Contrarianism squared

After nearly two years of a state in turmoil, the tide of bad news in Lebanon has reached the point where everything appears broken and almost nothing looks like it would ever function again. And it is true. To a point. Nothing in Lebanon is fully functional today, for example the entrepreneurship ecosystem.  This system, which has for the last decade been hailed as one of Lebanon’s biggest economic options, has been thrown back to where it was before 2013, sighs Nicolas Rouhana, general manager of IM Capital. 2012-13 was the time when the ecosystem was kicked into rapid formation by what Rouhana describes as a shock of half a billion dollars, namely the issuance of Circular 331 by Banque du Liban (BDL), the central bank of Lebanon, which set the stage for practically all investments into the entrepreneurship ecosystem over the following years. Stripping down the pillars However, the