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Home > Blogs > Author > Ian Fraser

Ian Fraser

Ian Fraser
Ian Fraser, a journalist since 1988, is working on programmes about the banking and financial crisis for the BBC. He writes about business and finance for the Financial Times, the Sunday Times, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Mail, and the Mail on Sunday. He is a visiting lecturer in financial journalism at the University of Stirling (since October 2009). Previous roles include business editor of the Sunday Times Scotland, financial editor of the Sunday Herald, deputy editor of Director, assistant editor of EuroBusiness and editor of internal publications at Unilever. He previously worked in the advertising industry in Edinburgh, London, and Paris. Ian graduated MA honours in English from the University of St Andrews.

Recent blog posts

  • CalPERS and other activist investors to gain a seat in the boardroom
    If you believe that increased shareholder engagement is the key to a corporate nirvana in which responsible investors can force companies to change their behaviour - for example by thinking longer-term and eschewing corporate excess - there's been a most welcome development.
  • Dealing with the euro mood swings
    When the PIIGS crisis was at its height in May, many economists believed the eurozone was going to hell in a handcart and that the euro was doomed. There were predictions that fiscally-challenged economies such as Greece faced bankruptcy, ejection from EMU and a reversion to currencies such as the drachma.
  • China’s love affair with US bonds is not over...yet
    I wrote a blog post six months ago saying that Americans should not be paranoid about the possibility that China, the country’s biggest lender, will cause economic mayhem by dumping the $1 trillion plus of US Treasury Bills and dollar-denominated assets it currently holds.
  • Turkey remains one of world's hottest emerging markets, despite fiscal slip-up
    On a visit to New York in December 2003, I interviewed Jim Rogers, the renowned investor and ex-colleague of George Soros. Rogers – who, in my view, speaks a lot of sense about macroeconomics – had recently returned from the round-the-world trip on which he based Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip.
  • Ukraine's recovery still rests on shaky ground
    Ukraine was the bread-basket of the Soviet Union but 17 years after gaining its independence, the country became an economic basket case as a result of the credit crisis – ranking in the hall of economic ignominy alongside the likes of Iceland, Ireland and Dubai...
  • US coming to terms with tax rises, despite Ryan's road map
    A new front has opened in the war of words over the best macro medicine for the damaged US economy between the neo-Keynsians, who generally favor continued borrowing and continued stimulus, and the deficit hawks, who favor a form of starvation diet: and it’s tax...
  • Are Europe's banks sleepwalking to disaster once more?
    It would be crazy if, three years after the start of the last one, Europe was to sleepwalk into another banking and financial crisis. But there are plenty of commentators who believe that is exactly what’s happening right now...
  • Samba set to continue despite Brazil's necessary slowdown
    Brazil's turbocharged economic growth—its GDP grew at 9% in the first quarter of 2010—may be showing signs of slowing but the authorities are welcoming this. They believe the pause for breath should enable them to ward off the spectre of inflation...
  • Indian bank stress tests expected to provide only superficial reassurance
    It seems that bank stress tests are catching on. In the wake of the US tests, whose results were published in May 2009, and the less exacting European ones, whose results came out on July 23, India is poised to embark on stress tests too...
  • Dodd-Frank better suited than Sarbox for rooting out accounting fraud
    The recent settlement between Houston-based computer manufacturer Dell and the US Securities & Exchange Commission provides further evidence of the failure of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to improve corporate behavior in the US. Despite Sarbox – a draconian, “tick box” set of rules introduced in the wake of the Enron scandal in 2002 – Dell was able to carry out an accounting fraud between 2001 and 2006...
  • Clueless banks happy to drift in sea of inexactitude
    Do the world’s leading banks have a firm grip of the true value of their assets, their true exposure to risk (including the likelihood of their borrowers defaulting) and their own true capital strength? And if they do have such information at their fingertips, are they accurately communicating it into the public domain for the benefit of regulators and shareholders?
  • Hendry's eclectic approach gives pointers to global outlook
    The Scots hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry has lately become something of a media darling thanks to his sheer outspoken-ness. But he also puts his clients’ money where his mouth is, often making them handsome returns, and has some genuinely interesting things to say about the outlook for the global economy...
  • Dodd-Frank Act won't prevent future crises
    American banks and financial institutions can hardly have expected to have faced no regulatory or enforced structural or behavioral changes after their lead role in causing the worst financial crash since the 1930s...
