Three years ago, we asked then Minister of Energy Gebran Bassil about how millions of dollars made from the sale of oil and gas data were being managed as part of our coverage of the governance of the nascent industry. He told us it wasn’t important. When we ran an article suggesting such secrecy is…
Banking on our self-reliance
The first rule of business ethics is: if you’re not proud enough of your work to talk publicly about it, something must be wrong. That the government once again cancelled a waste management contract without even naming the winner proves something dirty is going on. Worse than the implementation, of course, is the actual plan.…
In need of a new national economic strategy
Our economy is seriously underperforming. While this isn’t a surprise, it still bothers me every single day. I love our banks, but they are only part of the equation for real economic success. We need functioning capital markets, and we needed them yesterday. I love our central bank, but it simply cannot continue being the…
Enough brand confusion
I’m confused. Every time we write about the country’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, our researchers and fact checkers conduct extensive investigations in an attempt to once and for all classify central bank circular 331 in the right policy framework. They always come to the same conclusion: it’s an equity guarantee. The whole purpose of this policy instrument…
The good old days
Love him or hate him, Rafik Hariri had a skill set that worked for Lebanon. He was good at amalgamating the competing interests of Lebanon’s various groups and defending this country on the international stage with a unified vision of what Lebanon was and where it was heading. He also had foreign connections he could…
Resolutions for 2016
The magazine proposes a few resolutions for 2016. And we’re starting the year by practicing them. First, we call on the best and brightest Lebanese minds to seize the potentially lucrative opportunities that the Paris Agreement on climate change will afford. This is why we’ve put climate change on our cover. Our second, and most…