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...billion Dubai bond issue. Among other things, the bailout money has helped shore up the state-owned development companies behind most of those massive building projects. Still, the shakeout is probably not over yet, according to Saud Masoud, an analyst at the Dubai office of investment bank UBS. Masoud predicts house prices could eventually fall as much as 70% from last year's highs. "You can't just put in more capital," he says, arguing that Dubai needs to be more transparent about the seriousness of the real estate crisis, and diversify its economy. "At some point demand...
Mohamed, the Scottish real estate broker, is thinking of leaving too. His company is declaring bankruptcy, he says, and security guards recently prevented him from removing furniture from his office because of a rent dispute with the landlord. A local bank keeps calling to ask for the whereabouts of a former employee, a male nurse from Edinburgh who came to Dubai, hit the nightclub scene, bought a Porsche convertible, and then fled home after a week on the job, leaving about $115,000 in debt. "What were [they] thinking, loaning ?80,000 to a 24-year-old with no stable...
That's less of a problem elsewhere. Indeed, the most innovative new halal products and services often come out of Europe and Southeast Asia, places where your average food supplier or bank may know little, if anything, about halal. In Europe - the biggest growth region according to the Halal Journal - young devout Muslims are hungry for Islamic versions of mainstream pleasures such as fast food. "The second- and third-generation Muslims are fed up with having rice and lentils every day," observes Darhim Hashim, CEO of the Malaysia-based International Halal Integrity Alliance. "They're saying, 'We want pizzas...
...when oil prices started to rise in 2003, Saudi Arabia was ready. For one thing, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the country's central bank, had greatly expanded the number of well-trained national staffers. Second, it had at its helm officials who remembered the bad days of low oil revenues. That meant that when the oil gushers were turned up again, money was saved and not aggressively spent as elsewhere in the region. The nation's wealth was also placed in very liquid investments, predominantly U.S. government paper assets, rather than real estate. While other regional investment funds were...
John Sfakianakis is chief economist of the Saudi British Bank (SABB...