  • FSA challenges audit profession to sharpen up its act
    Do auditors tend to be so close to the management of the companies whose financial results they’re supposed to be auditing that they are predisposed to take whatever they’re told by their paymasters at face value? And if auditors are failing adequately to challenge management on book-keeping and audit methodology, what is the value of the audit reports they produce?
  • Curing the world’s financial ills in four not-so-easy steps
    The inadequacy of the communiqué from the G20 summit, which made it clear that the high-level talking shop in Toronto had failed to deliver a unified global stance on preventing double-dip recession, has prompted fears that we are now entering the next phase of the banking and financial crisis. The G20’s inability to agree on a global approach to resolving developed world indebtedness and economic failings prompted...
  • The spin-free life of SocGen analyst who cut himself off from herd
    What is it about Sociéte Générale? Not only has the French bank spawned the “rogue trader” Jerome Kerviel, currently on trial for alleged fraud in Paris, and the deep-thinking global strategist James Montier (author of a QFINANCE viewpoint article). Now it has delivered a leftfield, maverick investment analyst whose outsider's perspective could revolutionize equity research. Marc Mozzi, a real-estate analyst with Sociéte Générale in London, differs from his peers...
  • Having recognized role in crisis, fund managers put themselves on the couch
    The villains of the financial crisis, whose aftershocks are now forcing austerity on millions of Europeans, are many and varied. Groups singled out for blame include bankers, investment bankers, rating agencies, politicians, central bankers, “no touch” regulators, and credit-hungry consumers and corporations. But there is one group whose role has not yet been fully recognized or explored: the fund managers...
  • Osborne’s shock therapy represents “kill or cure” for English patient
    Britain’s new chancellor, George Osborne, has this week come in a volley of abuse from neo-Keynesian economists, left-wing commentators and opposition Labour MPs. His critics are enraged by his decision to "supplicate before the market Gods" and "recklessly endanger Britain economic future" by imposing an austerity budget on Britain last Tuesday, June 22nd...
  • Bankers square up to regulators over economic fallout of Basel III
    The war of words between regulators, including central bankers, and bankers over the economic impact of the proposed Basel III reforms is not showing much sign of abating. The proposed new rules, which are a key part of the G20’s push for a stabler financial system, would force banks to hold more capital and liquid assets. The rules are being finalized by the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements, the oversight body for the global...
  • Europe's rush to impose austerity measures could prove disastrous
    Call it the new frugality but deficit reduction has become economic flavour of the month across most of Europe. The turning point came at the recent meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Korea, in early June. Fortune magazine said those present had a collective crise de coeur after becoming "alarmed by the public finances of some countries". Together they "made clear that they could no longer wait until...
  • UK competition watchdog nips at investment bankers' heels
    It’s pretty much been a one-way street for investment banks since the UK and US governments started to deregulate financial markets in the 1980s. Indeed Philip Augar, former investment banker and author of The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, has called it a “stairway to heaven”...
  • BP disaster shows that environmental and social risks are also financial risks
    British pension funds are learning some important lessons from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Until this crisis, pension funds regarded London-based oil giant BP as a “safe” bet for the long term. After all the oil company’s shares have tended to rise in value year-on-year, as well as providing a regular and robust dividend stream. They have formed a major component of most UK pension fund’s portfolios. But the Gulf of Mexico environmental disaster...
  • Has love of “easy money” driven Washington to distort inflation figures?
    Ben Bernanke is confident America has inflation under control. Speaking in Tokyo last Wednesday the Federal Reserve chairman said: "Despite increases in inflation a few years ago and now declines of inflation to very low levels, inflation expectations in the United States are very stable.” The remarks helped pour oil on troubled markets, which are fretting about financial instability and possible sovereign defaults in Europe. There have also...
  • ECB becomes Europe’s “feudal overlord”
    Europe faces a terrible future, with the “welfare socialism” that characterized the post-war years being swept away and a possible return to feudalism, the economists Simon Johnson and Peter Boone have warned. In a thoughtful piece published in the Daily Telegraph, they argue that the European Central Bank is Europe's new feudal overlord, and that its serfs and vassals are countries and, of course, voters...
