Middle East

MIDDLE EAST 2014 SUPPLEMENT By Gordon Platt Dubai has rolled over its debt and keeps on spending in preparation for World Expo 2020. And this time, it says, there will be no property bubble. Dubai welcomed the New Year with ...

MIDDLE EAST 2014 SUPPLEMENT By Gilly Wright The Arab Spring dissuaded many companies from investing in the Middle East-North Africa region, but foreign investment is now returning on the back of a wide array of major planned infrastructure projects. Ongoing ...

MARKET FOCUS: MIDDLE EAST INVESTMENT BANKING By Gordon Platt The Middle East may present political challenges, but dealmakers anticipate that 2014 will be the year M&A flourishes in the region, particularly in the GCC countries, as well as Iraq and ...

LOCATION: LONDON, UK Global Finance held its Best Trade Finance Banks 2014 ceremony during the BAFT global annual meeting in London in January. Corporate and financial leaders from around the world were present to accept their awards and honor other ...

GOLD STANDARD By Rebecca Brace and Anita Hawser Global Finance presents the winners of its annual Best Treasury & Cash Management Providers awards. Global multinational corporates may have come out of the 2008 global financial crisis better off than the ...

STAR PERFORMERS By Anita Hawser Over the past six years transaction banking has been one of the best performers in an otherwise lackluster banking sector. Even in the midst of a global financial crisis, suppliers and salaries still need to ...

MILESTONES By Justin Keay First Jordan was hit by the global economic crisis, which slowed annual growth rates from around 8% to 3% and reduced foreign direct investment to a trickle. Now Syria’s bloody civil war is threatening to overwhelm ...

SPECIAL REPORT By Andrew Cunningham Al Rajhi tops the rankings of Safest Islamic Banks in the GCC. The use of Islamic finance arouses strong emotions. For its supporters, it offers an ethical way of conducting financial transactions that is far ...

MILESTONES By Michael Shari A fissure is opening in the bulwarks of Western sanctions that have isolated Iran from the global banking system since the early 1980s. In an interim deal signed in November in Geneva, Iran agreed to curb ...

MILESTONES By Luca Ventura When in early January the US secretary of state John Kerry traveled to the Middle East, newspaper headlines mostly focused on his attempt to push yet another peace deal between Israel and Palestine. His efforts, however, ...

EMERGING MARKETS ROUNDUP By Gordon Platt The Dubai Financial Market was one of the best-performing equity markets in the world in 2013, with the general index nearly doubling. Confidence in the emirate was boosted by news that it won the ...

MILESTONES By Tiziana Barghini A grand plan to transform a vast area round the Suez Canal—one of the world’s longest and oldest waterways, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas—into a trading and industrial center could finally see the light of ...

COUNTRY REPORT By Gordon Platt The coming year could be crucial for Saudi Arabia, as the Middle Eastern powerhouse deals with a changing global landscape in terms of both its primary economic driver—oil—and its key international partnerships. Three years after ...

NEWSMAKERS By Gordon Platt Ibrahim Dabdoub, group CEO of National Bank of Kuwait, is stepping down after 30 years as CEO and 53 years with the bank. “I am leaving NBK in the safest hands,” Dabdoub stated. The bank has ...

COUNTRY REPORT   By Gordon Platt   Oil-rich Kuwait is finally making progress on implementing its multibillion-dollar development program and improving its business operating environment.   Despite its aim to become a world-class financial and commercial center, the Arab Gulf ...

COUNTRY REPORT   Despite the change of leadership Qatar has undergone, the new emir is expected to follow his father’s lead, building on the country’s early economic gains by diversifying beyond oil and gas.

Oil may be the liquid that drives many of the economies in the Middle East, but the spread of the Internet has unleashed a new generation of tech-entrepreneurs and start-ups, fueling hopes of a non-oil economy for the future.

There is a new definition of the emerging markets and their characteristics that confutes many old and accepted axioms; for example, the idea that the cost of labor is cheaper in developing countries, or that governance is more advanced and regulations are more enforced in developed countries.

MILESTONES By Justin Keay It’s only four years since the global economic slowdown plunged Dubai into a major debt crisis and near-default, but the country is acting as if none of this happened. To say the old confidence is back ...

WHEN WILL A NEW SUN RISE? By Justin Keay The Levant region is plagued with political instability and unrest. But there are pockets of economic strength and inklings of long-term development. According to the Collins English Dictionary, the word Levant ...