Jim haddad

"Les pieds sur terre et la tête vers le ciel” “Fortune favors the bold”. Matthieu 6, 24-34. AUB'14 | HEC'17. Beirut | . 𝘝𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯.

[Bechara Gerges @BecharaGerges]

🚩THE FATTAL EXIT IS THE STORY EVERYONE IS MISSING

Read the press release and you’ll see a corporate transaction. CMA CGM acquires 100% of Fattal Group. Closing Q3 2026, pending approvals. Deal value: officially confidential.

Read the room and you’ll see something else.

The figure circulating in market chatter, north of half a billion dollars, is the part nobody is processing. Lebanon attracted $1.84 billion in foreign direct investment across all of 2024, the best post crisis year on record. One transaction, by one buyer, for one company, would land somewhere around a quarter of the national haul. That is not a deal. That is a macroeconomic event with a logo on it.

And the timing is not an accident.

The Fattal shareholders chose to exit now, not in 2019 before the lira collapsed, not in 2023 when the economy was still bottoming, but six months after the ceasefire, fifteen months after Joseph Aoun’s election, and in the same week Lebanon is sitting at a negotiating table in Washington opposite the Israelis. A 130 year old family house does not sell at random. It sells when the price is right and the politics are clearer than they will be again for some time. Read it as confidence in the new sovereign moment, or read it as cashing out before the next disappointment. The family knows which.

The buyer is doing something colder, and more interesting. CMA CGM already operates the container terminals at Beirut and Tripoli. They bought Rifaï in 2021. Souchet in 2023. Now Fattal, the company that moves Jack Daniel’s, Hermès, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Oreo and Johnnie Walker onto every kitchen counter, pharmacy shelf and duty free aisle from Beirut to Baghdad. Rodolphe Saadé is quietly assembling end to end control of the Lebanese consumer supply chain, from the dock at Beirut Port to the bottle on the shelf in Achrafieh. This is not sentiment about the homeland. This is the most sophisticated bet anyone has placed on Lebanon in more than a decade, and it has been engineered to print money in any political weather.

Underneath the transaction sits a harder truth. Lebanon’s largest legacy distribution house is being absorbed into a French flagged conglomerate run by a French Lebanese billionaire. The wealth that built modern Beirut is increasingly owned by Lebanese who left. The country’s commercial future is being written abroad.

Half a billion dollars walked into the room. The question is whether Beirut is sober enough to understand what just happened, or whether we will treat this, like we treat every signal, as a press release to congratulate ourselves on.

@RodolpheSaade @cmacgm

[Jim haddad @jimrhaddad]

How did the Iranian delegation reach Islamabad? @airplusnews @LebanonJets @flightradar24

[air plus news @airplusnews]

🔴 [ Liban ]

MEA continue à opérer certains de ses vols, malgré les bombardements incessants à Beyrouth.

[Zouzou Cash @ZouzouCash]

So much unfolded last year, it refused to stay quiet. Before moving on, it helps to look back.

Zouzou Cash revisits 2025 with an extra dose of sarcasm for those who missed a few chapters.

[air plus news @airplusnews]

🔴 [ Iran ] De nombreux vols à destination de l’Iran font demi-tour ce soir.

▫️Des vols Turkish Airlines, Pegasus et AJet retournent actuellement en Turquie.

▫️Qatar Airways annule des vols vers l’Iran.

[air plus news @airplusnews]

🔴 Hier soir, un Airbus A330 d’Air France reliant Beyrouth à Paris s’est posé en urgence à Munich. L’équipage a rapporté une odeur suspecte en cabine.

L'appareil, immatriculé F-GZCM, effectuait son deuxième vol commercial après une période maintenance.

Les pompiers allemands n’ont décelé aucune fumée toxique à bord de l’Airbus.

Les passagers ont été pris en charge par Air France.

[Flightradar24 @flightradar24]

#AF565 from Beirut to Paris squawking 7700 and diverting to Munich.
https://t.co/bvzKvIeLDR

[air plus news @airplusnews]

🔴 Voici le tout premier Airbus A330neo de MEA à la sortie des usines Airbus de Toulouse.

La décision d’achat remonte à décembre 2018, avec une commande ferme de 4 A330-900neo, complétée par deux options, destinée à moderniser sa flotte long-courrier.

📷 @cliper31

[Zouzou Cash @ZouzouCash]

When everything runs on time for a guest in white you realise the chaos was never a curse, just a choice.

If three days can look this organized, imagine what a lifetime could look like.

Zouzou Cash walks you through the good, the bad and the holy.

https://t.co/H9XyxvbH09

[Jessica G. Obeid  @Jessica_Obeid]

🇱🇧 I'll fight for you forever & a day...
On its Independence Day, Lebanon is facing its most profound existential crisis.
This country that I love so much, may soon cease to exist as we know it.
But I think love requires honesty.

Lebanon doesn’t need more speeches, more excuses, more conferences, more PR, more elites whitewashing and deal-making, more bets on future seats aboard the Titantic, or more leaders with fragile egos and overused victim narratives.

Lebanon needs courage, vision, new system, and accountability.
And above all, people willing to act boldly and make that happen.

May you have better days my love 🇱🇧 You definitely deserve better 🤍

[Jim haddad @jimrhaddad]

@LebanonJets 😂😂😂😂

[air plus news @airplusnews]

🔴 Impressionnante vue du ciel du Moyen-Orient ce soir.

Fermeture des espaces aériens :

❌ Israël
❌ Irak
❌ Iran
❌ Kuwait
❌ Bahrain
❌ Qatar

[Jim haddad @jimrhaddad]

@airplusnews 👑 💪🏻

[Jim haddad @jimrhaddad]

@airplusnews Le dernier appareil de Yemenia?

[LebanonJets @LebanonJets]

A340 of #Iran Government just got added to #Beirut arrivals for Sunday morning
#IRAN03 #EPIGA
(posts are getting shadow banned for some unknown reason)

[Jim haddad @jimrhaddad]

@LebanonJets Welcome back!😍

[air plus news @airplusnews]

🇱🇧 [ Guerre au Liban ]

▫️Désormais seule, Middle East Airlines opère depuis l’aéroport de Beyrouth.

▫️Toutes les compagnies étrangères suspendent leurs vols.

📷 @omar_ladki

[Jim haddad @jimrhaddad]

Parenting in Lebanon:
Laughing and playing like nothing happened.
Hiding all your traumas and fears while postponing panic and anxiety attacks till after bed time.
Our parents did it, we are doing it and it seems the next generation is cursed to do it all over again.

[Michel Abi Rached @michelarached]

ما شبعت بيروت من دم شبابها؟