All Blacks: the ALTRAD logo will be featured on the chest of the teams in black’s jersey from next year.
All Blacks: the ALTRAD logo will be featured on the chest of the teams in black’s jersey from next year.
Profile of the entrepreneur who has built an empire in less than a generation
The All Blacks continue to show and demonstrate their strength in their Rugby Championship, and from next year the logo on the chest of the players in the black jerseys will no longer be that of AIG, but rather ALTRAD.
Last month, a partnership agreement was announced. The agreement establishes an unprecedented contract between New Zealand Rugby and Altrad, the French industrial services and building materials giant. The contract runs for six years from January 2022.
The group's founder and owner, Mohed Altrad, is also the owner of MHR, the Montpellier rugby club that plays in the French Top 14 championship. Since 2017-18, he has also been the jersey sponsor of the French national team, as the jersey of the XV ed France already bears the ALTRAD logo.
But Mohed Altrad has several faces, and even several lives: he is also a novelist, and is ranked 25th in the 2021 edition of Forbes France, which lists the main French billionaires (Altrad is indeed listed thanks to assets estimated at 2.8 billion euros, or about 364 billion yen).
"All the All Blacks and Altrad have their roots in the heart of indigenous, humble peoples and have been on the path to success, at the highest level, each in their own world and environment," Altrad added when announcing the deal.
Mohed Altrad was born in the Syrian desert; he was a Bedouin (nomad) child, and his birth date is unknown. It is said to be between 1948 and 1951. “I lost my parents when I was young, and I was raised by my grandmother. I was not allowed to go to school as I was told that, as a shepherd, I did not need to know how to read and write”. But the young boy secretly went to school where he learned to read and write, almost by himself.
And one day, with the help of a teacher who noticed his presence and his will, he was able to go even further.
In 1970, he studied abroad, specifically in Montpellier, France, on a scholarship from the Syrian government. « The first challenge was to learn the French language and culture, and to forget myself”, Altrad recalls.
He graduated from the University of Montpellier and went on to earn a PhD in IT engineering from the University of Paris VIII. After starting out as an engineer, he became an entrepreneur and started what would become the current Altrad Group in the 1980s, when he bought a scaffolding company in Montpellier that was about to go bankrupt.
In 2011, the Montpellier rugby club was also on the verge of bankruptcy, and he was asked to buy it for €2 million (about 260 million yen). Rugby then came into Mohed Altrad's life.
