Beirut SE: Blom (1 month) Current Year High: 1,526.31 Current Year Low: 1,168.36 Un Under the shadow of the non-event of St. Cloud that failed to generate any improvement to Lebanon’s crippling disease of politics, the Beirut Stock Exchange did what it has been doing in the first half of the year: hang on by its teeth, gums bleeding. The BSI capped at 1172.86 on Jul 26, July trading volumes were largely insignificant. Report-worthy movements in the banking sector included the competition among local banks to buy the domestic business of BLC from the Qatar Investment Authority and the acquisition of Banque de la Bekaa by Bank of Sharjah (BoS) for $25 million. BoS essentially acquired a license which it wants to use to build an operation in the Levant. As far as stock market confidence indicators go, first-half 2007 findings by the semi-annual MasterIndex survey gave 20.5 out of
