3/27/08
No 'lid' in sight
What do you think? Email us at mme@cnn.com, or click on "add a comment" below.
3/20/08
A Universe Apart
The Great Eastern Hotel near Inside the foyer I took time for a few interviews to sound out my views that we are not living in one global economy right now. “It really does seem like two parallel universes,” said Marwan Elaraby of Citadel Capital the Egyptian investment bank.
“You drive around The dollar continues to tumble; oil continues to surge; prices everywhere for staples are skyrocketing. Despite the rosier economic outlook, protestors in Finance is Confidence Middle Eastern players are not ignoring the red-lights of concern flashing on Wall Street, quite to the contrary. They are hoping to minimize the impact. As co-founder of Beltone Financial, Aly El-Tahry noted: “Finance is confidence. As long as you don’t have a catalyst or something that diverts the present expectation from this negative mood, we’ll continue to have uncertainty.” For “I'm much more concerned about the policy formulations in the future because the kind of extreme pragmatism that we're witnessing today could be justified in the short term by uncertainty, by requirements of having to make and to do some quick actions to fix problems,” said Mohieldin. The Worldcom fiasco led to Sarbanes-Oxley. This severe credit crunch he worries may lead a new White House occupant to move into action to limit trade or the flow of financial investments. Let’s hope not. We however have heard very little from the three remaining presidential candidates on what they would do about the Meanwhile, back in the foyer of the Great Eastern, the talk remains on creating new opportunities. With this economic boom underway in the region, the players are looking to What do you think? Email us at mme@cnn.com, or click on "add a comment" below. 3/13/08
The well's running dry
In a week where oil and gold have found record highs, it seems almost out of place to discuss the emergence of another commodity that will likely determine the viability of the Middle East and North Africa region – water. Water, like electricity in one’s home, is taken for granted. When was the last time you thought about the source of your water, the price of water or whether it will be there when you open the tap? About a third of the world’s population does so each and every day, because they don’t have reliable access to clean water. While it is not a desperate situation today in the Middle East, it will be tomorrow if the situation is not tackled. The global population is expected to expand by two and half billion in 2050. Besides the obvious natural pressures of living in the desert sands, the region is also home to the fastest rate of population growth, where it is tabbed to double to 600 million by just 2020. The Middle East only receives about two percent of the world’s rainfall and has only one percent of its water resources. This has not been lost on policymakers and the ruling families. Six of the top ten investors in desalination plants are Middle Eastern governments, totaling 57 percent of global capacity. Many of those facilities need to be upgraded and new ones need to come on line to keep pace with both economic and population growth. There is a handsome payoff for this investment. According to Gulf One Investment Bank in Jeddah, for every dollar put into water capacity, there is a three dollar boost in productivity. This means that water is not only the source of life, but the source for future growth as well. To date Saudi Arabia has allocated about three percent of its annual budget to water infrastructure; investors say ten times that amount is needed. The Kingdom is the largest owner of desalination facilities and with the seven economic cities planned for the next two decades, demand will surge, so will the need for the private sector to play a role. Rough estimates put the sums needed at $100 billion for the region in the next eight years. With those dollar signs flashing, investment bankers are busy working on the formation of funds to leverage the opportunity. Gulf One recently launched its Moya Holding Company. The first tranche of the two billion dollar fund has been raised and they are co-investing that money with governments in public-private partnerships. Expect many more of the same models. I recently interviewed Atif Abdulmalik the CEO of Arcapita, the Bahrain-based private equity group who says bluntly, “We as an institution are focusing on it, investing in it because we think that's the future.” The group has quietly bought water utilities in Europe and the United States and sees water as one of the most promising sectors in the region as well. As one shrewd Malaysian CEO Francis Yeoh of YTL Corporation wisely shared over dinner five years ago, utilities may not be sexy, but they are predictable and produce cash flow. That is why he too is a buyer of utility companies in Britain and Australia. Peter Brabeck-Lemathe of food giant Nestle has put the issue of water at the center of his radar screen. He finds politics at this juncture have overruled common sense. Two-thirds of the world’s water supplies are going into agriculture, but how efficiently? Bio-fuels are not water friendly by any means, but the rush into production has been intense. We know through our coverage that the Middle East is swimming in record oil revenues. There is so much around that sovereign wealth funds are investing that money at home and abroad. This is a case where oil and water do mix. All the mega development projects being built in the Gulf and throughout the MENA region from Algeria to Yemen will not mean anything without the free flow of water. This will require a combination of proper infrastructure, new technologies and the collective efforts of business and government. Let the conservation and the exploration begin. What do you think? Email us at mme@cnn.com, or click on "add a comment" below.
