The Zawawi Brothers: Pepsi, Politics and a $1B Oman Empire

Long before Vision 2040 gave Oman a roadmap for diversifying away from oil, two brothers from a Muscat merchant family were already doing it themselves, one factory, one bank, one government appointment at a time. Omar and Qais Al Zawawi built the Omar Zawawi Establishment, better known as OMZEST, into one of the Sultanate's largest private conglomerates, while simultaneously serving as some of the most trusted advisers to Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Their story is part business case study, part political history, and it still shapes how Omanis think about building companies that outlast their founders.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Brothers Omar and Qais Al Zawawi returned to Muscat in 1967 and 1971 respectively and founded OMZEST, which grew into a group of more than 75 wholly owned and associate companies.
• Qais Al Zawawi first built commercial experience abroad, helping establish Pepsi-Cola's Dubai bottling operation in the 1960s before bringing that dealmaking skill home to Oman.
• Omar Zawawi founded Oman International Bank in 1984, the first 100 percent Omani-owned bank in the Sultanate, later merged into HSBC Bank Oman.
• Both brothers held senior government posts under Sultan Qaboos: Qais as Deputy Prime Minister for Financial and Economic Affairs, Omar as Special Adviser for External Liaison.
• Qais Al Zawawi died in a 1995 car accident in a vehicle driven by Sultan Qaboos near Taqah, an event that remains a defining moment in Oman's modern political history.
• Omar Zawawi led OMZEST for nearly five decades until his death in 2020, by which point the group's revenues exceeded $1 billion annually.

🏛️ From Merchant Roots to Muscat's Boardrooms

The Zawawi family's commercial pedigree predates Oman's modern era by generations. According to the family's own account and independent biographical research, the brothers' grandfather, Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Zawawi, arrived in Muscat from Mecca in the late nineteenth century and became one of the port's principal merchants, later advising several sultans. Their father, Abd al-Munim bin Yusuf, served as a purchasing agent for Sultan Said bin Taimur, keeping the family close to the palace even as Oman remained largely closed to the outside world.

Omar Zawawi was born around 1930 in Karachi, then British India, and had an unusually academic early path for a future tycoon: schooling in Bombay, Beirut and Cairo, where he earned a medical degree, before studying medical economics at Harvard. His younger brother Qais, born in 1935 in Salalah, took a more commercial route early on, working for the British Bank of the Middle East before helping set up Pepsi-Cola's bottling operations in Dubai during the 1960s alongside Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, then ruler of Dubai.

🥤 The Pepsi Deal That Sharpened a Dealmaker

Qais Al Zawawi's stint building a soft-drinks bottling business in Dubai in the 1960s might sound like a footnote next to his later government career, but it was formative. Regional business history accounts describe it as his introduction to large-scale distribution, franchising and manufacturing partnerships, skills he brought back to Muscat when he returned in 1967 to reestablish the family's commercial interests just as the country stood on the edge of enormous change. Omar joined him in Oman in 1971, a year after Sultan Qaboos came to power and opened the country to development after decades of isolation.

Together the brothers formed the Omar Zawawi Establishment, OMZEST, which quickly built a diversified portfolio spanning construction, manufacturing, trading, agency representation, banking, insurance and education. Early ventures reportedly included some of the country's first schools and hospitals, along with the electrical, telephone and color television infrastructure that many Omanis take for granted today.

🏦 Building Oman's First Omani-Owned Bank

One of Omar Zawawi's most enduring contributions to Oman's financial sector came in 1984, when he acquired the local branches of the British Bank of the Middle East along with shares of the Oman Arab African Bank to form Oman International Bank, described in company histories as the first 100 percent Omani-owned bank in the Sultanate. He chaired OIB until 1996, and his daughter Reem later became chairperson of the bank's board, a rare instance of Omani women leading a major listed financial institution in that era. OIB eventually merged with HSBC in 2012 to form HSBC Bank Oman SAOG.

By the time of Omar Zawawi's death in 2020, OMZEST had grown into a group of more than 75 wholly owned and associate companies with combined business volumes exceeding $1 billion, according to OER Live's tribute coverage. More than 60 percent of that revenue came from manufacturing, spanning batteries, textiles, glass, paint, vegetable oil and detergents, alongside agency representation for global names like Mercedes-Benz, IBM, Xerox, 3M and Microsoft.

