Business Monitor Online’s Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare analysis has just published two new articles on trends in the sector. In the first article, we outline our belief that, in anticipation of an investment-led economic slowdown, the Chinese government will increase its efforts to boost the country’s social security net in order to control popular discontent. The… [Read more]
The seven biggest telecoms service providers in the GCC – STC (Saudi Arabia), Etisalat (UAE), du (UAE), Qtel (UAE), Batelco (Bahrain), Zain (Kuwait) and Omantel (Oman) reported mixed financial results for the second quarter of 2011. One of the key financial indicators for telecoms operators is net profit. Figures published by the operators show du,… [Read more]
Rumours are still swirling on the subject of the Dubai World (DW) restructuring, and I am not yet convinced that the time to initiate a long-term bullish position on Dubai stocks has come, in spite of the recent rally. I have heard various theories on DW, and I am inclined to the optimistic side: the… [Read more]
Suggestions of a technical default on November 26 by UAE-based Dubai World have sent shockwaves through the financial world. Not only are creditworthiness concerns reaching boiling point, but global equity markets, too, seem to initially have gone into panic mode. Business Monitor’s Liz Martins and Terry Alexander discuss the implications of a debt default by… [Read more]
Upon her return from the United Arab Emirates, we ask Liz Martins from the Middle East desk at BMI to share some of her views on the country and its prospects of weathering the macroeconomic storm hitting the region.
So now we have a name for the single GCC currency (the Khaleeji) and a location for its central bank (Riyadh). Is it finally going to happen? The implications are potentially quite serious: the Gulf is one of the world’s largest holders of US dollar reserves, and, if it opts for a trade-weighted basket peg,… [Read more]
One of the reasons I favoured the Gulf stock markets at the beginning of this year, when the rest of the world was crashing and burning, was that they had the one thing the rest of the world was lacking: liquidity. Accordingly, as G20 and mainstream EM financial institutions were gasping for air, most of… [Read more]
