A spotlight on markets

  Crises purify markets,” pronounced Fadi Khalaf, the recently appointed secretary general of the Union of Arab Stock Exchanges (UASE) in his opening remarks to the organization’s first public meeting in Cairo in early December. With stock market heads trying to bolster each other’s confidence that the worst was over, the global economic crisis had never sounded more silver-lined. Eleven days after Dubai World, the government-owned holding company, delayed its debt repayments in November and caused a massive drop in stock prices around the globe, Rashed al-Baloushi, deputy executive officer at the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange said the bourse was “very optimistic about the future of [its] [Emirati] markets.” Despite such statements intended to minimize the impact of the Dubai  World crisis, the fact that most Arab governments retain majority shares in their markets remains a critical factor in these economies’ ability to mitigate future crises. The near default of