  • There is method in Merkel’s madness
    The decision by German chancellor Angela Merkel to unilaterally impose a ban on “naked short-selling” last week was derided by many market commentators as an act of sheer folly. The move was dubbed “an act of desperation” (by Brian Yelvington of Knight Libertas), “moralistic hysteria” (Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research), “simply unfathomable” (Uwe Parpart of Cantor Fitzgerald), and “a distraction from the major...
  • Investors shooting themselves in foot with acceptance of "golden hellos"
    The £3.3 million, no-strings-attached “golden hello” recently handed by Unilever to its incoming finance director, Jean-Marc Huet, caused dismay among some investors ahead of the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company’s annual general meeting on May 13. The main reason that investors, including UK-based Cooperative Asset Management, were so incensed was that the award came without any performance conditions attached...
  • Roubini's 10 part prescription for a more stable financial future
    Nouriel Roubini, the New York-based economist who can justly claim to having foreseen the crisis, has proposed a comprehensive list of 10 reforms to limit the chances of such a cataclysm occurring again. The proposals, outlined in Roubini's new book, Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance, co-authored by Stephen Mihm and published yesterday by Penguin, include an overhaul of securitization, a ban on CDOs, the shifting…
  • Roubini: “The crisis ripped the sleek shiny skin off what had become a gangrenous mess”
    The economist Nouriel Roubini is astonished that, even though the market-fundamentalist, laissez-faire belief system that dominated economic and political thinking for most of the past five decades is now utterly discredited, nothing has yet emerged to take its place. In his new book, Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance, Roubini argues that policymakers, bankers and economists allowed themselves to be seduced by…
  • Euro crisis morphs into the sovereigns' subprime
    Hope triumphed over fear with last Sunday night's dramatic €720bn ($1 trillion) EU/IMF intervention to prop up the eurozone, but there remain widespread suspicions that this solution—dubbed the biggest bailout in history—may yet prove too little too late to save the eurozone. Even after news of the EU/IMF package, which wrongfooted investors who were betting on a Greek default, dribbled out from Brussels on Sunday night and Monday morning…
  • Senate's Goldman dossier lifts lids on internal practises
    The internal correspondence from inside Goldman Sachs amassed by the Senate’s Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations makes for shocking reading—which must be deeply embarrassing for Goldman Sachs and the managing directors concerned. The voluminous evidence, including memoranda, personal emails and credentials presentations, would (almost) be enough raw material for someone wanting to write a book or a film script…
  • Hell hath no fury like a Wall Streeter scorned
    An anonymous memo is doing the rounds of Wall Street and the City of London. It could be a spoof. But it does have the ring of authenticity. In the memo, a peeved Wall Streeter rails against attempts by President Barack Obama's administration to cramp his style by reining in the wild beasts of finance. The writer issues a stern warning to the rest of America ("Main Street"). He or she basically argues that if Wall Street is to be "knocked off the top of…
  • Greek bailout rewrites rulebook for EU sovereign debt
    Is the European Union and the IMF's €110bn bailout of Greece a good or a bad thing. If you’re a German voter, 57% of whom reportedly oppose the rescue package (largely because they hate the idea of salvaging a profligate nation such as Greece), the answer is definitely the latter. Others in the “bad” camp include the investor Jim Rogers, who was interviewed about it on BBC Radio 4’s “World at One” on Monday. Rogers, famous for best-selling books…
  • Former President Clinton concedes he got it wrong on derivatives
    Former President Bill Clinton has admitted that he ought to have tightened up the regulation of derivatives when he was in office, but insisted he had no regrets over the decision to repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking. A relaxed Bill Clinton told ABC’s “This Week” he should never have listened to the advice of his former Treasury Secretaries, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both of whom recommended…
  • SEC vs Goldman Sachs suggests changed days for Wall Street
    The torrent of speculation surrounding the SEC’s chances of succeeding with its attempts to nail the “giant vampire squid” (a.k.a. Goldman Sachs) over alleged fraudulence in its Abacus 2007-ac1 collateralized debt obligation seems to have obscured the true import of what happened last Friday. For Goldman Sachs, traditionally the most successful and powerful investment bank on Wall Street, to be charged with fraud by the leading regulator in its…
  • Iceland makes a drama out of its crisis
    Iceland’s Truth Report (or “Black” Report) into the October 2008 collapse of its banking sector is exactly the sort of forensic inquiry from which a number of other countries where laissez-faire politicians allowed cavalier banks to pursue reckless growth trajectories could also benefit. The findings of the Truth Report, put together by its Special Investigation Commission and published last Monday, are also being performed in a Reykjavik theater…
