Wafic Saïd
| Wafic Saïd | |
|---|---|
A bust of Wafic Saïd by Michael Rizzello in the Saïd Business School, Oxford
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| Born |
Wafic Rida Saïd 21 December 1939 Damascus, Syria |
| Residence | Monaco |
| Occupation | Businessman, philanthropist |
| Years active | 1959–present |
| Known for | Saïd Foundation, Al-Yamamah arms deal and the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School |
| Net worth | £1.5 billion (2014) |
| Spouse(s) | Rosemary Thompson (m. 1969) |
| Awards | Sheldon Medal, University of Oxford; Grand Commandeur Ordre de Mérite du Cèdre of Lebanon and Ordre de Mérite of Morocco |
| Website | waficsaid |
Wafic Rida Saïd (Arabic: وفيق رضا سعيد) (born 21 December 1939) is a Syrian-Saudi Arabian financier, businessman and philanthropist, who has been resident for many years in Monaco.
Saïd lived in Syria until his early twenties and studied in Beirut and London. In 1963 he left Syria for Switzerland where he worked as a banker, before making his fortune in the Saudi Arabian construction industry in the 1970s. Saïd came to public prominence after helping facilitate the Al-Yamamah arms deal between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. He established the Saïd Foundation in 1982 and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford in 1996 with an initial £20 million donation to the University. Saïd owns several international properties, including Tusmore Park in Oxfordshire, but is officially a resident of Monaco.
Saïd was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1939 to a prominent Syrian family. Saïd's grandfather had served in the Turkish army during the Ottoman period, reaching the rank of general, and was a colonial governor of Ottoman Syria. Saïd was the youngest son of Rida Saïd, a prominent Syrian eye-surgeon and ophthalmologist who had been asked by King Faisal I of Syria to found a Faculty of Medicine, and was the founder of the Syrian University in Damascus in 1926.
Saïd's father died when he was still a child, and after initial schooling by Jesuits in Beirut, Lebanon, Saïd studied at the Institute of Bankers in London. Saïd had been offered a place at the University of Cambridge, but was unable to take up the place as a result of political instability in Syria in which his family's assets were sequestrated.
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