When Shaher Moh’d Ali Awartani co-founded Silver Coast Construction & Boring LLC in Abu Dhabi in 1997, the UAE’s construction sector was mid-acceleration — infrastructure demand rising sharply and capital flowing into a region transforming itself at visible speed. What Silver Coast became over the following decades — a 4,500-person enterprise responsible for USD 1.35 billion in completed projects — was not the product of a single contract or a favorable market window. It was the result of consistent operational execution, sustained across nearly three decades.

That foundation did not remain the limit of Awartani’s ambitions. Beginning in 2010, he co-founded a series of ventures spanning industrial manufacturing, proprietary investment, real estate, hospitality, healthcare, and regulated financial advisory. Today, his career represents one of the more quietly constructed multi-sector portfolios among Abu Dhabi-based investors — built without the infrastructure of a family office dynasty or the visibility of a listed conglomerate.

The Founding of Silver Coast Construction & Boring LLC

Silver Coast Construction & Boring LLC was co-founded by Awartani in Abu Dhabi in 1997 — a period when the UAE was investing heavily in civil infrastructure, commercial real estate, and public-sector development. The company grew steadily through the following decade, eventually reaching a workforce of up to 4,500 employees.

The scale of its output — USD 1.35 billion in completed UAE construction projects — places Silver Coast within the most consequential tier of Abu Dhabi’s private construction sector. Awartani’s role as Chairman and Co-founding Partner has remained consistent across the company’s history. Silver Coast is not a legacy credential. It remains the institutional anchor of his professional record.

Expanding Into Industrial Manufacturing

By 2010, Awartani co-founded Abaad Wood Industries, an industrial manufacturing company serving the UAE’s construction and interior fit-out sectors. The move was a logical extension of the construction domain — supply chain adjacency as business strategy. For a chairman already operating at the scale Silver Coast had reached, identifying demand in complementary sectors was a practical application of accumulated industry knowledge.

Abaad did not represent a departure from construction. It represented a deepening of it — and an early signal that Awartani was building a portfolio with deliberate structural breadth.

The Transition Into Capital and Finance

The more significant strategic shift came in 2013. Awartani co-founded Equalis Capital Ltd within the Dubai International Financial Centre alongside H.E. Yousif Al Otaiba — one of the UAE’s most prominent diplomatic and investment figures. The DIFC is among the world’s most tightly regulated financial jurisdictions, and registering a proprietary investment company there carries both structural and reputational weight.

Two years later, in 2015, Awartani was invited to join Global Gate Capital Partners in Geneva as shareholder and Board member. The firm manages more than USD 2 billion in assets under management across real estate and private equity — a significant institutional platform, and one that extended Awartani’s investment footprint well beyond the Gulf.

The Geneva appointment marked a clear inflection point: a construction-rooted operator now functioning at the board level of a multi-billion-dollar international investment firm. The distance between those two roles is not simply one of sector. It reflects a deliberate, decade-long transition in the scale and nature of his activity.

Real Estate, Hospitality, and the 2017 Ventures

In 2017, Awartani co-founded two ventures alongside some of the Gulf’s most recognizable institutional names.

High Point Real Estate LLC was established in Dubai alongside H.E. Yousif Al Otaiba, H.E. Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, and Mr. Ahmed Ismail Bashee. The company developed and currently owns two residential assets in Dubai with a combined value of USD 100 million.

That same year, Awartani co-founded Café Milano Abu Dhabi at the Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi — alongside H.E. Yousef Al Otaiba and Mubadala Investment Company. The restaurant is the only international outpost of the acclaimed Washington, D.C. dining institution. It is a venture that sits outside the financial sector entirely, and yet it reflects the same operating principle: partnership with principals of established standing, within a context of institutional credibility.

Healthcare and an Institutionally Dense Co-Investment

In 2020, Awartani became a substantial shareholder in Reem Hospital Abu Dhabi. The co-investor roster defines the significance of the transaction: InvestCorp of Bahrain, Mubadala Investment Company at a 25% stake, Wisayah Capital — a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco — H.E. Yousef Al Otaiba, and the Bashee family.

Few private investors in the UAE participate in a single transaction structure that includes both a sovereign wealth fund and a Saudi Aramco subsidiary. The Reem Hospital investment is, in that sense, one of the most institutionally concentrated entries in Awartani’s career. The asset is also an active medical institution — not a real estate holding — which adds an operational dimension to the investment not present elsewhere in the portfolio.

Yasa Capital and a Return to the DIFC

In 2024, Awartani co-founded Yasa Capital (DIFC) Limited — an investment and advisory firm regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority as a Category 4 entity. The DFSA’s Category 4 designation covers firms authorized to arrange and advise on financial products and services within the DIFC.

The founding of Yasa Capital closes a loop that began with Equalis Capital more than a decade earlier. Where Equalis marked Awartani’s first formalized presence within DIFC-regulated finance, Yasa Capital represents a more recent, independently structured expression of that same commitment — to operating within the UAE’s highest available regulatory standard.

Taken as a sequence, the arc from Silver Coast in 1997 to Yasa Capital in 2024 is not the story of an investor who discovered finance late. It is the story of one who built the credential base — operationally, institutionally, and professionally — before formalizing it.

About Shaher Awartani

Shaher Moh’d Ali Awartani is an Abu Dhabi-based businessman and investor. He is Chairman and Co-founding Partner of Silver Coast Construction & Boring LLC, Co-founder of Yasa Capital (DIFC) Limited, and a shareholder and Board member of Global Gate Capital Partners in Geneva. His career spans nearly three decades across construction, real estate, private equity, hospitality, healthcare, industrial manufacturing, and regulated investment advisory. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Management from the University of Toledo and completed his secondary education at Queen’s College Taunton in Somerset, England. He funds private scholarships and supports pediatric healthcare through charitable contributions to Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.