The private Saudi-based property, trade and agriculture group Al-Shiddi is investing up to $257 million in the next two years in its Sarajevo joint venture with Bahrain-based International Investment Bank, as well as in a hotel in the Bosnia & Herzegovina capital. The Sarajevo City Center development has already begun and will include a shopping and entertainment center, five-star hotel and office tower next to the parliament and government buildings. IIB acquired a 28.3 percent equity stake in the project in August 2009. Al-Shiddi will invest about $216.6 million in the center, due for completion by end-2012, and it is also investing about $40.6 million in a four-star hotel in a newer section of Sarajevo for completion by end of this year. Chairman Sulaiman Al-Shiddi said he expects the completed complex to be worth $406 million as it occupies the last comparable location in the city, where space is limited due to surrounding mountains.
