2007

New seeds for economic growth were engineered last month in Beirut when the European Investment Bank and Byblos Bank Group announced that their collaboration had progressed another step towards establishing …

Egypt’s banking sector is set to become hotly competitive in 2007. Strong international and regional banks that have entered the market in the past two years are aggressively hunting for …

Foreign banks are continuing to show strong interest in Turkey’s banking sector, as demonstrated by the upcoming sale of state owned HalkBank and privately-held Oyak Bank. While the inflow of …

Gen. John P. Abizaid, the most senior military officer of Arab descent to serve in the US armed forces, disagreed with President Bush over the president’s Iraq strategy—and he is …

The skies between the Levant and London got a little cloudier at the start of the year, as airline BMed admitted it had suffered such substantial losses in 2005 and …

Lebanese trade patterns are in for further changes in 2007, but it’s not armed conflict that will force alternative trade routes on the country’s many importing merchants and exporting manufacturers. …

Lebanon is a potentially lucrative market for Islamic banking in view of its diversified community, according to many Lebanese bankers. However, the country still notes a shortage of Islamic financial …

Few Syria observers ventured a guess at the New Year as to what the coming 365 days may hold for the country. The region’s topsy-turvy politics is the primary reason, …

One week into the opposition demonstrations that effectively paralyzed commerce in the capital throughout much of December, a few hardy businesses in the Beirut Central District (BCD) cautiously opened their …

While the consensus of stock market analysts at the end of a harsh 2006 was an uncertainty if those erratic equity markets – mainly those in the Gulf Cooperation Council …