Ben T. Smith IV, a longtime Silicon Valley executive and currently head of the Communications, Media and Technology practice at Kearney, speaks to Global Finance about the post-SVB venture capital industry and the pace of innovation.
Many of the world's richest countries are also the world's smallest: the pandemic and the global economic slowdown barely made a dent in their huge wealth.
Global Finance editor Andrea Fiano interviews Ásgeir Jónsson, Central Bank Governor of Iceland during Global Finance's World's Best Bank Awards at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on October 15th.
As the war in Iraq reached its apparent endgame in early April, the US Agency for International Development (USAid) began signing off contracts for companies to reconstruct and develop the country. Construction giant Bechtel won the first contract, a deal worth up to $680 million to patch up roads, schools and power plants damaged in the war.
Washington approved $2.4 billion relief funding from Congress in April, and USAid has also allocated resources to Iraq from its current budget. USAid has, unusually, been in the spotlight over the upcoming Iraq work since there is disquiet over how contracts are being assigned. Tenders had been privately invited from a small number of American companies months before the invasion began.
USAid insists that pragmatism alone accounts for this system: only a limited circle of companies could hope to take on the larger projects, there are problems of security clearance, and time is at a premium. “There’s no bias,” says a USAid spokeswoman. “It’s just the practicality.”
However, an official at Washingtonbased Interaction, the US’s largest alliance of development and humanitarian organizations, says that while not-forprofit organizations may not be able to execute mammoth engineering projects, they are being overlooked for other projects. “We’ve had decades of experience,” he says.
Formally created by the Foreign Affairs Assistance Act of 1961, USAid traces its roots back to the Marshall Plan and post- World War II reconstruction efforts.