Trends | July 2010 | Boom Town

MAKE ’EM

LAUGH

EGYPT

DISCOVE

RS STAN

D-UP C

OMEDY

Canada ........................C$ 7.50 France ..........................€ 4.57 Germany ....................... € 6.14

Egypt ..............................E£ 10 Italy .............................. € 5.17Jordan ............................. JD 4

Kuwait ...........................KD 1.2 Lebanon .................... L£ 5,000 Morocco .........................DH 22

Oman ............................ OR 1.5 Qatar .............................QR 15Saudi Arabia ...................SR 15

Switzerland ....................SFR 8Syria............................ S£ 100Tunisia .......................... TD 2.5

UAE .............................AED 15 UK .....................................£ 2USA ....................................$ 5

A MediaquestCorp Publication

July/

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° 145

IRANSpy novels provide readers Western clues

PALESTINEConsumers boycott settlement products

Boom Town

Riding the WaveAs the Dow Industrials edge upward, so do orders for a new generation of mega-yachts

Turkish DelightAn airline’s new strategy is shaking upthe hub-and-spoke model in the Middle East

Hotel developers scramble to fillthe housing gap in Saudi Arabia.

Registered in Dubai Media City

July/August 2010 /N° 145TRENDS

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July/August 2010 | TRENDS 3

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July/august 2010 • Issue 145 • www.tReNDsMagaZINe.Nets.C.C. arabies, 18 rue de Varize, 75016 Paris, Francetel: +(33) 1 476 64600 • Fax: +(33) 1 438 07362 e-mail: [email protected]

COVeR stORy

ROOM seRVICeHoteliers are investing in saudi arabia’s booming internaltourism market in their quest for rapid growth.

leaDINg tReNDs

sHaRIa’s FINal FRONtIeR? with all the interest in Islamic banking, the industry still isn’t mainstream. Here’s why.

tuRkey

ONe NatION…Despite turkey’s divisive politics, everyone agrees: the country needs a new constitution.

leaDINg tReNDs

leaDeRsHIP lessONs a new book about the Middle east offers valuable advice to business leaders.

IRaN

sPy VeRsus sPyNovels fixated on Iran’s secrets might tell us more about the rest of the world.

BusINess

eleCtRONIC slIDeas companies expand across the gulf, investment in information technology rises.

leaDINg tReNDs

wHat a MaNageR waNtsthe latest survey of asset managers reveals where the money is – and where it’s going.

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BusINess

RIDINg tHe waVeas the Dow Industrials edge upward, so do ordersfor a new generation of decadent mega-yachts.

BusINess

weDDINg sINgeRafter years of playing local parties,Omar souleyman is hitting the big time.

PeRsPeCtIVes

staND-uP gROws uP a particularly western style of comedyis the new toast of the town in Cairo.

BusINess

tuRkIsH DelIgHtwith the enchanting city of Istanbul as its hub, turkish airlines charts a new course.

ON tHe ROaD

all CHaRgeD uP tesla’s roadster gets more stares than the classics at Newport’s Concours d’elegance.

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wHeRe yOu waNt tO Bea crackdown on visa policy means new business for those who stick to the rules.

last wORD

JOHN ReIDCoca-Cola’s market whiz says the company has a product portfolio that ensures success.

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FERRARI APPROVED, Trends.ai 6/29/10 11:36:16 AMFERRARI APPROVED, Trends.ai 6/29/10 11:36:16 AM


mainstream option, the market still fac-es critical challenges. Experts say a lack of consistent rulings on Shariah compli-ance, short supply of Shariah scholars, isolation from broader financial markets, and constraints on the time-frame of debt instruments are major challenges to the growth of Islamic finance.

“The problem with religious scholars is they don’t understand Islamic financ-ing,” the executive vice president of cor-porate finance for Saudi’s giant industri-al firm Sabic, Mutlaq Al Morished, says.

Finding people who are both Islam-ic scholars and have a deep understand-ing of financial tools and how they work is proving to be one of the most difficult problems to overcome, and often leads to the confusion over different instruments.

investing islamic Finance’s next MoveBy emily Meredith Dubai

At a recent meeting in Dubai, lawyers from several international firms talk-

ed about the legal issues surrounding Is-lamic finance. In spite of their reputation, involvement from lawyers signifies matu-ration of the market. More than 75 coun-tries are involved in Islamic finance, and there are consulting firms built around ad-vising companies and banks about Shari-ah-compliance.

“Where we are in Islamic finance to-day is where [foreign exchange] was in 1971. We are on the cusp, technology is the next phase,” the global head of Islam-ic finance for Thomson Reuters, Rushdi Siddiqui, says.

But while these developments give reasons to hope that Islamic financing will soon move from an alternative to a

“The availability of high-quality scholars is the biggest deficit,” the head of Islamic products at Barclays Capital and Barclays Wealth, Harris Irfan, says.

One of the biggest challenges for bankers interested in Islamic financing is the variation in what is considered Sha-riah-compliant. For instance, the sukuk issued by Sabic is ruled on by Shariah courts in Saudi Arabia, Al Morished says, which he notes “tend to be more conser-vative than our brothers in the G.C.C.”

Developing new products can be an arduous process. Scholars may make de-cisions without giving much explanation to the company attempting to issue a Shariah-compliant instrument. The Ma-laysian-based Islamic Financial Servic-es Board is attempting to introduce some standardization. Currently the board is reviewing possible regulations on capi-tal requirements.

“How big a crisis you have to be able to survive is the subject of huge debate,” the director of policy and Islamic finance at Dubai International Financial Center, Peter Casey, says. “We’re going to get new liquidity standards. The numbers may not be what some have predicted but we’re going to get them. And in many countries they will be applied just straight on to Islamic financial institutions.”

The countries with a serious concern for Islamic finance will probably want to see them adapted, and the Islamic Finan-cial Services Board is already working on how those standards can be adapted with Islamic finance, says Casey.

A report from the International Insti-tute of Finance in May says local debt mar-kets need to be better developed, but Casey says that Shariah-compliant money mar-kets need to be developed first.

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lia to which the author writes several es-says questioning entrenched Middle East-ern ideologies in the hopes of beginning an intellectual dialogue with his readers.

“In Lebanon, issues of religion and ideology have touched us in such a way that an entire generation is at risk,” Sou-bra said to TRENDS in his first interview since the book was published. “Go to Scandinavia and you’ll find their young people are concerned about the environ-ment and infrastructure. But go to Leb-anon and they worry about jihad. Let’s just put these religious issues on the back burner for once and put intellectual issues on the front burner.”

A literary work is most potent when it comes out of its author’s life struggles. For Soubra, he decided to write “Let-ters to Dalia” as both he and his father were battling cancer. (His father died last year.) The pain and anguish he encoun-tered along the way helped temper how he approached hot-button issues of Mid-dle Eastern politics and religion. He’s not afraid to discuss what he sees as the re-gion’s biggest problems (chastising Ar-abs for living in medieval times, for in-stance), yet he does so in an extremely sensitive and thoughtful manner.

One of the objectives of “Letters to Dalia” is to start a dialogue, according to Soubra. “We have the right to disagree. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who only see things as black or white. Dalia is an intellectual who sees things in shades of gray,” he said.

Being able to discern subtleties is key to the future success of Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East, according to Sou-bra. He writes about a Middle East with an addiction to edicts. “Yet religion is about common sense. Nobody has the right to

LEADERSHIP Letters From the HeartBy Jay Akasie Dubai

Effective leadership begins with the ability to cut through the clutter and

concentrate on the issues that matter. The same philosophy goes for reading. Be-cause we’re inundated with so much ma-terial, it’s a joy to focus on a book that up-lifts and inspires.

“Letters to Dalia: Reflections on Leb-anon and the Middle East” (Easton Studio Press, 2010) is the sort of book that will challenge every leader who reads it to re-think his strategy and purpose. And that’s just what Hani Soubra, the book’s author, had in mind over the last two years while he was writing it.

Soubra is a Lebanese national who now lives in Dubai as the regional director for the B.B.C. His new book, published last month, imagines a young lady named Da-

force anything on anybody,” he said.He also said leaders – in the Middle East and the West – often use ideology in the most hypocritical ways. For instance, Soubra points to the fact that at no point did the pope tell Hitler to stop his path of destruction in World War II. But a differ-ent pope centuries earlier was sure to tell Galileo to stop his astronomical research.

Three Middle Eastern leaders are mod-els of reform and point the way to a bright future, according to Soubra. The late Leba-nese prime minister, Raifk Hariri, came to power amid a brutal civil war, and instead of using his position to wield military pow-er, he set up foundations whose aim were to send children to school. The late Sheikh Zayed of the U.A.E. focused with a there-tofore unseen intensity on his country’s unification and economic development.

The current ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed, is another U.A.E. leader that Soubra says the region should emu-late: He pioneered the vision that his tiny Gulf emirate could rival economic cen-ters like Hong Kong and Singapore. “The common element among these three men is that they were [and are] addicted to economic metrics, and that’s how success in the modern world is measured. They weren’t guided by fiery ideology and ser-mons. These men spoke of economic growth,” Soubra said.

Will his new book begin to encour-age real-life Dalias to come forth and take bigger roles in the life of the Mid-dle East? Soubra says he hopes so. And if the book touches some nerves, his hope is that readers react with intellectual vigor.

“If you disagree with what I have to say on religion or other topics, write a book or an article and let’s start a dia-logue,” he said.

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agement in the region totals $2 trillion, although the head of Invesco Middle East, Nick Tolchard, says institutional investors have less flexibility now than they did in 2007 and 2008. One conclu-sion serves as a cautionary clause for the rest: The survey found that investment location in the G.C.C. has huge influence on asset location. That is, asset manag-ers in each country have more in com-mon with one another than they do with the region as a whole.

