Reading Time: 5 minutes Over 300 days have passed since Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s prime minister, stood on the White House lawn next to Donald Trump as the US President promised an answer to the “menace” of Hezbollah within 24 hours. That answer did not materialize in the form of a comprehensive foreign policy or as diplomatic niceties, at least…
IT in banking
Reading Time: 5 minutes Some business success stories surprise like new gourmet recipes. It occasionally happens that culinary innovations start with ingredients which by and in themselves do not appeal to everyone as superb delights for the senses—for example liverwurst and artichokes, or Brussels sprouts and tofu—but make a winning dish when combined. Likewise, hardcore banking and software development…
The breakdown
Reading Time: 5 minutes It has been one of the most reassuring factors in the Lebanese economy—some might be inclined to say nearly the only one—that local banks maintained their strong financial standings during the past years and have been perfectly assuming their role in financing the economy. Beyond their financial performance, which is highlighted in the analysis below,…
Strongest linkage or missing links?
Reading Time: 8 minutes The list of infrastructure needs is long, yet the wish list of these projects for Lebanon is still very rough, and as Executive noted last month, looks methodologically as messy as a disorganized teenager’s room waiting for an encounter with neatness. As the projects in the vast national infrastructure file may contain some old and…
News on the house of Saradar
Reading Time: 3 minutes Over the past three to four years, Saradar Bank was being developed as a universal bank with a full range of services in corporate, private, and retail banking. The process was aimed at engineering one differentiated banking entity out of two smaller banks, Near East Commercial Bank and Banque de l’Industrie et du Travail. Although,…
Buoyed by banks
Reading Time: 6 minutes The relationship between the Lebanese economy and its banks is not quite as simple as the numbers suggest. Banking aggregates are improving every year. But the economy in Lebanon cannot be assumed to be sturdy just because the banking sector is jogging on and on. There are far too many risks and alarm signals on…
A window of opportunity
Reading Time: 6 minutes Executive met with Christina Lassen, head of the Delegation of the European Union to Lebanon, to discuss the challenges Lebanon is facing, what to expect from the upcoming CEDRE investment conference and Brussels II refugee aid conference, and the outcomes of last month’s Rome security conference. E It is an interesting time for Lebanon,…
Let the sunshine in
Reading Time: 4 minutes Anyone who has lived or spent time in Lebanon is aware of the chronic gaps in the electric grid, which have resulted in regularly scheduled power cuts of three hours a day in Beirut and as much as 12 hours a day outside the capital. The government has persistently pursued stopgap measures, such as renting…
What’s in the Capital Investment Plan?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Judging a book by its cover may no longer be common lingo in the digital age, but it seems to be exactly what Lebanon is hoping people will do ahead of the CEDRE investment conference scheduled for early April in Paris: Never mind the details; be impressed by the dazzling overall figures and exciting projects.…
A litmus test in Paris
Reading Time: 8 minutes April 6 could be a very good Friday for Lebanon. Not only does it unofficially usher in the fruit season, a symbol of renewal and rebirth, but it is also the day that state officials will pitch a set of large-scale infrastructure projects to the international community and investors at the CEDRE conference in Paris.…