The region’s capital markets have been slow to perform this year and are actually lagging below the rate of economic growth, according to Edmund O’Sullivan, Editorial Director at MEED. O’Sullivan is also playing host to more than 250 leading finance heads at MEED’s Capital Markets forum (November 21-22 2006, Emirates Towers hotel, Dubai).
He said that regional economies are growing at an average of 20 per cent, while the region’s bourses are way below their opening position at the beginning of this year.
“The region’s capital markets, with the exception of Bahrain, fell by up to 50 per cent in the first quarter of this year. This made investors wary of trading and has made potential investors think twice about trading.”
O’Sullivan said that it in global markets it is unusual to have economic growth considerably higher than the growth of national securities markets.
“We would be hard pushed to find such a situation in international markets where the capital market is lagging way behind economic growth. It is more usual to find close synergy between the growth of the economy and the level of stock market trading. In order to have a strong diversified economy you got to have a very strong capital market.”
He observed that recently released third quarter results, showed buoyant performance from the region’s major banks, but a drop in brokerage fees : “The banks here are doing well, although there was a commonality on the fall of revenues from brokerage fees, as they were adversely affected by the slow trading activity on capital markets”, he observed.
O’Sullivan suggested that the main reason for the lack of trading interest is psychological and that these factors will become less significant with time : “The further we can get from the big crash the market suffered in the beginning of the year, the more activity we will see return to the trading floors.”
More than 250 delegates have confirmed their participation at the Capital Markets event, where 51 key speakers are set to deliver opinion and stir timely debate on global and regional capital markets over 21 sessions.
The two-day conference at the Emirates Towers Hotel casts high-level panel debates that includes: Peggy Farley, President and CEO, Ascent Capital Management, Yasser El Mallawany, Chairman and CEO, EFG Hermes, Amit Tripathy, Senior Financial Analyst, Global Investment House, Timothy Gray, Chief Executive, HSBC Saudi Arabia, and Hani Kablawi, Managing Director, The Bank of New York.
The list of confirmed speakers includes two regional and two global securities market heads. Henry Azzam, Chairman of Dubai International Financial Exchange and Abu Dhabi’s Rashed Al Baloushi, Acting Director General of Abu Dhabi Securities Market will be joined by Martin Graham, Director of Market Services and Head of AIM, London Stock Exchange; Charlotte Crosswell, Head of NASDAQ International.
Event sponsors include Commercial Bank, Dubai Bank, Fitch Ratings, Kamco, QNB and Shuaa Capital as gold sponsors; Al Qudra, HSBC and Makaseb as silver sponsors; and Victory Heights as conference sponsor.
Delegate fees are US$1899; a full agenda and additional information can be found on www.meed.com/capitalmarkets
MEED Conferences is part of the leading information brand in the Middle East working to provide delegates with the very latest business sensitive information. Over the past 10 years, MEED Conferences has organised events attended by senior government officials and thousands of international business people. The conference series is aimed at companies active or seeking business in the markets of the Middle East. MEED is well established as the source of strategic and accurate regional information placing it in a unique position to bring together high-calibre speakers.
About MEED
MEED (Middle East Economic Digest) is internationally recognised as providing essential information for anyone doing business in, or with, the Middle East and North Africa. With journalists and contacts across the entire Middle East and North Africa region, MEED provides reliable, up-to-date business news, facts and data in both print and online. MEED now attracts over 70,000 individual readers each week, across 70 countries world-wide.
