Money & Me: ‘My best investment is buying UAE off-plan properties in the early 2000s’

Nazar Musa, chief executive of Sovereign PRO Partner Group, a company set-up and corporate service provider in the UAE, has been through the highs and lows of entrepreneurship.

That has taught him to invest money in risk-free assets like property. In fact, he picks a couple of off-plan properties he purchased in Dubai in the early 2000s as his best investment since it has brought him attractive returns.

Mr Musa, a Briton who was born in Sudan, started his career with the UK tour operator Airtours in Spain and then moved to Jamaica.

He returned to the UK and joined a travel business called Holiday Autos in 1996 and sold it to online travel retailer Lastminute.com in 2003. This business was eventually sold to online travel agency Travelocity in 2005.

Mr Musa, 53, came to Dubai on holiday in 2005 and loved it so much that he decided to move here.

“I was involved in a number of other small businesses, some successful, some not so successful,” he says.

“I later moved to Singapore and then Sydney, Australia. We then decided to come back to Dubai in 2019, call it home and buy a house.”

In 2019, Mr Musa joined PRO Partner Group, which was eventually sold to the Sovereign Group in 2022.

He is also founder and chairman of Spartan Boxing Clubs, which has centres in Singapore, Cambodia, the Philippines, the UAE and Australia.

He sits on the board of MAF Fitness in Australia and the US, retains a shareholding in travel PR company Gulfreps and is also chief executive for Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the Sovereign Group.

Mr Musa, who completed his degree in international business from the UK, currently lives in Arabian Ranches in Dubai with his wife and two children.

Did wealth feature in your childhood and what did you learn from it?

No, it did not. My father was a newly qualified doctor when he came to the UK in the early seventies. He came from a background of being very protective of money. I have five siblings. Six kids, one income, north-west of England. We were never poor, but we never had any meaningful disposable income.

You learn to find the best ways to spend money. You learn that money isn't everything, it doesn't create happiness or secure your family. Of course, it helps, but there are other ways of being happy and better ways to use money than on luxuries in life.

How did you first earn and what did your first job pay?

It was a part-time job in a fruit shop, where I earned £2.20 ($2.86) an hour.

My first full-time job was with Airtours in Spain. My salary was £14,000 a year, but I was overseas, so all that money was being paid in the UK and I was earning commissions locally. It was a pretty good deal at the time.

Any early financial setbacks?

The fact that I didn't handle money very well at university meant that when I was looking to rent my first house or borrow money from the bank for a deposit, it wasn't possible because of the credit history that I'd built.

Being an entrepreneur, starting and growing businesses, there have been a number of times when I've had no money, so they're always very stressful.

How do you grow your wealth?

We invest in property. I have equity in a number of businesses, but find that my life goes through no money, then a lot of money, then no money, and a lot of money.

The key is to have a supportive wife who is responsible about our money behaviour. When there is money, we tend to put it in something solid and relatively risk-free, which is property.

Are you a spender or a saver?

I have always been a spender. Only more recently have I thought much about saving. But I spend on things that I value, will potentially appreciate in value, or that I have control in developing, such as, businesses.

I'm not the kind of spender that needs to spend on wasteful things. But I spend money much better than I save money.

Have you been wise with money?

There are times when I was wise with money. The first money that I made from an equity sale, I bought an apartment, gave my parents some money and donated some money to the charity I support.

But unfortunately, there have also been times when I've let passion or risk-taking take over my decision making and that isn't the wisest thing to do.

What's been your best investment?

There're a number of business investments I've made that have returned well. But buying a couple of off-plan properties in the UAE in the early 2000s, when a lot of these developments were just models in many developers' showrooms, was a massive risk that turned out to be a really good investment. These include a two-bedroom apartment in Dubai Marina for Dh800,000 and a five-bedroom villa in Jumeirah Islands for Dh1.4 million.

Any cherished purchases?

No. You can have the nicest watches, the fastest cars and the best houses, but it's just stuff.

The important stuff is your family, relationships and how you're looked at by your friends, peers and team.

A luxury purchase can be replaced one day, but you can't replace family, friends or relationships.

Do you have any financial advice for your younger self?

I've had a paradigm shift in the way I think about money in the last five to six years.

I would tell my younger self to save something, as opposed to spend as much as I was spending. It's good to invest in property, maybe stocks, but you need to have some liquidity as well. I wish I had done that earlier.

But I tell that to my kids now, and I don't think they're listening either.

Any financial milestones?

There are many: buying your first house, selling your first business.

I am very aware of people who are much more vulnerable than myself, who don't have the benefits of the lifestyle we're able to live, so being able to give to the charities that I support is a milestone. I support them in other ways as well, it isn't just about money.

Once you have a little bit of time and liquidity to be able to do that, those are good financial milestones that are much more important than the first watch you bought or the first car you drove.

What luxuries are important to you?

The luxury of time is vital. My wife is also a senior executive in a global corporate company. With everything that I run, trying to find time to be in the same place at the same time, give time to our kids and ourselves is a real luxury that we have to work on.

Everything else is just stuff, and stuff comes and goes. You can't buy time back. I'm very conscious of that.

What are your financial goals?

I'd like to be in a position where we have enough investments and funds to let the money work for me, instead of me working for it.

I'd like to be in a position where we can spend more time in our property overseas, spend more time travelling and more time with our families.

How do you feel about money?

Money offers me the freedom to do what I want, be who I want to be, and, therefore decide my own time, as well as gives me the opportunity to help those that don't have it.

It's a necessary evil, but I was born in a Third World country with no money, so returning to that is never difficult.

Maybe that's what's driven some of my entrepreneurial risk-taking mindset.