Consolidated Contractors Company

In the summer of 1941, after having graduated from American University in Beirut, Hasib Sabbagh, one of the founders of CCC, returned to Israel to find a job. After a number of disappointing job offers, he decided to start his own business and went to Beirut in spring 1948, where a number of his brothers and sisters had already sought refuge due to the Arab–Israeli War. Hasib set up his own company with his brother-in-law Said Khoury and some other businessmen from Syria and Lebanon, and called it Consolidated Contractors Company.

The company's first headquarters was in Homs, Syria, but later moved to Beirut, where Hasib Sabbagh, Said Khoury, and Kamel Abedelrahman, the founders, became the sole owners of CCC to create an Arab construction company. In 1950, CCC won a large contract to build pipelines from Kirkuk in Iraq, to Banyas in Syria, and Tripoli in Lebanon. In 1952, CCC was able to obtain another major contract for a Bechtel-Wimpey joint venture, this time in Aden, to build a major refinery and a camp for workers. A year later, CCC won projects in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar. In 1973, CCC set up the National Petroleum Construction Company in Abu Dhabi to provide offshore services to the oil and gas industries in all the Arabian Gulf countries. Today NPCC has an annual revenue of over US$800 million

In 1975, when the civil war broke out in Lebanon, CCC moved its headquarters first to London and then to Athens in 1976. In the same year, Abd al-Rahman decided to sell his shares in CCC to Sabbagh and Khoury. In the 1980s, CCC was restructured and the CCC owners aimed at expanding the company's operations into Europe, the United States, and Asia. CCC bought Underwater Engineering, a British firm that worked on underwater oil projects, and ACWa, an environmental company. CCC also bought SICON, an Italian mechanical engineering company specializing in petroleum-related projects. They then acquired the Morganti Group, a construction firm in the United States.

To diversify its projects, CCC started a partnership with Canadian OXY, and won a bid to explore for oil in Masila, South Yemen. Fortunately, oil was found in large quantities. Oil exports from Masila peaked at 170,000 barrels per day.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 dealt a heavy blow to CCC's operations in the Persian Gulf region. The company had to move all of its employees out of Kuwait and close down its business operations there. However, by the mid-1990s, CCC emerged again as a thriving company after having navigated successfully the economic and political downturns of the early 1990s growing into the versatile and diversified large international construction company it is today.

In 2019, CCC specializes inHeavy Civil Construction, Buildings and Civil Engineering Works, Mechanical Engineering Works, Heavy and Light Industrial Plants, Marine Works, Offshore Installations, Highways, roads and airports, and Pipelines for water, gas, oil and slurry.

Legal complications

In March 2008, Ambatovy Minerals S.A., specializing in the extraction and refining of nickel and cobalt, entered into a contract with CCC for the construction of a 220-kilometer pipeline in Madagascar. This project was part of a large-scale industrial initiative aimed at transporting raw ore extracted from the mountains to the coast for refining. From the outset of the contract's execution, problems arose, necessitating successive amendments to the contract. Despite these adjustments, tensions persisted, leading to an arbitration proceeding in 2012 in Toronto, in accordance with the rules of the International Court of Arbitration.

After more than three years of proceedings, in September 2015, the Court rendered a decision in favor of Ambatovy Minerals S.A., awarding it $25 million compared to only $7 million for CCC, resulting in a net compensation of $18 million in favor of Ambatovy Minerals S.A. CCC contested this decision before the Ontario Court of Appeal, but the appeal was dismissed.