Investors abroad commonly group the countries together – a practice not backed by the preferences found in the data, but one managers have seen before, accord-ing to Tolchard. “When American in-vestors started to develop interests, they viewed Europe as one whole,” he says.

investing What a Manager WantsBy emily Meredith Dubai

Transparency. If you’ve heard this word ringing from the financial raf-

ters lately, then thank the fallout from last fall’s Gulf debt crisis.

Lack of data is a common complaint for professionals trying to assess educa-tion and energy consumption needs and to those looking to invest in local mar-kets. In May, the asset management firm Invesco tried to answer a few questions about the region’s finances when it an-nounced the results of its first survey of asset managers.

What do those controllers of wealth want? According to the survey, they de-sire short-time horizons and opportuni-ties to invest in emerging markets. The wealth controlled by these managers is large. Invesco estimates that asset man-

The shift that saw France and the United Kingdom as separate entities, Tolchard says, will likely occur as glob-al investors become more familiar with the Middle East. Invesco, which is also primarily an asset manager, said the ob-jective of the study was to better design products that meet the needs of regional investors. “I think it’s common knowl-edge that data in the Middle East is very scarce,” Tolchard says.

The Middle East is still a relatively small component for investors from de-veloped markets. The non-oil economies of the Gulf countries are small, and the region’s sovereign investors look out-ward to invest their wealth. More infor-mation won’t necessarily usher in a new era of investment from abroad.

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What will help are more investment opportunities. Most of the exchanges in the region are small, put constraints on foreign ownership, and are relatively illiq-uid. Tolchard says I.P.O.s will be more re-alistic in the coming years than they have been, as owners come to price expecta-tions more in line with the market’s appe-tite. “Our expectation is that there will be significant listing in the next three years.”

Most investors in the region said emerging markets were their highest pri-ority over the next few years. The issue is whether this is cyclical or whether this is a strategic change, he says.

The survey also asked about risk appe-tite. Thirty-three percent of Saudi manag-ers said they were more risk averse – a fig-ure that is only surprising when compared to the 67 percent of Kuwaitis and 65 per-cent of Emiratis who said they were risk averse. Saudi Arabia is known more for its

careful plodding than its appetite for risk. But the U.A.E. and Kuwait, as well as 59 percent risk averse Qatar, were much more exposed to the global economy during the crisis, and they suffered more severely. The risk aversion is somewhat contradict-ed by a desire to invest in emerging mar-kets – where the higher potential returns are earned simply because of their risk.

Even with an interest in emerging markets, the region’s asset managers don’t appear to want to hold on to their investments for long. In the G.C.C., 38 percent of the people interviewed had a time horizon of less than a year, and in the last six months the timelines have de-creased, something Tolchard hypothesiz-es could be caused by “the transient na-ture of expatriate populations.”

High expatriate populations mean that investors are typically saving for retire-ment in another country, and that com-

panies are not obligated to contribute to large, long-term pension funds that they also must hedge against. Expatriates who feared losing their jobs, or ones who ac-tually did and left home, could have in-fluenced the shrinking time horizons. But Tolchard says he thinks other factors also contribute to the short time frame.

He says many investors – perhaps ac-customed to high yields in emerging mar-kets – expect high returns. Advisors, wary of not meeting the outlined goals, shift strategies quickly when one is not gener-ating the expected returns. Tolchard says his company works with professional ad-visers to help them understand how to talk to their clients about long-term invest-ments. “With better expectation manage-ment comes more confidence, and more confidence comes with a longer term in-vestment. I think those time horizons will change. It will be interesting to see.”

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out French Institute/Alliance Française “LeSkyRoom,” others headed to their seats for what most would argue was the highlight of the month-long World No-mads Festival.

Ghosn is responsible for more than 340,000 employees worldwide as head of two separate companies, on two sepa-rate continents, that together comprise the globe’s third largest automotive group. He spoke about how his nomadic upbringing helped bring him corporate success.

Ghosn began by saying that he is not the product of a single country, but rath-er one of France, Lebanon, and Brazil. Drawing on his conviction that a nomad in today’s world has a significant number of advantages, he said that such benefits

MANAGEMENT Nomadic SuccessBy Aline Sara New York

The business world knows him as Cost Killer. In Japan, he was recently

crowned Father of the Year. But the chair-man and chief executive of the Renault-Nissan alliance, Carlos Ghosn, is proud-est of another title: World Nomad.

The Brazil-born, French-and-Leb-anese Ghosn addressed an eclectic yet intimate crowd of some 100 New York-ers last month, including fellow no-mads like the chief executive of Invus and chairman of Weight Watchers, Ray-mond Debbane; the internationally-ac-claimed fashion designer Reem Acra; and the recent Tribeca film festival win-ner, Carlos Chahine.

As some lingered outside in hope of a last-minute ticket into New York’s sold-

nevertheless come at a cost. At the per-sonal level, nomads undoubtedly suffer. “At times you want to be like everyone else, but you are not. You struggle to find your identity, which eventually makes you tougher,” he said.

Whereas nomads survive through adap-tation, individuals, regardless of who they are, must all make mistakes: “You jump in, you make a mistake, you learn from it, and you try, time and time again,” Ghosn said.

Japan is a country with a strong iden-tity, according to Ghosn. Breaking in was synonymous with being scrupulous-ly careful about respecting local customs. After studying the Japanese language and traditions, he followed every single one of the company’s rules, except for those he felt were hampering corporate perfor-mance. “I wanted to make sure I didn’t come across as a foreigner coming in to revamp the situation with his culture’s tools and strategies,” he said.

As a result, because he could not be labeled a “big U.S. executive,” he was given the benefit of the doubt, which was the very gateway into the entire automo-bile company’s rescue operation.

Different cultural values breed dif-ferences in opinion, which in turn lead to better achievement, Ghosn said. Even if varying perspectives are more difficult to manage, the ultimate outcome is much better, especially when it comes to glob-al competition. “If you can’t make tough decisions, you just don’t take the job, be-cause learning to take tough decisions is part of the process,” he said.

Indecision might indeed be paralyz-ing, but it should not even be part of the equation in the first place. Ghosn said that when starting with Nissan, he was well aware of the challenges, namely the

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ponderous task of having to lay off a sig-nificant number of employees. “When you take the job, you are responsible for the company’s history, present and fu-ture,” he said. At the end of the day, it’s about performance and results.

A chief executive’s job is to push the limit, but never cross it, he said. Experi-ence, through the years, has helped polish Ghosn’s skills in understanding the limit.

Highlighting the differences between Renault, a French company, and Nissan, a Japanese one, the renowned business lead-er said he believes that regardless of the culture, the best way to optimize a person’s performance is to ensure he preserves his

identity, because once he feels he has lost it, he loses motivation. As such, there is a notable distinction to be made between partnership and acquisition. The former preserves a company’s identity, whereas the latter arguably absorbs it. This is why understanding and valuing each culture’s tendencies is essential.

“Michelin gave me the opportunity of working among France’s best,” he said, pointing to the observation that French executives are sophisticated and analyti-cal. He also said that such individual qual-ities tend to dissolve at the team level. This is not to say that there are not many lessons to be learned from French culture.

“Once you have a French company that is capable of mastering work at the team level, then you have a winner, as illus-trated by models such as L’Oreal or Mi-chelin,” he said.

Ghosn gives the example of Nissan: 40 percent of the company’s employees are international. They learn from being surrounded by one another.

Whereas one Lebanese-American spectator who currently works at CNN in Manhattan commented on Ghosn’s cha-risma, engaging personality, and charm, the chief executive of InterAudi Bank, Jo-seph Audi, summed up his impression in one simple word: “Brilliant.”

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here are few issues on which Turkey’s fractured society can find any solid unity. Deep di-vides over politics, religion, mi-

nority rights, perceptions of the coun-try’s past, and its future direction are all creating chasm-like rifts.

However, there is one issue on which there is little disagreement: the need to reform or replace the constitu-tion, drafted under the supervision of Turkey’s military commanders after they had staged a coup in 1980. That coup, which halted escalating politi-cal violence and removed a deadlocked parliament, replaced it with an era of widespread human rights abuses and a political system where the armed forces’ role in daily life was even more firmly enshrined.

All of Turkey’s major parties – the ruling, pro-Islamist Justice and Devel-opment Party (A.K.P.) of Prime Min-ister Recep Tayyip Erdogan; the main opposition bloc, the center-left Re-publican Peoples’ Party (C.H.P.); the far right Nationalist Movement Par-ty (M.H.P.); and minor groupings such as the leftist Democratic People’s Party (D.S.P.) and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (B.D.P.) – want to see the constitution changed. So do busi-ness groups wanting a more open so-ciety (one with fewer barriers to trade) and non-government organizations of various hues who want to see greater freedoms enshrined in law.

Even the Constitutional Court, the supreme judicial body charged with up-holding the constitution, regulating the

activities of political parties, and the last resort for those seeking to have state leg-islation overturned, supports rewriting the document so that it better reflects the needs of a modern society.

Unfortunately for the A.K.P., that is about as far as consensus goes, with no other political party voicing support for a package of reforms covering 29 sepa-rate articles of the constitution unveiled by the government in late March.

While there is little of controversy to be found in proposals such as establishing a state ombudsman’s office or enshrining the rights of children within the constitu-tion, some of the proposed amendments would make fundamental changes to core state functions. In particular, it is the A.K.P.’s plans to overhaul the judicial sys-tem that has aroused the most opposition.

Focus: Turkey

Avoiding the Draft

T

Istanbul has a fractured political scene, but there’s one issue on which everyone can agree: the need for a new constitution.

