Word: banking
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...injected another kind of novelty into the region: stock fever. The newspapers were filled with ads offering loans - usually with exorbitant interest rates - to help Kenyans buy shares. Poor people who didn't even have bank accounts complained about a minimum investment requirement of 10,000 shillings (just over $150). And on the first day of the IPO, thousands of people lined up in downtown Nairobi to snap up shares. It was perhaps most emblematic that one Kenyan newspaper the Daily Nation, referred to potential investors as "punters," as if by buying Safaricom shares they were betting on a racehorse...
About 35% of the shares will be up for sale to investors abroad, making some Kenyans grumble that rich foreigners - or rich Kenyans with foreign bank accounts - would profit off the sale. "It's just another advantage to the rich, who will keep their millions and millions," says David Mutua, 27, a security guard. Still, the IPO was so popular among ordinary Kenyans that even opposition leader Raila Odinga, who narrowly lost a disputed presidential election to incumbent Mwai Kibaki in December, had to dial back his distaste for the offering. Once he realized that the sale would go ahead...
Land of Peril - and Peace Since my wife and Ijust returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank, I read "Israel's Secret War" with great interest [March 24]. We were both concerned and encouraged by what we saw of everyday life in that troubled part of the world. While we believe Israel's border checkpoints help provide security that its citizens deserve, we also saw checkpoints located well inside the West Bank that seem to have the purpose of hassling Palestinians. It was encouraging, though, to meet with Father Elias Chacour, a Catholic Archbishop and three-time...
Hidayat Ali's story is one of blackest despair, and unconquerable hope. In late December 2004, the native of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province, withdrew his life savings from the bank - a $40,000 cash payment on a new shop. A few days later, Hidayat was out with his family when he heard news of an earthquake. He rushed home to drop off his family, then went to check on a friend on the other side of town. Minutes later, the waves struck, washing away everything Hidayat held dear: his wife and two children, his house...
...ally in E.U. horse trading - is down. Sure, Brown and Sarkozy are getting along just fine; time spent working together as national finance ministers at the European level has done them no harm. And Sarkozy's plans for a Mediterranean union and criticisms of the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank have irked German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But "to do anything major in Europe, France needs the support and solidarity of Germany - at times, in the face of British resistance," says Delafon. "It's fantasy to believe that the U.K. would somehow take the place or join Germany as France...