Reading Time: 5 minutes In Lebanon, as in virtually all other countries around the globe, health has in 2020 been catapulted to the top spot of social concern after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. To assess the correlation between the pandemic, national governance, the economic and liquidity crises, and the overall state of public health in Lebanon, Executive…
Organic care and true beauty niches
Reading Time: 9 minutes The global cosmetic and personal care market is growing, the upward swing especially boosting companies that produce organic and sustainable products. The specificity of new manufacturing trends and the evolution in marketing funnels, such as the rise of micro social media influencers, is shifting the research-intensive health-related sector towards viability of small enterprises, niche producers,…
Drug money
Reading Time: 6 minutes What a difference in perception a year makes – especially this year of 2020, and especially in all matters concerning health, directly or indirectly. Let’s assume – very reasonably – that you were cleaning your hands a few times a day at about this time in late 2019. Were you to have been engaging in…
Alternative medicine spikes
Reading Time: 6 minutes Alternative medicine has been sitting in the shadow of traditional, Western medicine for some time in Lebanon: alternative medicine. Though it is not controversial, alternative medicine is still seen as a complement to traditional medicine. Long a fixture of the Lebanese traditional scene, with stories, and for some, memories of elder Lebanese concocting herbal remedies…
Startups actually
Reading Time: 9 minutes Success is a perfect measure of life. Yet this perfect measure is never in itself perfect. Money, knowledge, passion, experience of gain, learning from failure… All can be successes and each can be a tremendous hurt that changes life’s trajectory. It depends on our objectives and circumstances. Success of entrepreneurial startups and young tech enterprises…
Retail on the run
Reading Time: 5 minutes From the perspective of consumer markets in Lebanon today, there are two classes of people: 1, those who can no longer carry out basic transactions in a consumer economy, and 2, those who are lucky enough to still go shopping, without knowing how long their luck will last. The large and growing first group includes…
2020: Spinneys successes, challenges and outlook
Reading Time: 8 minutes The Gray Mackenzie Retail Lebanon group took over the local supermarket chain, Spinneys, three years ago next spring, acquiring the brand from Abraaj Capital in the United Arab Emirates. Today, the group portfolio includes 16 Spinneys super and hypermarkets, 5 discount stores under the Happy brand, and 11 convenience marts under the Grab’n’Go label. Sitting…
Existential warfare: The year of truth and shock
Reading Time: 4 minutes Sadly, but also realistically, one could not blame an economic analyst for pronouncing Lebanon a lost cause in 2020. The numbers are not only disturbing, but unrestrainedly disastrous. Moreover, these numbers not only exist in arcane accountancy details, but they prevail wherever one cares to look, whether that is the macro-economy or fiscal realities. And…
Full interview with investment expert Romen Mathieu
Reading Time: 10 minutes In the context of Lebanon’s existential crisis, Executive inquired about the country’s new economic and social barriers – a mountain of problems formed around a nexus of poverty, unemployment, and colossal need for investment, that at first (and second) sight appear impossible to scale. In seeking to chart financial and economic pathways across this agglomeration…
The untold story of the last 12 months
Reading Time: 4 minutes Lebanon is not a country by any easy definition. Whatever your preference in terminology, when talking about a community of people in terms of country or nation there are classic denominators involved that are either geographic, or social and cultural, but always framed as coherent and continuous. But Lebanon? Territorially, linguistically, historically, religiously, ethnically, even…