By Bill Sellars Istanbul

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Avoiding the Draft



Among the proposed amendments, the A.K.P. wants to change how the coun-try’s senior judges and prosecutors are appointed. Currently, the justice minister only has limited input into the appoint-ments process for the top jurists in the land, but under the planned changes, the president will choose 16 out of 19 mem-bers of an expanded Constitutional Court panel, with parliament nominating the re-maining three judges. There would be a similar shift in the process of promoting officials to the Supreme Board of Judg-es and Prosecutors, the body from which other senior judicial posts are filled.

These proposals, which would see pro-fessional jurists completely dependent on political forces for their advancement, are central to the A.K.P.’s planned overhaul of

the constitution. Given that President Ab-dullah Gul is the former deputy leader of the A.K.P. and is one of Erdogan’s closest allies, the judiciary has spoken out strong-ly against the moves, claiming they would dismantle the pillar of checks and balanc-es in the constitution.

The judiciary is either viewed as cru-cial for the defense of one cornerstone on which the modern Turkish republic is built – that of Turkey being a democratic and secular state – or as a reactionary force im-peding the development of the country, po-litical freedoms and human rights.

The first view is held by the oppo-sition C.H.P. (which was established by republican Turkey’s founding fa-ther and first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk), most political parties and non-

government organizations not affiliated with the government, the military, and the judiciary itself.

It is no surprise that the second posi-tion is that held by the government and its supporters, who contend that the judici-ary has long put a brake on the develop-ment of a civil society and has repeated-ly intervened in politics and subverted the will of the people. In particular, the courts have incurred the ire of many by banning a series of pro-Islamic parties, the prede-cessors to the A.K.P., on charges of seek-ing to overthrow the secular order.

The government may struggle to get its views accepted, at least in the parlia-ment. Though holding an absolute major-ity in the 550-seat legislature, having re-turned 337 deputies at the last election, the A.K.P. is still short of the two-thirds backing required to have its reforms passed through the Grand National As-sembly and into law.

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Focus: Turkey

The A.K.P. wants to change how the country’s senior judges and prosecutors are appointed


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Should it fail to get any of the minor parties to sign on to the program (and as long as it can keep its own deputies in line and gets more than 330 votes), the government can lay the package before the electorate and call a referendum. An-ything less than 330 votes in the par-liament will see the package getting rejected outright.

This would also put paid to another amendment, once close to the A.K.P.’s basic philosophy, that would clear the way for the government to pass regula-tions to allow women to attend schools and universities wearing the Islam-ic headscarf. With the backing of the M.H.P., the A.K.P. did have this ban re-moved briefly in 2007, only to see the

Constitutional Court overturn the law. The short lifting of the ban also high-lighted the deep divides in Turkish soci-ety, sparking nationwide protests by sec-ularists that drew hundreds of thousands to anti-government rallies.

The A.K.P.’s efforts to remove the headscarf ban prompted Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, to open a case in 2007 seeking to have the party closed and many of its leading officials, includ-ing Prime Minister Erdogan, banned from any political activity for five years on charges they were trying to overturn the secular regime.

Ultimately the court found the A.K.P. guilty, but not guilty enough, with the judges deciding to impose a fine and a caution to Erdogan and his supporters, rather than closing the party. However, the decision was a near run thing, with the vote of just a single judge on the pan-el standing between the A.K.P. remaining open and its joining the long list of pro-Islamist parties that had fallen foul of the constitution and the judicial process set in place to protect it.

While the A.K.P. may be able to find the numbers, either in the parliament or through the ballot box, to push through its reforms, the secular establishment has made it clear that it intends to mount a vigorous defense. On April 9, Yalcinkaya re-entered the fray, slamming the propos-als by saying they represented an attempt by the government to gain control over the judiciary.

“The proposed method of choosing members of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Board of Judges and Pros-ecutors is undemocratic. The supreme board is being politicized by the reforms package. A new system that frees the judi-ciary from political interventions should be introduced,” he said.

Equally staunch in its views is the center-left opposition C.H.P. During the initial hearing of the proposed amend-ments by the parliament’s Constitu-tional Commission, the C.H.P.’s Sahin

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‘A new system that frees the judiciary from political interventions should be introduced’

1982 20102005

The constitution of Turkey is ratified, establishing the

principles and rules of the state

The current governing party, the A.K.P., proposes a

major overhaul of the constitution

Council of Europe criticizes Article 42, which says Turkish must be taught as a

first language

Focus: Turkey



Mengu argued that the government’s ef-forts to change the constitution were in fact in violation of the very document they were seeking to rewrite. “What the A.K.P. wants to do is obvious,” he said in early April. “They are trying to change through indirect ways the unchangeable principles of the constitution such as sec-ularism and democracy.”

Responding to judicial criticism of the package, the prime minister has called on judges unhappy with the pro-posed measures to remove their robes and enter politics, with Erdogan saying senior judges should remain within the limits set down within the constitution itself. “There are already some political

parties that are against the constitution-al amendments,” he said. “Join them and maintain your struggle publicly.”

The government’s reforms almost came unstuck before they were tabled be-fore the parliament. Having submitted its draft reform package to the office of the speaker of the parliament, the A.K.P. was forced to withdraw it almost immediately, after it was revealed that among the par-liamentary deputies who had signed the petition requesting the document be ta-bled before the legislature’s Constitution-al Committee was the speaker himself, Mehmet Ali Sahin. Although a member of the A.K.P., under the parliament’s by-laws the speaker is supposed to be above pol-

itics and is forbidden to vote or support new bills.

Although a technicality, Sahin’s name on the petition would have been cause for the opposition to apply to the courts to have the package ruled invalid. With the A.K.P. trying to weaken the grip the judi-ciary has over political activity, the gov-ernment was keen to prevent giving away any free kicks. They withdrew the legisla-tion and then tabled a new version, with-out Sahin’s signature, in early April.

It is unlikely the government will get the numbers it needs in parliament to pass its package. Even though it has tried to woo the 11 independent deputies in the house, along with the pro-Kurdish B.D.P. and the left leaning D.S.P., who between them hold some 30 seats, the courting has not brought about any engagement, let alone consummation.

As such, the government will have to go to the public if it wants to pass its pro-posals into law, possibly in the middle of the year. A.K.P. officials have predicted that any referendum on the package of amend-ments will receive 60 percent backing from the electorate, and will also serve as a vote of confidence in the government itself. This might be optimistic, with many opinion polls showing support for the government having slipped to around 30 percent, well below the levels Erdogan and the A.K.P. enjoyed when re-elected in 2007, when they won almost half the popular vote.

Whether at the top end or the low end of potential electoral support, the vote would be nowhere near the endorsement given to the last major constitutional ref-erendum held in Turkey. Looking back some 30 years, the military-drafted con-stitution that the A.K.P. is seeking to over-haul was also put to a public vote, with some 80 percent of Turks casting a ballot in favour of its being adopted.

Although the vote’s result may have been colored by there being little in the way of organized or even permitted oppo-sition, it may also have been the last time such a large cross-section of Turkish soci-ety was as unified on any subject.

Focus: Turkey

The prime minister has called on judges unhappy with the proposed measures to enter politics

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alestinian Authority inspector Ibrahim Mahmoud walked past the bookstand featuring Stephen King novels in Ara-

bic and kept going through the aisle of Pampers and toiletries until he came to a stop amid aluminum foil and paper plates at the Bravo supermarket in the upscale Tira neighborhood of Ramal-lah in the West Bank.

“These are suspicious products,’’ he said, lifting up foil sold under the la-bel Hoppy and plates bearing the name Rainbow. He explained that the absence of a factory address on the packages, and the fact that just a mobile phone number was printed there, raised the likelihood that these were actually pro-duced at illegal West Bank settlements rather than inside Israel proper.

Soon Mahmoud’s attention turned to kitchen sponges made by the Nikol company. He flipped through a booklet and found them to be one of more than 500 products the Palestinian Authori-ty has banned for being manufactured on the settlements that have proliferat-ed across the occupied West Bank since 1967, eating away at the territory Pal-estinians envisage as forming the heart-land of their future state.

Colleagues removed all the sponges from a shelf, placing them in a cart. “We will take it with us and destroy it later. It is illegal, not allowed in the Palestini-an market,’’ Mahmoud said. Some con-fiscated products end up being burned, while others are dumped in landfills.

The snap-inspection in late May came as part of an unprecedented Pal-

estinian Authority campaign to encour-age the more than two million Palestin-ians in the West Bank to boycott all products made on the settlements.

Half a million Israeli settlers have moved to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, since 1967.

The campaign also hopes to transfer all 25,000 Palestinian workers on set-tlements to jobs within the Palestinian economy. However, alternative employ-ment has not yet been developed and workers are wary of not having a liveli-hood if the P.A. enforces its rapidly ap-proaching deadline for the transforma-tion, by the end of this year.

While some dovish Israelis and Pal-estinian sympathizers abroad have long called for a boycott of settlements, the

Focus: Israel/Palestine

Let the Buyer Beware

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Hoping to shore up its standing at home and abroad, the Palestinian Authority is waging a boycott of goods produced at Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

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P.A, grasping for a way to show it is com-batting occupation, has only now decid-ed to risk a confrontation with Israel over the matter. The campaign – including in-viting foreign journalists on inspections – is aimed at encouraging the international community to get tough on settlements. It is also a way for the Palestinian Authority to gain legitimacy and mobilize backing for itself domestically among a popula-tion that has traditionally seen it as cor-rupt and, in the eyes of many, too close to Israel because of its security cooperation with the Jewish state.

