Kuwait's Kharafi Group is undergoing a restructuring process following the death in April of the conglomerate's popular chairman, the company's vice chairman, and likely successor, said. "We are working on the restructuring of the company," said vice chairman Bader Nasser Al Kharafi, son of the deceased chairman Nasser Al Kharafi, who died in Egypt in April. The late chairman's influence on Kuwait society was indicated when shares in companies the conglomerate has stakes in took a sharp drop immediately after his death. Kharafi Group has an annual turnover of more than $5 billion and operates in more than 25 countries worldwide. Its subsidiary, Kuwait Food Company or Americana, holds the Middle East franchises for Pizza Hut, KFC and TGI Friday's, among others. Shares in telecoms giant Zain, where Al Kharafi was the main force behind a failed $12bn stake sale in the firm to UAE's Etisalat, fell five percent following his death. Similarly, shares in National Investments fell 5.1 percent and shares in the National Bank of Kuwait, the country's biggest lender and which Al Kharafi was a board member of, also dropped 1.7 percent, despite reporting positive first-quarter results. "This (the death) will have a dramatic impact on the stock market and the political and economic scenery," Naser Al Nafisi, general manager at Al Joman Centre for Economic Consultancy in Kuwait, told Reuters. "He had a powerful influence and a special charisma - his brothers and sons will not carry the same." As the restructuring continues, Bader said each segment of the business was currently operated by an individual family member. "It is a family business and it is divided into sectors and everyone is in charge of his own sector.” I am in charge of the industrial part of the company, because of my engineering background so I think we are going to still focus on that." Nasser Al Kharafi was ranked 77th in the 2011 Forbes list of richest people in the world and was estimated to be worth $10.4 billion but he level of debt was pretty much unknown.
