Via Portfolio Magazine, an interesting look at how U.S. companies are using Dubai as an illegal conduit into Iran. “…Despite sanctions aimed at stemming the sales of U.S. products to Iran, the goods are still getting there. U.S. sanctions were first imposed against Iran in 1979, during the hostage crisis. The current embargo dates back […]
Read more »Via Arabian Business, an interesting look at the wave of Middle Eastern investment targeting Kazakhstan. Up for grabs is the vast and untapped commodity wealth of a country the size of Western Europe, with all the wheat, copper and uranium that Gulf states need. As the article notes: “…The head of investment banking at Renaissance […]
Read more »From The National, an interesting analysis of Russia’s recent diplomatic and trade activities in the Middle East and North Africa in a bid to enhance its geopolitical clout and gain access to, and at least partial control over, the region’s oil and gas reserves. As the article notes: “…Among the former global superpower’s tactics: linking […]
Read more »As reported by The International Herald Tribune, “frontier” markets are gaining even more interest than before in light of the recent turmoil in more developed markets. As the article notes, what has started to come home to investors is that frontier markets, which are remarkably diverse, have achieved these good returns with low correlation to […]
Read more »In a recent article published by Knowledge@Wharton, Howard Pack (a professor of business and public policy at Wharton) and Marcus Noland (a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics) examined how Arab countries are coping with globalization & exploiting the recent influx of hydrocarbon-based money into their economies. We found the following notes […]
Read more »Two very interesting looks at impact that the high price of oil is having upon petro-states and the New Seven Sisters. The first, from the Economist, notes that while oil is now almost five times more expensive than it was at the beginning of 2002, the price increase is primarily a result of geography, not […]
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