“Settlements are illegally built on our land and the land for a Palestinian state. They are a theft of our land and natural resources,” a spokesman for the P.A., Ghassan Khatib, says. “Settlements are

the main practical obstacle to a two-state peace solution. They are built in a way to prevent the ending of occupation and to prevent the possibility of peace.”

The campaign hopes to encourage Pal-estinian consumers to buy Palestinian pro-duced goods in place of those from settle-ments, and thereby give a push to building an economic base for a future state. A plan authored by the Palestinian Prime Minis-ter, Salam Fayyad, specifies that all the in-stitutions and infrastructure for a state be ready by the end of next year – regardless of whether or not there is progress in peace diplomacy with Israel.

Khatib stresses that the boycott is of settlement goods and not those produced inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders. There-fore, he says, the boycott does not violate

economic agreements with Israel. The Is-raeli government, however, views the boycott as an “intolerable” act, while set-tler leaders are calling for Israel to retal-iate by closing its harbors to Palestinian imports and exports.

Currently, $200 million a year of set-tlement goods is purchased by Palestini-ans, out of a total of $3 billion in imports from Israel, according to P.A. officials.

“Settlements are our problem as Pal-estinains, so we have to do this step,” a deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legis-lative Council and normally a vociferous critic of the Palestinian Authority, Has-san Khreisheh, says. “If the Europeans are standing with our struggle, we have to stand up for ourselves at least.”

The inspection in Tira was done in a friendly way, and the chief executive of Bravo, Aram Hijazi, said he backs the crackdown and that the eight Bravo outlets throughout the West Bank will comply.

The campaign is aimed at encouraging the international community to get tough on settlements

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“We are a national supermarket and it is our duty to have a good relationship with the government. They already gave us a list of settler products we shouldn’t have in the store. From that moment we’ve removed products. We are not 100 percent free of settler products, we are 99 percent free. With agricultural products it’s difficult to find out if they are from

settlements or not. With some products it can be tricky. And you have to educate consumers. They like variety.”

Hundreds of P.A. volunteers have been going door-to-door in the West Bank to per-suade people to sign the “Dignity Oath” to refrain from settlement products. And an estimated 300,000 booklets are being dis-tributed with pictures of the products to be

avoided, including pretzel sticks, sesame paste, apple sauce, stereo speakers, cos-metics, and a computer mouse. Pamphlets for children emblazoned with a pointing finger reminiscent of American army re-cruitment posters and the slogan “you and our conscience” are also aimed at raising awareness. “Did you know that the settlers in the 9,600 settlers in the Jordan valley consume one quarter of the amount of wa-ter used by all 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank?” it asks.

On paper, at least, there is a big stick behind the campaign. Presidential decrees issued by Mahmoud Abbas in April pro-vide for stiff penalties for merchants who do not comply, although until now the P.A. has merely issued warnings. Any-one dealing in goods produced on the set-tlements will be imprisoned for 2-5 years and fined the equivalent of up to $15,000, according to the decree. Those who im-port settlement products face 3-6 years


300,000 $3,000$15,000

Number of booklets being distributed with

pictures of the products to be

avoided

Fine and 3-6 years in jail for anyone

who imports settlement products

Fine and 2-5 years in jail for dealing in

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Hundreds of volunteers have been going door-to-door to persuade people to sign the “Dignity Oath”


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in jail and fines of up to $3,000. Abbas in late May ceremoniously affixed a sticker to his house proclaiming it to be free of settlement products, while Fayyad has at-tended burnings of settler goods.

With Israeli G.D.P. at $200 billion an-nually, the boycott by itself can hardly be felt in the Israeli economy, although it is believed some settler firms will feel the pinch. Still, the government fears that it could encourage boycotts of Israel from abroad, particularly Europe, which in re-cent years has begun singling out settle-ment products and denying them the tariff-free status given to other Israeli products.

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz termed the boycott “intolerable” during a recent interview, arguing that – by con-trast – Israel had eased restrictions to en-

able growth of the Palestinian econo-my over the past year. “Israel has made gestures promoting economy and peace, while on the other hand we are receiving a cold shoulder. This must stop,” he said.

The chairman of the manufacturers’ organization of Israel, Shraga Brosh, went further, saying Israel should close its ports to all imports and exports for the P.A. “As far as we are concerned, they can transfer their activities to Jordan and Saudi Ara-bia. This way we will show them that af-ter their slap in the face, we will not turn the other cheek.”

The weak link in the campaign is the P.A.’s requirement that Palestini-ans working on settlements leave their jobs by the end of this year. Official pro-nouncements of how they will be ab-

sorbed lack specifics, although a fund is to be set up to encourage the private sector to give jobs in Palestinian areas. However, how many jobs can be provid-ed will depend on the overall health of the economy. And that is a direct func-tion of Israeli policy, including how strict a checkpoint regime Israel maintains for intra-West Bank transit of goods.

The P.A.’s reasoning is that the 25,000 settlement workers would much prefer not to be participating in the takeover of Pales-tinian land and that they are therefore open to accepting new work within Palestinian areas, even if that means lower wages.

But in interviews with TRENDS, workers at the Mishor Adumim industri-al zone, part of the sprawling Maale Adu-mim settlement east of Jerusalem, were worried over the P.A. plan. Despite the looming deadline, no one from the P.A. has been in touch with them, they said.

“I say, give me an alternative. Right now, there is no alternative,” said Kha-lil Qirat, 42, while eating a lunch of pita bread, humus, and olives under a tree, the red roof of the sprawling settlement visible on a hill behind him.

The resident of a sleepy biblical town 15 minutes’ drive away, supports two wives, six children, his mother, and a de-ceased brother’s children on his salary of 200 shekels ($60) a day at a dry cleaning facility. Qirat, who has been working at the settlement for 15 years, says he previously toiled in agriculture, but that he could not make a living at it. “I have good conditions but everything is expensive. I spend all of my salary on school, electricity and water. Still, if they give me an alternative job for half of what I make I will take it,” he said.

However, another worker, who de-clined to be identified, said bluntly that the P.A. plan is “no good. The Palestinians pay badly. We are working to feed our chil-dren, and what the Palestinians pay is not enough. I will not leave. I grew up work-ing for Jews. In this country an Arab can-not live apart from the Jews and the Jews cannot live apart from the Arabs. I’m not interested in politics and hassles.”


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Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz termed the boycott “intolerable” during a recent interview


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here’s a generous book acqui-sition budget in the Iranian foreign ministry. It allows for the regular refreshing of a pri-

vate access library in North Tehran containing specialist geopolitical titles.

Proliferating on its shelves are the latest Persian and English-language periodicals and books about Iran, the Middle East, Caucasus, and South Asia.

Here, middle-aged functionaries clad in the foreign ministry’s uniform of dark suits and gleaming white col-larless dress shirts browse the book-shelves, or request titles from female librarians wearing the maghnae head-scarf obligatory to female civil servants.

The English-language book sel- ection is eclectic. Visitors can flip through titles on the Pakistani nucle-

ar program, books on the British in-telligence agency MI6, several Mossad whistle-blowing memoirs, and chroni-cles penned by Shah-era American and British ambassadors. Judging from the attentiveness of the men poring over these books, Iranians are better in-formed about America’s view of their country and the region than vice versa.

In the looking-glass game of second-guessing an enemy’s actions, information is valuable. The Iranians know that cultural understanding is as important as hard intelligence, as the several tatty copies of “Know Thine Enemy,” the account of a clandestine journey into Iran by a former C.I.A. spy, Reuel Marc Gerecht, attest.

Gerecht “penetrated” Iran stuck inside a coffin-shaped metal container

lodged in the nether-regions of a truck. Times have changed, and another Far-si-speaking C.I.A. dropout, Robert Baer, has visited Iran openly, but the value of Gerecht’s book remains. It comes in several passages of insightful ruminations by C.I.A.’s only Persian-speaking case officer in the 1980s on the Iranian national character.

“Among themselves, Iranians were meaner, more hypocritical, and duplic-itous than they’d been before,” Gerecht wrote of the post-Revolution type he en-countered while inhabiting the persona of an American consular official in Istan-bul. “They prayed less often and far less hopefully. Persians no longer thought they had a mandate from God. Worst of all, 16 years after the Revolution, Ameri-ca was more idealized than before.”

Focus: Iran

Fact From Fiction

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Two new fictional works offer a fresh insight into Iranian life. Perhaps more important, they give the Islamic Republic a glimpse of how it is viewed by the West.

By Iason Athanasiadis Istanbul

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If Iranian officials are interested in how American authors with insight into the C.I.A. view them, then two re-cently-published novels are bound to be dropping into the North Tehran library’s stacks soon: David Ignatius’s ‘The Incre-ment’ and Claire Berlinski’s “Lion Eyes.”

Although “Increment” was published in early 2009, it has been eerily prophetic of the unfolding nuclear confrontation between Iran and America. It features a hidden facility, purposely malfunctioning equipment funneled by Western intelli-gence agencies into the Iranian program, and disappearing scientists. The C.I.A. admitted in March that an Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared last year while on pilgrimage to Mecca had defected.

Ignatius’s longtime beat at the Wash-ington Post was the C.I.A. He has turned

out an impressive stream of books about international intrigue. The books’ dust jackets glow with testimonials by retired C.I.A. operatives affirming that real-life spies read them. Given Ignatius’s excel-lent relations with the agency and the apparent accuracy of his novel’s plot, a nagging question arises: Is “The Incre-ment” the C.I.A.’s very Persian way of letting the Iranians know it is always one step ahead of them?