  • Breaking up is the hardest thing to do
    Three years since the onset of the crisis, the US Congress has finally got around to debating some serious proposals for reforming America’s banks and other financial institutions—and specifically for overhauling how they are regulated. But will the measures outlined in Senator Chris Dodd’s financial reform bill be sufficient to prevent another crisis? And can they be expected to make it through the political mill given the opposition of laissez-faire Republicans…
  • Banking’s new age of experience
    The weaknesses of bank boards and particularly the lack of financial industry experience of nonexecutive (or external) directors at banks, is seen as one of the reasons why so many such banks and financial institutions came within a whisker of going bust during the crisis. According to new research from Moody’s Investor Service, this is one area that US and European banks have been striving to address in recent months by replacing…
  • US rescue plan: Stiglitz vs Gold
    Three years after the crisis began is as good a time as any to take stock of the US policy response to the fallout from the subprime catastrophe—and assess the response’s effectiveness in nursing the world’s largest economy back to health. One of the fiercest critics of recent US economic policy is the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. In his book Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, he lambasts…
  • It was not lack of regulation, but lack of ethics, that killed The Street
    The former Salomon Brothers bond trader who lifted the lid on sharp practice in Wall Street with Liar’s Poker in 1989 has returned to his former stamping ground. In his new book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis focuses not on bulge-bracket banks but on a small band of wacky outsiders, including one described as “a loner with a glass eye, a medical degree and Asperger’s syndrome”…
  • Lehman Bros: Time for Sarbox to be rethought post-Valukas
    The time bombs detonated by the court-appointed examiner’s report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers have by no means all gone off. Indeed, further explosions are expected to continue to reverberate and echo around the financial and regulatory landscape for some years to come. The report—a 2,200-page, nine-volume page-turner written by lawyer Anton Valukas—revealed that the failed investment bank continuously manipulated its accounts…
  • Pension funds search for climate change risks and opportunities
    Pension funds are increasingly being asked by politicians, non-governmental organizations, campaigners, and pressure groups to mobilize their financial clout more actively and to take their responsibilities as corporate owners more seriously. The chances are it could change from being “asked” to being “required.” At the vanguard of the movement is UK Treasury minister Lord Myners who recently berated pension funds for…
  • UK’s uncertain outlook clouds stockpicking picture
    The man who took over the reins at Fidelity International’s Special Situations Fund from the legendary investment manager Anthony Bolton has been outlining his investment vision. Sanjeev Shah said that his preference is for companies capable of “generating solid underlying organic growth”—largely because of his suspicion that UK economic growth will remain muted for some time. Even though the UK recession officially ended in…
  • Greek tragedy’s happy ending—A European Monetary Fund?
    The Greek crisis has brought the structural flaws in European Monetary Union (EMU) into sharp relief, as well as weakening the euro and the credibility of the euro. But out of the furnace of the sovereign debt crisis an eminently sensible proposal has emerged. Instead of unseemly internal bickering over the extent to which richer eurozone states should dig into their pockets to bail out fiscally irresponsible partners, plans are being drawn up for a new institution that should help…
  • Beijing unlikely to go MAD any time soon
    Americans (some Americans anyway) remain deeply anxious about China’s ownership of $1–2 trillion of their country’s debt. The fears that these massive holdings leave the US vulnerable and expose intensified on February 15 when it was reported Beijing had dumped some $34.2 billion of US Treasury bills. There are fears, for example, that Beijing might suddenly offload its circa $1.5 trillion holding of Treasury bills and, in so doing, spark an economic version of mutually assured destruction…
  • Buffett advocates more stick, less carrot to ensure bank bosses shape up
    Legendary Omaha-based investor Warren Buffett often uses his annual letter to shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway group to impart some homespun financial wisdom and disseminate a few trade secrets. The letter accompanying the conglomerate’s 2009 annual report, released on Saturday, doesn’t disappoint. Perhaps Buffett’s most pertinent recommendation, concerns the corporate governance of large financial institutions. Buffett, 79, strongly believes that…
  • The wider consequences of Greece’s tragedy
    It’s time that institutional investors woke up to the wider repercussions of the Greek tragedy and rethought their attitudes to risk as well as their approaches to asset allocation. Obviously investors are aware of the way in which the credit crisis has accelerated the shift in the balance of economic power from the developed and towards the emerging world, a shift that has obviously been influenced by the fiscal irresponsibility of the former…