⚖️ Business and Government, Side by Side

What sets the Zawawi story apart from many family business dynasties is how deliberately the brothers combined commerce with statecraft. Qais entered Sultan Qaboos's cabinet in December 1973 as minister of state for foreign affairs, later becoming Oman's second foreign minister, and in 1982 was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for Financial and Economic Affairs, a role that put him at the center of the country's early economic planning. Omar, meanwhile, became the Sultan's Special Adviser for External Liaison in 1974, accompanying Qaboos on his first visit to the United States in 1975 and later negotiating Oman's diplomatic opening to China in 1978.

That closeness to the palace was, by most accounts, both the brothers' greatest asset and, according to some critics cited in independent biographical research, a point of scrutiny over how personal business interests and public office intersected in a young, fast-developing state. It is a tension familiar to many family conglomerates that grew up alongside the governments they served, a dynamic explored in the story of how Oman's first commerce minister built his own 60-company empire around the same period.

💥 The 1995 Accident That Shocked Oman

Qais Al Zawawi's career, and life, ended abruptly on September 11, 1995, when the BMW carrying him and Sultan Qaboos was struck by another vehicle near Taqah, about 16 kilometers east of Salalah, according to contemporaneous UPI reporting from the time. Qais died from his injuries at age 60; Sultan Qaboos survived. Omar, who was also reportedly involved in the same accident, recovered and continued to lead OMZEST for another quarter century. The episode remains one of the more sobering chapters in Oman's modern history, a reminder of how closely intertwined the country's business and political elite were, and often still are.

🌍 A Global Footprint Built From Muscat

OMZEST did not stay confined to Oman. The group opened a Beijing office in 1992, expanded into Egypt and Trinidad, and in the 2000s entered a joint venture with Germany's Siemens along with the Oman Methanol Company project in Suhar, tying the family's fortunes to the industrial buildout of the Sohar Industrial Port that Omar Zawawi is also credited with helping develop. It is a pattern that echoes in Oman's current push to court international manufacturing and technology partners, an ambition visible in efforts like the Sultanate's expanding digital services footprint abroad, though today's dealmaking runs through cloud platforms and bilateral digital agreements rather than bottling plants and construction contracts.

📚 Lessons for Today's Founders

• Diversify early and often. OMZEST never depended on a single sector; when one industry slowed, manufacturing, banking or trading revenue could carry the group.
• Relationships compound over decades. The brothers' government roles were not shortcuts to contracts so much as long relationships built on trust, tested over 20 to 30 years of service.
• Bring outside experience home. Qais's Pepsi-Cola apprenticeship in Dubai gave him deal-structuring skills he could not have picked up in Muscat alone, a pattern still common among Omani founders who train abroad before building locally.
• Plan for succession. Omar Zawawi ran OMZEST for nearly 50 years, and family members, including his daughter Reem at Oman International Bank, moved into senior roles well before his death, a contrast to conglomerates that stumble when a founder departs unexpectedly.

🤝 Philanthropy and Institution-Building

Beyond Oman, Omar Zawawi was a founding supporter of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security in Washington, a relationship the think tank credited with helping the center grow into a globally recognized institution, according to its own tribute statement following his death. Within Oman, OMZEST's decades of investment in schools, hospitals and vocational training left an imprint on the country's early social infrastructure that predates most of today's government-run development programs.

🇴🇲 Why This Story Still Matters in 2026

Oman's current generation of founders, from fintech entrepreneurs to SaaS builders, is chasing the same goal the Zawawi brothers pursued half a century ago: reducing dependence on a single revenue source and building institutions that outlast a single deal or a single sultan's reign. The brothers' willingness to plant flags in banking, manufacturing, construction and international trade simultaneously offers a template that still resonates as Oman pushes toward the economic diversification targets in Vision 2040. Their story is also a reminder that Oman's private sector and public sector have long been more intertwined than they might first appear, a dynamic worth understanding for any founder, investor or job seeker trying to make sense of how business really gets done in the Sultanate today.