Berlinski’s “Lion Eyes” (2008) is the follow-up to her debut, “Loose Lips,” a first-person narrative on joining and flunking the C.I.A.’s trainee program. “Lion Eyes” is an intriguing examination of an online romance between an Iranian spy and an American novelist recruited by the C.I.A. The novelist moves from Paris to Istanbul, deepening an obsessive rela-

tionship with an online acquaintance who purports to be an Iranian architect. Night after night, she studies his Flickr online photo account for clues as to his life in the serene riverside city of Esfahan.

Both books are fiction, making them welcome additions to the journalistic analyses, dry academic treatises, or first-person exile memoirs currently avail-able on Iran. In the era of Google Earth and extensive Facebook slideshows that document everything from obscure Ira-nian villages to out-of-the-way neigh-borhoods in Mashhad and Bushehr, both these books contain detailed descriptions of Iran. Remarkably, Berlinski has never visited the country and Ignatius only went once for a week. Still, the lyricism of per-sonal experience comes through in a par-ticularly tantalizing description of Tehran by Ignatius that hints at its mystique.

“It was a magnificent sight, this feast-bowl of a city: Close by were the skyscrapers and grand apartment blocks

The Increment has been prophetic of the nuclear confrontation between Iran and America

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of North Tehran, mounting the hill so ar-rogantly. Then came the green spaces with their fountains and gardens – Mellat and Haqqani and Lavizan parks – where people went to escape the heat and dirt. But it was the vast beyond that stretched your mind, the city tumbling mile af-ter mile onto the plains, from the cov-ered bazaar all the way south through the numberless alleyways of South Tehran to the martyrs’ cemetery of Behesht-e Zah-ra. Here it was – a city too big to take in with your two eyes, a city where nobody could know everything, a city so big that perhaps secrets could be hidden and no one would see.”

Unspooling between Tehran, Wash-ington, London, and Ashgabad, “The In-crement” relates what happens after an Iranian nuclear scientist performs a virtu-al “walk-in” by contacting the C.I.A. on its online treason form. Ignatius master-fully charts both the crisis of conscience prompted in the scientist and the bureau-cratic struggles fought by the director of the C.I.A.’s Persia House as he tries to stave off a disastrous attack on Iran.

“The Increment” is populated by sce-narios so realistic, they seem to be ripped from the headlines. A disclaimer nestles in the epilogue, teasing the reader with the assertion that “this novel is about an im-aginary country… and none of the charac-ters, companies or institutions described in this book are real.”

But the essence of both books is civilizational warfare and its morals. The biggest ethical struggle in Ignatius’s book is between a straitlaced Greek-American C.I.A. boss and a polished but deeply flawed MI6 character who is in ca-hoots with a wealthy Arab businessman and MI6 asset. In a climactic scene, the two face off with each other. The Brit tells the American: “This isn’t America, Har-ry. We aren’t infected with all your polit-ically correct cultural re-education crap, my friend. We don’t have the same rules about not sticking your pen in the com-pany inkwell. Here in Britain, it’s ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’ for heterosexuals too.”

Berlinski also instructs her readers in ambiguous ethics on both sides of the civ-ilizational divide. Although her virtual lover from Esfahan ends up using her to further his intelligence goals, she is also manipulated by an Istanbul-based C.I.A. agent anxious to get promoted. In a sat-ire of the society that Berlinski has es-caped (she lives permanently in Istanbul), the cuckolded husband of the C.I.A. agent

goes on to write a bestselling memoir-cum-cookery book that mixes exotic rec-ipes from his wife’s C.I.A. postings with the catchy title, “Diamonds Are Supposed To Be Forever, You Lying C.I.A. Bitch.”

Recent experience has taught the Pen-tagon that a military intervention against Iran is unrealistic. The Iranian focus on asymmetric warfare as a riposte to the American military’s battlefield dominance

Recent experience has taught the Pentagon that a military intervention against Iran is unrealistic

SuSPIcIoNS MISSIoNSINcuRSIoNS

In 2002, Iran rejected the u.K.’s ambassador, David Reddaway, calling

him a spy

In 2008, journalist Seymour Hersh de-tailed covert c.I.A.,

D.I.A. and u.S. special forces plans

In 2003, the u.S. began flying un-manned vehicles

from Iraq into Iran to gather intel

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has redirected Washington’s energies to-ward funding covert operations and ethnic separatism in Iran’s minority hinterlands.

Ignatius conjures up a campaign of scientific destabilization of the Iranian nuclear program by the C.I.A. and British MI6 that has real life echoes in the Mos-sad’s attempted scuppering of the Iraqi nuclear program in the late 1970s.

Iran’s nuclear priesthood is obsessive-ly controlled by an intelligence elite that monitors their every move, especially on highly restricted visits abroad where they would be exposed to recruitment pitches or assassination attempts by Western intel-ligence agencies. This is demonstrated by the rumors that have surrounded the mys-terious deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years. These insights seep into Ignatius’s narrative through the strokes

outlining his Iranian characters: the nucle-ar scientist, his disgruntled and destructive former Republican Guard cousin, and a counter-intelligence chief tasked with pro-tecting the nuclear program.

Ignatius’s Western characters con-firm the strongly held Iranian belief that whereas America possesses brute pow-er, British guile is far more threatening. When the C.I.A. is stumped by its lack of assets inside the country, it is to MI6 that they go. The British agent oozes shabby British public school chic but is deeply, morally compromised.

Ignatius has trouble with his Iranians. He stretches to attribute convincing psy-chologies to the anti-regime Iranian char-acters. But the “baddies” are cookie-cutter evil. The nadir comes with a psychotic, opi-um-addicted Arab intelligence mastermind

(loosely modeled on assassinated freelance operations planner Imad Mughniyeh) hilariously nicknamed Al-Majnun (“the Madman”). Passages like the following are more reminiscent of pages in the right-wing American press than a sensitive character treatment: “The Lebanese man seemed to disappear into the darkness itself, a cape of black. Even when Mehdi opened the door, letting in the light of the hallway, it was im-possible to distinguish clearly the form of the man in the shadows.”

For a better-aimed stab at attributing motivation to a villain, we have to return to Gerecht’s “Know Thine Enemy.” Re-ferring to himself as “the Angel,” Gerecht traces where his Iranian quarry fulfills his own spiritual gap. “A highly-evolved par-asite, the Angel had stayed alive while feeding off the dreams and frustrations of young Iranians. Yet he wasn’t all lies and deception. He’d always wanted to help Iran while advancing his own country’s interests. Incapable of faith, he’d needed Iranians to lead him to the white light, the ineffable divine essence for which Kho-meini too had searched. He wanted to feel the warmth and fraternity of Muslim men losing their identities in collective prayer. Not unlike the holy warriors he hunted, the Angel wanted at least for a while to turn off America’s static noise.”

Despite also being an intelligence operative, Berlinski’s Iranian inhabits a more ambivalent plain. The reader is left perplexed about the extent to which he’s caught between the inclination to charm or manipulate, or is just the hostage of pressures on his family.

Last summer’s Green movement was a blessing in disguise for Iran’s image abroad. For a country demonized in the Western press, images of photogenic young people manning 1968-style barricades on Tehran’s smoking tarmac helped human-ize Iran in the West. Literary offerings such as “The Increment” and “Lion Eyes” take a few timid steps towards deposing the Iranian from the throne of permanent villain.

Ed. Note: Iason Athanasiadis lived in Iran from 2004 to 2007.

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Last summer’s Green movement was a blessing in disguise for Iran’s image abroad

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Education

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vy League business schools like Co-lumbia Business School and the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School pride themselves on having in-

ternational rosters of students. Most busi-nesses – like the ones Wharton gradu-ates will work for – have gone global, and having an international student body prepares students for the challenges of a highly competitive marketplace.

Wharton’s senior associate director for admissions, Jackie Zavitz, says that over the past 10 years opportunities in the Middle East have exploded. As such, the region is a very interesting area to ex-ploit. “People in the Middle East are very cosmopolitan, they’ve seen a lot and tend

to be global citizens,” she says. “Appli-cants are becoming increasingly aware of the return on investment of coming to school in America.”

Recent Wharton graduates Fabrice Atallah, Walid Mansour, and Wassim Moukahhal, from Lebanon, and Khaled Zurikat, from Jordan, say they’re hap-py they chose to pursue their degree in America. Twenty-six-year-old Atallah, who completed his undergraduate studies in engineering at the American Universi-ty of Beirut, says he chose America for its wider networking opportunities even though European establishments – nota-bly the London Business School, Insead in Paris, and I.E. in Madrid – are closer to

home. He also says Wharton appealed to his international aspirations, which were fulfilled by a semester abroad in Spain. Before coming to Penn, Atallah had worked with Booz and Company, which sponsored his M.B.A.

Mansour, 30, says he would not have had the privilege of attending Wharton had it not been for a fellowship from the Dubai-based Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation. A graduate of both the French and Lebanese baccalaureate, Mansour studied engineering in France and worked as a strategy consultant in Beirut and the U.A.E.

Given the high-octane academics of American schools, Mansour had no

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doubts about wanting the challenge of studying in the States.

His fellow classmate, 30-year-old Zurikat, says the two-year M.B.A. is more appealing and comprehensive giv-en it offers more options than schools in Europe, namely majors in real estate or healthcare. The students also stressed on the myriad of extra-curricular activi-

ties on campus. Indeed, rather than intro-ducing their peers by their names, some favored referring to them by their talent, such as the salsa dancer of the promotion, or Wharton’s biggest comedian.

For Moukahhal, 28, working in pri-vate equity and investment banking dur-ing his post-graduate years in the Gulf was behind his desire to attend Wharton.

“Three of my managers, although only one was from the Middle East, always linked back to what they learned at Whar-ton,” he says.