3/6/08
Damaging dollar
There are many policymakers in the current White House who’ve silently supported a weaker dollar policy for the second term of the Bush Administration. This, the argument goes, helps support U.S. exports. True, but the downside risks today are percolating on many fronts. One can make a solid case that the common thread, which weaves through the financial markets today, is the weak dollar. President George W. Bush was quick to criticize the 13 members of OPEC this week for not increasing oil output at their meeting in Vienna. That may be politically palatable but it seems to be short on economic realities. There is at most, as numerous leaders and analysts have outlined on our program, 500 thousand barrels of spare oil capacity within the cartel and that is not enough to drive prices down from their historic highs. The culprit is the weak dollar. As a bet against dollar-based assets, global liquidity pools controlled by global fund managers have put money into the oil market. So the record prices we are seeing today are in part driven because these managers are looking for a more attractive return for their money. A similar story is playing out with the hard commodities – gold, platinum, silver, iron ore. The $100 barrier for oil has been broken and gold appears to be on its way to the $1000 an ounce with its record run. Don’t get me wrong; pressure from the developing world is intense. Countries within the broader Middle East are growing nicely and this is true from Dubai to Shanghai, from Kiev to Kuala Lumpur. As this band of growth from the Middle East to the Far East continues to expand, the pressure for the entire basket of commodities will continue to grow. But a strong dollar policy based on sound budget management in Washington would likely take out the top 20 percent of these record highs. Keep tapping the wealth There is a less obvious, sidebar story that has been a result of the soft dollar policy and that is the hunt for better returns by the giant and still growing sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf countries. When the dollar was solid, these funds were quite happy to park their money into the U.S. dollar and U.S. bonds. That is not the case anymore. With the coffers overflowing from $100 oil, they are re-deploying their assets around the globe, in U.S. and European equities, property deals and utility companies. This had many crying foul, but the rhetoric this week toned down considerably. As European Commissioner Charlie McGreevy noted on our program, the debate changed a great deal in the last year. “From being looked upon as, I say 'pariahs' as it were, a year ago. I think people are now looking at it in a more balanced way and I think we've had a more balanced discussion now then we would have had one year ago.” This is true in part because Europe and the U.S. actually need the funds as almost lenders of last resort. As a result, both the European Union and the U.S. Treasury are both talking about a voluntary code of conduct for sovereign wealth funds. The Gulf money managers I have spoken to scratch their heads and wonder out loud what that means in practice. But again, a whiff of cooperation seems to be in the air. The Chief Executive of Dubai International Capital Sameer Al Ansari said this week: “There’s little question that there needs to be more transparency.” While a center ground is being found, the funds garnered a big vote of confidence from Warren Buffet who moved to the number one slot on the Forbes wealthiest people list. Buffet pointed the finger back to Washington: “This is our doing. Our trade equation guarantees massive foreign investment.” As the Oracle of Omaha noted, the weak dollar may have helped sell goods abroad, but it has meant that, not only does the trade balance need to be financed, all the other products up for sale – especially banks and buildings – look like a bargain. What do you think? Email us at mme@cnn.com, or click on "add a comment" below.
|
ABOUT THIS BLOG
John Defterios’ blog accompanies the weekly business program, Marketplace Middle East (MME) that is dedicated to the latest financial news from the Middle East. As MME anchor, John Defterios talks to the people in the know, finding out their opinions on the big business moves in the region, he provides his views via this weekly blog. We hope you will join the discussion around the issues raised.
SHOWTIMES
Friday: 08:15, 19:45Saturday: 05:45 Sunday: 07:15 ALL TIMES GMT ARCHIVE
• September 2007• October 2007 • November 2007 • December 2007 • January 2008 • February 2008 • March 2008 • April 2008 • May 2008 • June 2008 • July 2008 • August 2008 • September 2008 • October 2008 • November 2008 • December 2008 • January 2009 • February 2009 • March 2009 • April 2009 |