Qatar-based Aamal Company, one of the GCC’s fastest growing diversified companies, said it has joined hands with German retail mall and shopping centre operator ECE Projektmanagement to expand its retail centre management business.

Focused on sustained, profitable growth and strongly diversified for balanced exposure across Qatar’s rapidly growing economy, Aamal’s operations comprise 23 business units with market leading positions in the key industrial, retail, property, managed services and medical equipment and pharmaceutical sectors.

The duo have a long-established track record of successful collaboration with ECE acting as manager of Aamal’s flagship City Centre retail mall in West Bay, Doha, for the past 10 years.

As per the new agreement, the two will create a new company, Aamal ECE, which will leverage the parent companies’ combined expertise and capabilities to meet the growing demand for comprehensive property management of shopping centres both in Qatar and potentially across the wider Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.

Aamal, will own 51 per cent of the joint venture, said the new firm will offer property management together with related consultancy and letting services for the portfolio of shopping centres owned by Aamal and those owned outside the group both in Qatar and the Mena region.

Commenting on the venture, Aamal vice chairman Sheikh Mohamed Bin Faisal Al Thani said: "The underlying economic strength of Qatar and the GCC is continuing to drive the expansion of shopping centre development in both local and regional markets and I’m positive there will be high demand for the services offered by our new partnership."

Tarek M. El Sayed, the managing director of Aamal, said the new JV reflects the success of the group’s strategy to build profitable long-term partnerships.

"ECE has already proved to be an effective partner for us, creating value and contributing to the success of our flagship City Center shopping mall while under its management by improving our tenant mix, enhancing the customer experience, and co-ordinating the mall’s successful redevelopment," he noted.

Joanna Fisher, the managing director, Center Management of ECE, said: "We have been active in Doha for ten years and we are proud and very pleased that our work has been rewarded."

"We are looking forward to intensifying our co-operation with Aamal by building up the Joint Venture and through that to continue the successful partnership in the field of Shopping Center Management in the future," she added.

Hamburg-based ECE is an European market leader in the field of inner-city shopping centers with 196 managed shopping centres. It has been developing, building, leasing, and managing shopping centres since 1965.-TradeArabia News Service