Learning goes well beyond the class-room, as the curriculum includes partic-ipating in special “learning teams” that incorporate familiarizing oneself with different leadership styles. Wharton also offers to fund small group dinners be-tween students and their professors to promote interaction with faculty.

Boasting a whopping 38 percent rate of scholars from abroad in its entering class of 2009-2010, Wharton’s M.B.A. program, says Zavitz, is among the most international of the top-tier business in-stitutions. Atallah, Mansour, Moukah-hal, and Zurikat are among the 20 Middle Easterners who represent 2.5 percent of last month’s 800 graduates at Wharton.

“Given the changing landscape in the region, applicants from this part of the

Wharton’s M.B.A. program is among the most international of the top-tier business institutions

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last month were from the Middle East

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world have a particularly creative and en-trepreneurial nature,” says Zavitz.

She also points to their exception-al people skills, adding that at the end of the day, business is all about relationships and building rapport, something all four of the graduates undeniably had the op-portunity to further develop during their time in Philadelphia.

Students at Wharton, whether due to their classmates, faculty, campus life, or courses, say they benefit tremendously from their M.B.A. experience. “At Whar-ton,” says Zurikat, “there is a big momen-tum for continuous achievement, and this momentum just pushes us to do more.”

This year’s graduating class saw the first ever “Student Trek to Lebanon.” Fol-lowing in the footsteps of many other in-ternational classmates who plan Wharton- sponsored trips to their countries of ori-gins, Mansour and Moukahhal, alongside two of their close friends, Lebanese-Amer-icans David Abraham and Albert Sara (the brother of the author of this article), led 40 among 110 wait-listed Whartonites to Leb-anon last August. Through visits to histor-ic sites and natural reserves such as the Ce-dars and Jeita Grotto, many who had never been to the region discovered the complex-ity and nuances of the tiny country.

Bearing in mind that the tourists were also business students, the organ-izers made sure to include a visit to Soli-dere, the Lebanese Company for the De-velopment and Reconstruction of Beirut Central District, as well as a private meeting with the Central Bank Presi-dent, Riad Salameh.

“We painted a complete image of the country, showing them both the good and the bad, traveling from Beirut, to Tyr and Saida, to the mountains and the beach,” says Moukahhal. He is certain the Lebanon Trek will become a tradition that will carry on long after the founders have left Wharton, for although fans of the American academic system, Atallah, Mansour, Moukahhal, and Zurikat will head back home to the Middle East this summer. “I always knew I would come

back, so why not now?” says Atallah, who will get married end of July and start work back at Booz and Company.

Deeming himself entrepreneurial, Mansour says that from a profession-al standpoint, he will thrive more in the fast-growing economy of Lebanon rather than in mature markets, such as in Amer-ica, especially given the recent crisis. Offering the example of the multination-al consulting company Roland Berger, which he will join, Mansour believes the opportunities will be more exciting and include more responsibility, as opposed to work in America that might be more about optimization.

On a more personal level, he says he feels generally optimistic about the Mid-dle East, foreseeing a healthier political

agenda, improved socio-economic pol-icies, favorable demographic changes as well as stronger collaboration among countries via organizations such as the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The economic meltdown, says Man-sour, has also profited the region, specif-ically through increased investments in internal infrastructure, energy, transporta-tion, media, and communication, “Invest-ment is turning inwards,” he says.

ConfidentLikewise, Zurikat and Moukahhal say they feel confident about the prospects of the local economy. Insisting on a sense of both belonging to the region and hav-ing a better understanding of its culture and politics, both graduates will move

Business graduates share a common economic knowledge that transcends cultural differences

Cor

bis



to Dubai – Zurikat to join Exxon Mobil, and Moukahhal to work in private equity at EFG-Hermes.

“The middle class here is emerging,” says Moukahhal, “particularly in the Gulf, the financial engine of the area. That in turn affects the neighboring, less affluent countries where economic activity takes place.” Finance can be used as a tool to in-centivize change and growth in local busi-ness and society, he says.

Of course, when it comes to this part of the world, and more especially the Le-vant, worrying about disruption through wars or political instability is with-in reason. However, Mansour dismiss-es such concerns and is convinced that politics do not directly impact the mar-ket, because to him, the economy is easi-

ly adaptable. Security threats, he says, no matter the source or origin, have not real-ly hindered the country’s growth, except momentarily, during fighting or other in-stants of crises. “Speaking from a purely numbers perspective, the weakest G.D.P. growth in the region is 4- to 5 percent, a rate much stronger than many European countries, with the highest numbers com-parable to those in China or India,” he says.

As Middle Easterners flock back home, it seems that no matter where they are, M.B.A. graduates, at least those from Wharton, seek similar types of jobs.

According to Zurikat, rather than hav-ing different ambitions, the students learn from each other how to be even more de-termined. To him, whether Western or Arab, classmates pursue jobs in consult-

ing, finance, industry, or start-ups. Man-sour says that despite diverging experi-ences growing-up, business graduates share a common economic knowledge that transcends cultural differences.

As for Moukahhal, the chief difference stems from the context. “Matured markets in the West are about sustaining growth, whereas the emerging markets are about creativity, amid which you build the ma-chine itself, as opposed to just keeping the engine running.”

Indeed, after speaking to the recent-ly crowned alumni, it is obvious these Whartonites are clear on one thing: Earn-ing a solid income is one thing, but giving back to their local community is just as important. “I like to sum it up as technol-ogy transfer,” says Moukahhal, “We ac-quire certain skills in the global world and bring them home, where we can have a di-rect impact on our society, its future, and our children’s future.”

Earning a solid income is one thing, giving back to their local community is just as important

Education


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Information Technology

00-TRE-Biz SAP Final.indd 54 7/7/10 11:45 AM


n the last few years, Arabian Construc-tion Co. has spread its reach through-out the Middle East. With projects in Jordan, Syria, the U.A.E., Iraq, and its

home base in Lebanon, keeping track of the activities at each of the sites was be-coming increasingly complicated, the company’s information technology man-ager, Mazen Al Mamlouk, says.

Data about each project’s inventory and expenditures was spread throughout the region in the company’s site offices. Managers in Beirut wanted more access to the data on each project. “The com-plexity associated with these big, mega-projects, which sometimes are in excess of $1 billion, is large, and you have to

have very good control over them. We needed reporting first so we could have meaningful business decisions,” he says.

Managers at the construction com-pany made a decision that an increas-ing number of companies in the Middle East are making: investing in information technology systems that collect and ana-lyze company data. Computers are sup-posed to simplify operations. But often text documents are just electronic ver-sions of handwritten notes. Crude spread-sheets calculate no more than a chart out-lined by hand.

According to Al Mamlouk, Arabian Construction needed software that would allow it to be in better control of opera-

tions. The company purchased software from SAP, the Germany-based provider of business management software. “We were looking for one solution where we could have an integrated system… and less of a headache,” he says.

Arabian Construction is not alone. Last year SAP’s sales in the Middle East and North Africa increased 40 percent, accord-ing to the managing director of SAP’s activ-ities the region, Sergio Maccotta. Growth in SAP’s sales comes on the back of an over-all increase in demand for business software. Citing numbers from the advisory firm Inter-national Data Corp., Maccotta says the mar-ket for information technology increased 11 percent over the same period.

Electronic Slide

I

Faced with random crises and well-laid expansion plans, even old-economy firms must invest in the latest information technology.

By Emily Meredith Frankfurt



This is part of an overall investment in technology. According to a report released in April by the data firm, spending on in-formation technology security is also up: Investments in technology security from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar make up 70 percent of all security expenditures. The investment in comprehensive systems like the ones SAP

provides is not small. While Al Mamlouk declined to say how much installing the SAP system cost the company, the invest-ment is for the long term. Each year the company pays a licensing fee equivalent to 18 percent of the initial license.

Committing to information technolo-gy infrastructure carries a huge price tag. After looking briefly at Microsoft and

Oracle, Arabian Construction said there were only two firms, SAP and Sweden-based IFS, that could meet the needs of its project-based business. The business of information technology is not, on the surface, a business of high-powered de-cision-making or revolutionary manage-ment ideas. But it can help companies make the kinds of seemingly small deci-sions that add up to millions of dollars.

In the Middle East, the oil industry has long looked toward analytics as crit-ical to its businesses. The business gen-erates billions of dollars and is necessary for the region’s governments to meet their budgets. When pumps are taken offline for maintenance, it affects revenues. De-ciding when to repair or maintain pumps is not a sweeping decision, but SAP’s head of oil and gas upstream operations, Stephane Lauzon, says helping manag-ers in massive oil companies understand the data coming out of all of their pumps helps them make maintenance decisions without stopping production.

But more businesses are making that commitment, even smaller ones. While SAP has served the region’s bread-and-butter petrochemical businesses for years, sales to small and medium enter-prises grew 30 percent in the first quar-ter of 2010. Maccotta says the region’s businesses realize they need to invest in technology as they try to expand. “What we see in the Middle East is still a market that is still in strong need of information technology due to the growth,” he says.

For SAP, this means a rapidly in-creasing customer base. In May’s annu-al convention, SAP brought a delegation of 130 customers and potential custom-ers to Frankfurt, Germany, to show off its wares. Included in the lavish convention, amid cocktail parties and gourmet din-ners, was a concert by the pop group Du-ran Duran.

Maccotta says that as of today, SAP sees the Middle East heavily investing in technology in order to support business. “If I look at the results of the business in the Middle East today, we are looking at

In the Middle East, the oil industry has long looked toward analytics as critical to its businesses


40% 30%11%

Increase in SAP’s sales in Middle East

and North Africa last year

Rise in SAP’s sales to small and

medium enterprises in the region in the

first quarter of 2010

Rise in market for in-formation technology last year, according

to International Data Corp


Trends WC IPTV 270x220-E.indd 1 6/16/10 11:48:03 AM


Making a commitment to information technology infrastructure carries a huge price tag

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750 customers. And the excitement comes from the fact that we are continuously moving with a ratio of two new custom-ers per week. Not commercial transactions, but two new customers per week,” he says.

