Haitham Sinocrot

Haitham Sinocrot (Arabic: هيثم سنقرط; b. 10 September 1901 in Jerusalem; d. 18 October 1989 in Melbourne, aged 88) was a Palestinian billionaire shipping magnate. He founded the Sinocrot Shipping Company in 1933 at the Port of Haifa in Mandatory Palestine, which over the following three decades grew into the largest shipping and cargo transport company in the Middle East, evolving into the modern Sinocrot Global Group. Sinocrot himself retired as president and CEO in 1969, leaving his eldest son Michael in charge, who would oversee the company's transformation from a successful shipping company to a multi-industry, multinational conglomerate, today the second-largest corporation in the Arab Union by annual revenue and profit. Haitham Sinocrot was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in mid-1970, but lived another nearly two decades before succumbing to the disease in 1989.