Khaled Suliman Saleh Al Olayan[1] (Arabic: سليمان صالح العليان; 5 November 1918 – 4 July 2006) was among Saudi Arabia's wealthiest businessmen.
Olayan's rise to great wealth reflected his connections to the Al-Saud royal family and his fronting for them, his acumen, the ability to cross cultural barriers, as well as extraordinary timing.
During King Abdul Aziz Al Saud's historic visit to Dhahran in April of that year, Suliman served as a company translator.
The merchant families of Unayzah had developed important trading links with the world outside central Arabia - the cities on the Red Sea and Persian Gulf coast, which had ties to Africa and Asia.
GCC's first customer was Bechtel, which was under contract to Aramco to manage the construction of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline), a mammoth project designed to link the oil wells in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province to a terminal in Lebanon on the Mediterranean Sea.
In the 1960s, Suliman turned to international equity investing, an activity which would eventually establish the Group as an influential participant in global capital markets.
Moreover, through GTC and GCC he acquired exclusive distributorships for Kimberly Clark, General Foods, Pillsbury, Hunt Wesson, Cummins Engine, Kenworth and Atlas Copco.
[7] Beginning in the late 1980s, the Group embarked on a series of new activities in Saudi Arabia, focusing on light manufacturing and franchising, reaching beyond the Kingdom to other Persian Gulf countries and the greater Middle East.