It will be for the mild climate, for the charm of its coasts, for the Arabian Nights atmosphere of its summer evenings in luxurious clubs or on board fabulous yachts. Or, in addition to all this, it will simply be due to the smell of money that has always emanated from this piece of Sardinia built from nothing in the 60s by the Aga Khan. Fact is that the Costa Smeralda has attracted the investments of the richest men on the planet for over half a century, in some cases from the Middle East: as if to seal a sort of double bond between the land of the four Moors and the Arab world, inaugurated by the Ismaelite prince Karim Aga Khan, a great friend of Avvocato Agnelli and a true pioneer of Sardinian tourist paradise.
Ali Khan's son, born in Switzerland and graduated from Harvard, he invented everything from scratch; including, in 1963, the airline Alisarda, which later became Meridiana. This small economic miracle, now consolidated in everyone's imagination between Billionaires, yachts of very rich Russian entrepreneurs and the comings and goings of VIPs and footballers, is about to change hands again. After having tempted various investors over the decades, the latest of which was the American billionaire Tom Barrack, son of a Lebanese greengrocer and owner of Colony Capital, a 30 billion dollar private equity firm that has controlled the luxury hotels since 2003 that belonged to the Aga Khan (including Romazzino), the Costa Smeralda is preparing to return to Arab hands.
And not just any. That of one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet: Hamad bin Khalifa, Emir of Qatar since 2003, belonging to the royal house of Al Thani (the one, so to speak, which has its hands on important European football clubs such as Manchester City, Paris Saint Germain and Malaga) and founder of the most influential television station in the Arab world, Al -Jazeera.
An enlightened prince (with him Qatar became the second state in the Persian Gulf in 1997 in which women have the right to vote), Al-Thani is also prime minister and foreign minister of the emirate, as well as chairman of the sovereign wealth fund Qatar Holding which already owns 14,3% of Smeralda Holding and which is now targeting 51%.
For now there are no official confirmations, but everything suggests that the operation will take place, both for Barrack's intention to give up ("I love Sardinia but if they don't let me invest anymore, I will transfer my business elsewhere", he had threatened a year ago), and because this would be only one of the great coups of the sovereign fund created in 2006 as the operational arm of the Qatar Investment Authority, which already manages enormous wealth in the Gulf country.
Just to name a few, in addition to football clubs, the British department store Harrod's, stakes in Barclays and Credit Suisse, the stake in the London Stock Exchange, which also controls Piazza Affari, the share packages in Porsche, Volkswagen and Total, the Hotel Gallia in Milan, and recently the 1% stake also in Lvmh, the French luxury group controlled by Bernard Arnault, who in his he had once invested together with Tom Barrack in Carrefour supermarkets.
From the entrepreneur of Lebanese origin Al-Thani will inherit not only the Sardinian jewel but also the operational team: Franco Carraro and Mariano Pasqualone will remain respectively president and managing director of the Costa Smeralda consortium, just as the hotel management of Starwood led by Franco Mulas will be confirmed.
In short, fifty years after the Aga Khan, nothing new under the sky of Porto Cervo and its surroundings: the money continues to arrive from the east, and it will still be managed by the usual suspects. Will it be enough for the sun to never set on the most fashionable island in Europe?
