CEO Michael Chalhoub on taking over the family business: 'My grandparents built this to make a small living'

As Michael Chalhoub describes his ascent to leading the family empire, he speaks with the deliberateness of someone who never fully expected the baton to land in his hand. “I didn’t think that it would lead me to this one day,” he says, still sounding faintly surprised.

Yet on January 1, 2025, he officially stepped into one of the most influential roles in the Middle East’s luxury landscape as chief executive of the Chalhoub Group. He succeeds his father, Patrick, who moved into the role of executive chairman after more than two decades at the helm.

Michael’s appointment was far from a coronation. “Last year, the executive committee ran a process with two internal candidates and a few external candidates. It lasted six months and I got chosen,” he explains. “I feel incredibly lucky, incredibly proud and very humbled to write the next chapter of this beautiful book.”

Political instability pushed the family to relocate to Beirut then Kuwait before landing in Dubai. Photo: Chalhoub

Although born into a dynasty that has shaped the region’s retail landscape for seven decades, Michael initially showed little interest in joining it. After earning an MBA in business administration from Harvard Business School and another in international affairs from Université Paris-Dauphine, he launched Sport360, a successful media venture. “I’m an entrepreneur at heart,” he says.

It took the pandemic to bring him back. “I wanted to help at a time when everyone was suffering because of Covid. I was rolling up my sleeves and thinking, now is the time I can really help out.” He joined the business in 2020, overseeing strategy, growth, innovation, investments and joint ventures, and was quickly pulled back into the family’s long-standing conversations. “Dinner debates were about how to push this brand or that, or how to reimagine things for the 21st century. It was very present in our everyday life.”

To understand the weight of the role he now holds, one must understand the arc of the group itself – a story shaped by resilience. In Damascus in 1955, his grandparents Michel and Widad Chalhoub opened a boutique for Christofle to bring European style to the Middle East, soon followed by Jean Patou and Baccarat. “My grandfather and grandmother built this to make a small living,” he says. “And it slowly grew into something.”

Level Shoes is expanding to the US and has its own men’s and women’s lines. Pawan Singh / The National

Political instability pushed the family to relocate to Beirut in 1965, civil war forced a second move to Kuwait and the Iraqi invasion of 1990 triggered a third upheaval to Dubai. Each move meant rebuilding. “My grandparents stayed in Kuwait and rebuilt with a few employees, but obviously everything was destroyed,” Michael says.

Those upheavals forged a resilience that underpins the powerhouse of today.