Peninsula reports. This will be the first branch of the chain in the Gulf country.

The Sainsbury’s supermarket is due to be located in the heart of Lusail in the Downtown area of the capital Doha. It is expected to open early next year.

The agreement was signed by Yousef Abu Bakr Al-Musleh, Chief Development and Asset Management Officer of Qatari Diar and Mohamed Hussein Al Ali, Group CEO, Ariane Holding Group. Present at the signing ceremony were Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, Director of Trade and Investment at the British Embassy, and Abdelkarim Al-Zoubi, CEO of Marakez Trading.

Thanks to oil and gas, Qatar is now the world’s richest country based on per capita income. The Qatar Investment Authority is a major investor in Britain and British companies. In 2012, when Barclays Bank was in trouble at the height of the banking crisis, for example, the authority emerged as a white-knight investor and became its biggest shareholder.

READ: Qatar investment in Turkey hits $22bn in 2019