Last year, Emirates Steel, part of the Abu Dhabi Basic Industries Corporation, implemented one of SAP’s systems when the company undertook a massive expan-sion project that increased production to 2 million tons of steel from 600,000 tons. As the company moved to five plants from one and grew from just 250 employees, it found it needed a more comprehensive way of tracking production and expendi-tures, the company controller in charge of business planning, Soumyajit Ghosh, says.

Some companies have found that in-vesting in new information systems al-

lows them to collect payments more eas-ily. Right now, because of the availability of information, the salesman who goes to collect the order actually knows in the morning what was the exact amount out-standing before he leaves the office, ac-cording to Ghosh. “He can take the print-out and it is absolutely up to date. When he goes and talks to the customer, the in-formation he provides to customers is ac-tually up-to-date and correct, whereas previously he was never exactly sure. He didn’t have the information to counter the customer’s claim,” he says.

In the past this was a problem because Ghosh’s sales system and production sys-tem were not integrated. So there was al-ways a gap and that gap could be a week to 10 days. “You could have invoiced a cou-

ple of million dirhams in the last week. There was always a mismatch,” he says.

Emirates Steel implemented the sys-tem at a time when the company was trying to meet high demand brought on by con-struction companies exploiting low mate-rial prices. The downturn caused the price of cement and steel to drop significantly, creating a surge in demand in this area as companies stocked up for future projects.

“The downturn affected the price of the material. [There were] a lot more pur-chases of steel and cement specifically at the lower prices, so while the sales pric-es were low the volumes were absolute-ly huge. That helped us to get the vol-umes in and make up for the low prices,” Ghosh says. “[The IT system] helped us ride over the hard times. You could fol-low our working capital, where our ma-terial was. It allowed us to quickly man-ager our inventories, to get rid of the slow moving inventories and to do a better col-lection from our customers.”

By 2013, the company plans to increase production to 5 million tons as it meets the needs of several additional projects in the U.A.E. The company gets involved at many stages of these projects, according to Ghosh. As new parts of the plant come online, Emir-ates Steel will produce heavy materials for in-frastructure as well as construction projects.

But the Middle East’s businesses might just be catching up to their coun-terparts in other parts of the world. “What we see in the Middle East is the behavior of Europe seven or eight years ago in terms of the interest of adopt-ing information technology,” Maccot-ta says.

As those companies grow, SAP is ex-panding in the region. The company re-cently appointed managers to oversee operations in both Qatar and Saudi Ara-bia, and has tie-ups with regional uni-versities to recruit young technology graduates. “We see the same wave of adoption of information technology and it’s due to the growth that the compa-nies have faced in the last three or four years,” Maccotta says.



Arts & Entertainment

00-TRE-Biz OmarSouley.indd 60 6/23/10 4:10 PM


hey are mostly young, mostly white – a mixed student crowd, self-consciously on-trend in tweed waistcoats, outsized

spectacles, and arm-long tattoos. During the shocked silence that follows the “Jap-anese doom metal” support act, they eye each other’s outfits and wait for the main act to surface.

But as the lights dim and Syrian dab-ke rhythms fill the air, the faces and bod-ies dissolve into a churning, writhing mass, synthesized drumbeats whipping the crowd into a frenzy. With every new song, the beat becomes louder and more insistent, the dancing faster and more fre-netic, raised arms pumping the air.

In the middle and above it all, the calm eye of a raging storm, is a small, middle-aged man wearing an elegant gray thobe, a red and white chequered keffiyeh and 1970s-style aviator shades. He faces the audience, microphone to lips, and wan-ders across the tiny stage, a wave of his arm urging the dancing to new heights.

The man is Omar Souleyman, one-time village wedding singer, now the face of an indie dance phenomenon hailed on the Internet as jihadi techno, his music played in urban clubs from Brooklyn to Barcelona and from Belfast to Beirut.

It is an unlikely outcome for an artist who started his career on the river plains of upper Mesopotamia, but this summer sees

Souleyman complete a four-month tour of Europe and North America. His new audi-ences are a million cultural miles removed from his Syrian fan base. And Souleyman is enjoying every second of the ride.

RootsHasake Province in northeast Syria is fa-mous for many things. Dissected by the River Khabur, Hasake was the breadbas-ket of Syria, producing wheat and cot-ton until drought struck three years ago. Closer to Iraq and Turkey than to Damas-cus, this remote eastern region is known as Al Jazeera – the island.

Souleyman comes from Ras Al Ayn, a border town of 50,000 souls whose in-

All the Parties In All the World

T

From Syrian wedding singer to techno phenomenon, Omar Souleyman has travelled a long road to success.

By Karen Thomas London



habitants include Arabs, Kurds, Armeni-ans, Turkomen, Chechens, and Assyrians, and whose musical traditions draw from its mix of Mesopotamian cultures.

In 2006, the American record compa-ny Sublime Frequencies dispatched Iraqi-American musician and filmmaker Mark Gergis to Syria. Gergis had travelled around the country in the 1990s, absorb-ing its music and culture. The soundtrack to that first trip was a rough but charis-matic voice played in taxi cabs and blar-ing from music stalls in the souq.

“I was hearing a lot of fast and fre-netic dabke music,” Gergis says. “When I heard sounds that grabbed me, I’d ask to see the cassette and it usually turned out

that Omar was the culprit. He had a genu-inely different sound to many other dabke and folkloric artists. Syria’s bigger-name dabke artists tend to be on the glossier end of the spectrum.”

Gergis returned to Syria determined to track down and sign Omar Souleyman. On arriving in Damascus, he met a man who knew a man who had met the singer personally. Several phone calls later, Ger-gis and Souleyman met up in Hasake. The rest is Sublime Frequencies history.

Now 42, Souleyman spent much of his childhood shuttling from clinic to hos-pital, after injuring his eye in a car acci-dent when he was five. His education was patchy, due to the long months of medical

treatment. Instead, he took whatever cas-ual work he could find, laboring and sell-ing trinkets.

From the time he was seven, his sing-ing voice had attracted attention, but his family did not see music as a career. He carried on singing nevertheless, and in 1994 started singing full-time, perform-ing at weddings in villages and towns across Al Jazeera. Soon, kiosks across the country were selling cheap cassette recordings of Souleyman’s songs. Two years later, the song Jani (She Came to Me) became a nationwide hit.

Souleyman’s music fuses classical mawwal traditions of improvised poet-ry with the pop sensibilities of sha’bi and dabke folk-dance rhythms, drum ma-chines, and synth hurled into the mix. The sound is rooted in the Assyrian, Turkish, Iraqi, and Kurdish influences that have shaped Ras Al Ayn.

His wedding shows are built around performance poetry. He works with half a dozen poets, most frequently with Mahmoud Harbi. Singer and poet stand together in the center of the party, and Harbi whispers improvised lines of poet-ry in Souleyman’s ear. Souleyman – act-ing as M.C. – then relays the poems to the crowd.

This summer’s tour is a poet-free af-fair, however, a stripped-down show built around the singer, his keyboard player, and Ali Shaker on electric saz. But in any case, it’s not the poetry but the frenetic rhythm that grabs young Western clubbers.

BeatsThat rhythm comes courtesy of Souley-man’s musical partner and keyboard play-er Rizan Sa’id. A shy, unassuming figure on stage, Sa’id composes Souleyman’s music, creating a solid wall of sound from darbouka drum loops, overlaid with sam-pled reed flutes and electronic keyboard riffs. Sa’id’s upbeat rhythms and Souley-man’s downbeat charm have set the band apart from other dabke artists. “Omar’s blend of musical styles, his voice, the en-ergy that the band generates and his im-

Souleyman’s music fuses mawwal traditions with pop sensibilities of sha’bi and dabke rhythms





If Damascus sophisticates are sniffy about shawi music, Souleyman has won over new audiences

500 600,00050,000

Omar Souleyman’s back-catalogue of cassette albums,

most distributed as bootleg recordings

Hits on YouTube that Leh Jani,

one of Souleyman’s songs, has notched up

Population of Ras Al Ayn, the border town in

Syria Souleyman hails from

age and presence all contribute to his anomalous standing,” Gergis says.

If urban Damascus sophisticates are sniffy about shawi (redneck) music from the rural east, Souleyman has won over new audiences in the wider Arab world. In 2000, his first music video aired on Ar-

abic satellite channels, raising his profile across the Middle East.

Since then, he has notched up half a dozen pan-Arab hits including Khattaba (A Proposal), a sardonic song poking fun at a village father’s shameless dowry list, and gone global with the stomping dance an-

them, Leh Jani (When I Found Out), which has more than 600,000 hits on YouTube.

Even now, when not touring abroad, Souleyman sings at up to 20 weddings a month – but these days his party circuit covers Lebanon and the Gulf.

Souleyman agrees to meet TRENDS before the sound-check for his gig in Lon-don. It is his sixth British date this sum-mer, at the start of the mammoth tour that will take him to more than 30 venues across Europe and North America by the end of September. We track him down to the circular turret of the converted 1920s London cinema, where he and his transla-tor sit cross-legged on the flagstones.

Two hours before he will appear on stage, Souleyman is dressed for the night’s performance in his gray thobe, a pack of Marlboro tucked in top pocket, face hid-den behind the ever-present aviator sun-glasses. While the trademark frames add a rakish air of rock-star cool, they also dis-guise his damaged eye.