  • Tobin makeover not quite what it seems
    The campaign for a “Tobin” tax on global financial transactions, first proposed by the Nobel prize-winning economist James Tobin in 1971, has gained a new lease of life. The idea was given fresh impetus by “Red” Adair Turner, chairman of UK regulator the FSA last summer. Yet, despite the public’s dislike of bankers, the proposal never really caught the public’s imagination. This probably had little to do with dire warnings issued by the City of London and London Mayor Boris Johnson that the…
  • IPO window slams shuts in “howling gale of fear”
    The flotations window that has been opened up since the bear market rally kicked in last March has been slammed shut as risk aversion stalks global financial markets. Institutional investors are concerned about the ending of quantitative easing and the uncertainties that have been caused by the sovereign debt crisis in the EU. Both have sparked stock market volatility and rendered the near-term outlook for some corporates somewhat cloudy. The apparent closure of…
  • Volcker’s right: Prop trading was at heart of crisis
    There are plenty of powerful voices on Wall Street and in Congress out to rubbish President Obama’s ‘Volcker Rule’ right now. Their main gripes are that it won’t really work in practice (since it doesn’t apply to many banks and that others will find ways around the proposed rule), and that the rule will undermine the competitiveness of US banks and diminish their ability to lend to the real economy...
  • G20 reform agenda knocked sideways by Obama
    Despite the worthy talk at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, the world is even further from reaching unanimity about how best to re-regulate banks and financial institutions than at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last September...
  • Turner turns fire on bean counters
    Lord Turner, chairman of the UK's top financial regulator, angered people in the City of London when he told them last August that much of what they do is “socially useless” and that governments had been wrong to allow the financial sector to pursue untrammeled growth for so long. In a recent speech to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales (ICAEW) he went one step further and attacked the bean counters—and specifically standard setters such as…
  • HSBC goes with the economic flow
    If you need tangible evidence that economic power is ebbing away from Western financial centers such as London towards more dynamic economies in Asia, then look no further than HSBC’s decision to move its head office from London to Hong Kong. Ahead of next week’s historic move, which reverses the bank’s 1992 move from Hong Kong to London (a UK government requirement without which the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank would not have been allowed to…
  • Stiglitz lambasts Obama over handling of crisis
    He may be something of a pariah on Wall Street thanks to his calls for a new tax on “upper income” Americans but, in his latest critique of the Obama administration’s handling of the financial crisis, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz makes a great deal of sense. Stiglitz—described as “perhaps the closest thing we have to John Maynard Keynes in both his theoretical outlook and his cogent kibitzing of policymakers” by…
  • How to boost investment returns: Invest responsibly
    It’s official. Caring for the environment and for society can actually benefit your wealth. And according to a raft of recent surveys, the benefits of investing responsibly are increasingly being recognized by the global fund management industry, puncturing expectations that the financial crisis might put paid to such hopes. The only real negative to emerge from the recent surveys—and unfortunately it’s a big negative—is that…
  • Bernanke’s land grab falls flat
    There’s an interesting tussle going on in the US over whether the Federal Reserve should be given more powers—or indeed whether the Washington-based central bank should have its wings clipped. Those arguing in favor of the Fed gaining additional abilities perhaps unsurprisingly include its chairman “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke. He has recently been claiming—to the wry amusement of some economic commentators and guffaws from others…
  • Pondering recovery amid the snow
    The picturesque Swiss ski resort of Davos will later this month again play host to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the annual jamboree of the global great and the good. This year the event is likely to be dominated by soul-searching about the state of the global economic recovery. Specifically, speakers will be assessing whether the neo-Keynesian medicine doled out by most governments is going to be sufficient to…
  • Tobin becomes fashionable
    It was recently suggested that the US economist James Tobin renounced his commitment to a globally implemented tax on financial transactions just a few months before he died in March 2002. Tobin first proposed the idea, which he believed would curb speculation on foreign exchange markets, in 1971. In the wake of the recent financial crisis, the proposal has been gaining some traction in the…
  • Asian economic miracle version 2.0
