Antoine Choueiri, the founder, chairman and president of pan-Arab media representation agency Choueiri Group, succumbed to cancer on March 9 at the age of 70.
Choueiri had been battling the disease for several years. Despite surgeries and periods of remission, in recent months he had withdrawn from public life. His absence will be felt by a wide array of people who were used to turning to him for advice and analysis. Until the end of his life, media-shy Choueiri remained one of the most respected personalities in the realm of regional advertising. When he talked, people listened.

DEDICATION. Antoine Choueiri was born in Beirut on Aug. 3, 1939 to a family of five. His father was a railway mechanic and his mother a housewife. He had to leave school aged 15 and didn’t have the chance to go to university, but early on he made up his mind that he would one day run his own company. He knew that, in order to achieve his goals, he would need an education, so what he couldn’t initially afford he acquired through sheer will and dedication. He put himself through night school, and ended up with Lebanon’s top accountancy qualification at the time. Around the same time, in 1961, he married Rose Salameh, who would remain by his side for 49 years.
Antoine Choueiri’s future wasn’t in accounting; he won a job at Abou Adal Group, a luxury goods distribution company that also had a publishing arm producing two magazines at the time, and within 10 years he had become head of sales in Abou Adal’s media division. Some men would have been content with this – climbing the ladder quickly inside a well-established company – but Choueiri had other plans. In 1970, he created his own company, Regie Generale de Presse, a media representation house that, as Choueiri Group, would grow to become the most powerful in the region.
The company started by selling space for Al Mawaad magazine, a challenge that was made tougher by the Lebanese civil war that raged for 15 years and all but destroyed Lebanon. Choueiri was forced to flee to France along with thousands of other Lebanese.
That’s not to say he turned his back on his home country, however. By giving sales representation to major Arabic newspapers such as Al Watan al Arabi, the Paris-based Choueiri Group opened doors to an advertising market that had remained widely overlooked until then. On top of this, Choueiri came up with a business model that hadn’t been seen before in the Arab world; his sales agency Video Force worked for video rental companies in Saudi Arabia, while his Arabian Outdoor built up the MUPI and outdoor business in the kingdom.

ARAB WORLD. The year 1985 was crucial for Choueiri and his company. Coming back to Lebanon, Antoine Choueiri not only turned to the rest of the Arab world at a time when few others had an interest in it, but also expanded horizontally over the year, through a wide array of media including print and, most importantly, television. It was in 1985 that LBC was launched, and Pierre El Daher, chairman of the LBC Group, remembers Choueiri’s pitch. “The LBC station had been launched around three months earlier, and Antoine stormed into my office telling me, ‘You have something good here, and I’ll be your media rep.’ I simply couldn’t turn him down,” he says. The Choueiri Group was immediately appointed media representative of a nascent station that was to become one of the region’s most successful endeavors.
Today, the Choueiri Group and its 500-strong staff represent 17 satellite television stations, 11 print titles, seven radio stations and a lot of outdoor. It works with MBC, LBC, An Nahar, Al Hayat, Al Safir and Dubai Media Incorporated – to name just a few. It operates in 11 markets and has 14 subsidiaries, and is said to control around 70 percent of the region’s television spend. And its founder worked closely with the GCC Advertising Association, which was founded in 2005 and later became the Advertisers’ Business Group, representing the region’s biggest spenders.

PASSION. Antoine Choueiri left his mark on whatever endeavor he felt compelled to embark on. Take sports, his other passion. Without his involvement, Lebanon’s basketball scene would not be what it is today. Indeed, when Antoine Choueiri became president of basketball club La Sagesse in 1992, few would have bet that this team would win 19 championships in 10 years, including twice winning both the Asian Club Championship and the Arab Basketball Cup. He gave up his interest in 2005 out of disappointment at the way the Lebanese basketball industry was managed.
Success such as Choueiri’s cannot be achieved without generating criticism and making some enemies. But despite accusations that he pursued his own profit to the detriment of his partners, Choueiri wouldn’t shift his position. And for many, Antoine Choueiri’s most appreciated quality was his loyalty. Clients often became close friends of his; he was, for example, the godfather of LBC chairman Pierre Daher’s son, and his friendship with late publisher and MP Gebran Tueini, (assassinated in 2006) was unwavering.
Choueiri enjoyed time with his seven grand children and all the people close to him, either in his East Beirut office or in his house in the mountains. He leaves an impressive heritage. He will be remembered and missed – by his family and friends, first and foremost, but also by a whole industry that, through his death, has lost some of its spirit. He is survived by his wife Rose, his two children Pierre and Lena, and seven grandchildren.