    The flow of economic power from West to East has been massively accelerated by last year’s banking and financial crisis; indeed if investment managers’ predictions for 2010 are to be believed the process has become unstoppable. Many of the world’s leading investment management firms are predicting, in their outlooks for 2010, that the emerging economies of Asia-Pacific, and to a lesser extent Latin America, will outperform…
  • Roller-coaster ride for Chinese equities
    With economic recoveries and stock market rallies in the developed world looking shaky, investors are increasingly turning their eyes eastwards to benefit from the continuing economic boom in China. The latest to take the plunge is Anthony Bolton, the highly regarded British investor, currently president of investments at Fidelity. So enthused is Bolton, 59, by the opportunities in China…
  • Propping up failures only prolongs recession
    Are governments too eager to sustain banks that would otherwise have gone bust and are they too keen to lend a hand to the casualties of recession, such as US car manufacturers? And in doing so, are they at risk of inflating asset price bubbles that could turn out to be every bit as dangerous as that which burst so spectacularly in 2008? The way in which readers respond to this question will…
  • No-one can afford “too big to fail” banks
    The thorny issue of what to do about institutions that are “too big to fail” has been addressed by Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England. In evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, King said it is impossible to construct a credible regulatory system while dinosaurs that are “too big to fail” are still allowed roam the financial jungle. By “too big to fail” King means…
  • Asia’s unprecedented opportunity
    Asia has a critical role to play in pulling the global economy out of recession and towards a more sustainable future, according to Dominique Strauss Kahn, the French-born managing director of the International Monetary Fund. But delivering the Monetary Authority of Singapore lecture on Friday, November 13th, he stressed…
  • Back to the future
    Morality and business ethics were on the agenda at the closing session of the QFINANCE debates on the future of finance held in Doha this week. Following a lively debate, delegates at the CNBC debate on the future of finance (“Same rules, same game”) voted on four possible outcomes of the banking and financial crisis. Each proposition was advanced by a finance practitioner, advisor, or scholar. In the end, the winning proposition at the debate…
  • Don’t count chickens on recovery
    There is a danger that central bankers including Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank and Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve will hold interest rates too low and for too long—just as their predecessors did after the terror attacks on the United States in September 2001. Speaking at the launch event of QFINANCE in Doha on Wednesday, Rajar Kumar Gupta, senior partner emeritus at management consultants McKinsey & Co, warned…
  • Mark-to-market a cure, not a cause, of crisis
    It is wrong to blame fair-value accounting, also known as mark-to-market accounting, for causing the financial crisis that last year nearly tipped the global economy over the edge, according to the chairman of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Gerald Corrigan. Also a managing director of Goldman Sachs, Corrigan said: “I do not believe that fair value accounting was the cause of it.” In his role as co-chair of Goldman Sachs’s firm-wide risk management committee in the run up to the crisis…
  • New dawn for Gulf finance
    A new era has dawned for financial services, in which Gulf financial centers are well placed to demonstrate their virtues and fully compete with Western centers, according to Abdulrahman Ahmed Al-Shaibi, non-executive director of the Qatar Financial Center Authority. Addressing the QFINANCE launch event in Doha (“FT Rethinking the Future of Finance” conference), Mr Al-Shaibi said the time has come for…
  • Sovereign funds chastened
    Transparency has turned out to be something of a doubled-edged sword for the world’s $3 trillion sovereign wealth sector. Analysts suggest that sovereign wealth funds, which last year decided to embrace transparency, are now paying the price for being open and honest about their investment performance. Vociferous public disapproval of the losses they have incurred by investing in Western banks just as the credit crisis started to unfold is forcing them to…
  • Challenges on talent front
    Gulf nations will have to become less rigidly hierarchical if they are going to boost entrepreneurialism and attract and retain overseas talent, according to speakers at the Doha Business Roundtable. Linda Hill, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, one of the speakers at the Economist-organized event, said that if expatriate workers are denied the chance to get to the upper echelons of indigenous businesses...
  • Doha revisited
    Protectionism has become the “crack cocaine” of modern politics and anti-globalization forces have been emboldened by the global downturn, according to Mike Moore, the former prime minister of New Zealand. Speaking at the opening of the Doha Business Roundtable, “Gulf 2020: Scenario planning in a post crisis-economy,” in Qatar, Moore highlighted a recent report from the WTO which exposed...

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