After 16 years in the business, Sou-leyman has a back-catalogue of around 500 cassette albums, mostly distributed, Grateful Dead-style, as bootleg recordings of his live concerts and party appearanc-es. What this means, Souleyman admits, is that his reputation outweighs his earnings.

It is a problem common to many Arab artists, who have no access to copyright protection and thus no guarantee that they can make a living wage from mu-sic. “Most of my 500 albums were not recorded in the studio,” Souleyman says. “Other people recorded them from per-formances I gave at parties. I haven’t made money from my music – other peo-ple have. But for me, what is more im-portant than the money is the fame. Af-ter the fame comes the money,” he says. “It’s now the second time that we have toured in Europe and the shows have at-tracted large crowds who really seem to enjoy themselves. Wherever we go on tour, we like to say that we leave our fin-gerprints – but really, these are great au-diences. I want to play to all the parties in all the world.”


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To his young audiences, Souleyman’s Middle East rhythms hold a subversive underground appeal

The tour promotes Souleyman’s third album for Sublime Frequencies. “Jazeera Nights” was released in May, a follow-up to the studio-recorded “Highway to Has-sake,” which first unleashed the Souley-man/Sa’id sound on Western audiences three years ago. Last year brought a live follow-up album, “Dabke 2020.”

“Highway to Hassake” met with huge critical acclaim. The rave reviews prompt-ed British indie bible the N.M.E. to rank Souleyman fifth on its annual Future 50 list of the top alternative music industry movers and shakers, high above global heavy hitters Jack White and Lady Gaga.

Celebrity fans include Icelandic su-perstar Bjork, who praised Souleyman’s

“alive and very urgent” sound, and Blur/Gorillaz singer Damon Albarn, who put “Leh Jani” on his radio playlist. Despite hints that an Albarn/Souleyman collabo-ration would soon follow, however, noth-ing has materialized yet.

Wide appeal“Omar’s appeal is extremely varied,” Gergis says. “Who else is adored by Saudi princes, Kurds, Arab Muslims, and Chris-tians, indie record collectors, world mu-sic enthusiasts, punks, academics, Hol-lywood hipsters, and pop stars? You can count the names on a hand.”

For all the hype about globalization and the Internet bringing world culture to wider

audiences, however, few Arab singers have achieved enduring success in the West. Of those that have broken through, most have needed partnerships with big-name West-ern stars to secure media exposure.

And so Cheb Mami scored a cross-over hit through his “Desert Rose” duet with Sting. Hakim has worked with both Stevie Wonder and the late James Brown. Rachid Taha toured America after film di-rector Ridley Scott used his track “Barra Barra” for the helicopter crash scenes in “Black Hawk Down.”

For record companies, the cross-cul-tural duet is a marketing tool – a win-win strategy for the Western artist, who gains new access to audiences in the develop-ing world, while taking credit among the fans at home for “discovering” a fresh new sound. The developing-world artist scores a one-hit wonder and walks away with nothing.

Souleyman is open to working with a Western partner – on his own terms. “A lot of Arab artists have become famous through duets,” he says. “But sometimes there’s a problem of cultural attitudes, and of differences in style. It would be interest-ing to put together a duet with an American or European artist, with the right person.”

Meanwhile, he is working on a doc-umentary with Gergis and enjoying his new clubland fan base, even if singer and audience seem a little at cross-purposes: To his young dance rebel audiences, Sou-leyman’s traditional Middle East rhythms hold a subversive underground appeal.

Which brings us to the subject of ji-hadi techno: Um, what exactly is it? Sou-leyman looks baffled. “Jihadi techno, you say? Where did you hear that? It’s not a name I’ve heard before.”

The term appears in Sublime Frequen-cies’ marketing blurb, TRENDS persists. Souleyman shoots another baffled look at his translator and shrugs. “I think of my music as dance music, as sha’bi music,” he says. “When I get up on stage, I have to get the people to dance. To me – hon-estly – getting people to dance is the only thing that matters.”



Aviation

00-TRE-Biz Turkish Airline.indd 68 6/23/10 4:12 PM


city has to be a sterling piece of real estate for the emperor of Rome to relocate his capital there. But that’s just what the

Emperor Constantine did in 476 A.D. when he upped and moved to what’s now Istanbul.

Constantine preferred calling the city Constantinople – a big stretch there – as he began a dazzling building program on the shores of a river that links Europe with Asia. Indeed, part of Istanbul’s appeal is that it’s the only city in the world that straddles two continents. For more than 2,000 years, its location has made it a hub of trade, com-merce, culture, and religion.

What really makes a great city is that no matter how old it is, there’s always the pos-

sibility that something new is around the bend. The same goes for companies. Take Turkish Airlines, for instance. The nation-al carrier has been around for 75 years, but it’s transforming itself into a nimble and aggressive airline in the manner of a young company. The innovative blueprint that charted the airline’s transformation comes from Temel Kotil, Ph.D., the company’s chief executive officer.

Just as Constantine (and later, the Em-peror Justinian) utilized the city’s strategic location to build one of three great empires that would call Istanbul home, so has Dr. Kotil taken a look at the map in much the same way. “What I noticed is that there are few places on earth that afford such an ide-

al place for a commercial airline hub,” he said to TRENDS during a recent interview at the company’s Istanbul headquarters.

The leaders of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires were accustomed to fighting for their hold on the crossroads of the world. Today, Dr. Kotil has devel-oped a strategy that will help him navi-gate Turkish Airlines through a fierce-ly competitive industry that would make even Justinian’s head spin. Those familiar with the Gulf are no strangers to airline hubs. Indeed, Dubai has staked much of its future on it being the word’s pre-emi-nent transportation hub.

These days, success in the airline in-dustry hinges on several factors, such as

Turkish Delight

A

Turkish Airlines’ new expansion strategy is taking off thanks to Istanbul being an attractive hub amid the spokes.

By Jay Akasie Istanbul



the absence of pesky unions, stable fuel prices, and national subsidies to keep fares competitive while not skimping on service. But the foremost factor, proven by the rise of airport powerhouses like Dubai, has become location.

Dr. Kotil is a shrewd and experienced businessman: His strategy acknowledg-es the recent rise of the Dubai airports and the success of the airlines associated with them. He’s quite content to leave fleets largely consisting of giant wide-body jets to the blue-chip Gulf carriers. What he’s concentrating on is putting smaller com-mercial jets on shorter routes, an advan-tage of flying out of Istanbul. That’s not to say the company doesn’t have a long-haul plan as well; it has 12 Boeing 777s and 10 Airbus A330s on order. “We order from

both manufacturers to keep prices man-ageable,” he said with a smile.

The strategy is paying off. Turkish Airlines is now the third largest European airline and the only carrier offering four-star services in all cabin classes with-in Europe. The company expects to car-ry 31 million passengers over some 4,500 flights by the end of this year, up from 10.3 million over 1,750 flights in 2002.

In 2008, Turkish Airlines carried more international passengers than domestic ones for the first time. That gap is widen-ing as it adds destinations in North Amer-ica (like Washington, D.C. and Los An-geles), Africa (Dar Es Salaam), and the Far East (Ho Chi Min City and Dhaka). Dr. Kotil also knows that when the wide-body jets fight over the world’s huge air-

ports, Turkish Airlines can carve out a niche flying to mid-sized and small termi-nals. When’s the last time you took a di-rect flight to Sochi or Novorsibirsk? (It’s okay if you can’t answer that question.)

Perhaps the best thing about having your corporate headquarters and hub in Is-tanbul is that most people want to fly to you and vacation there. It’s nice to have a really attractive hub amid all those spokes.

The 20-mile Bosphorus Strait is what connects the Asian continent to the Medi-terranean Sea, and throughout history the man who controlled that passage control-led most of the known world. The his-toric heart of the city is Sultanahmet and the Bazaar Quarter. These two neighbor-hoods are within the old walled capital that forms the “Golden Horn” jutting out into the Bosphorus.

Much of Istanbul’s distinctive skyline comes the domes and surrounding min-arets of the various medieval mosques

Dr. Kotil is concentrating on putting smaller commercial airplanes on shorter routes

Aviation



around the city. The grandest one of them all was actually dedicated by Justinian as the Hagia Sophia Church in 537 A.D. For nearly a thousand years this church stood at the center of the Orthodox Chris-tian world. When the Ottoman Turks ex-pelled the Byzantines in the 15th centu-ry, they converted the massive edifice into a mosque, which included building four minarets around the perimeter of the dome.

Hagia Sophia is now a museum that stands adjacent to the grounds of the Top-kapi Palace, the home of the Ottoman Sultans between the 15th and 19th centu-ries. The palace is also a museum, with the rooms of the Treasury and the Sultan’s Harem used to display many of the jew-els and religious relics of the royal family.

Nearby is the 17th century Sultanahmet Mosque. Most people – especially Eng-lish-speaking tourists – know it as the Blue Mosque because of the brilliant blue marble used in what stands as the last of the imperi-al mosques. It’s difficult to believe the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia are separated by 1,100 years; their architectural styles are strikingly similar. The Blue Mosque stands out because of its six minarets.

No visit to this neighborhood would be complete without lunch at the Four Seasons, one of two hotels of the famous hotelier in the city. The Four Seasons Sul-tanahmet is a jewel among jewels. The main building began life as a prison for Turkish dissidents in the 19th century. Its recent renovation into a hotel involved the painstaking preservation of period art-work and antiques. Architects also kept its location in consideration while planning numerous rooftop terraces and a court-yard that afford spectacular views of the nearby Hagia Sophia. Within the court-yard is a glass pavilion that houses “Sea-sons,” the hotel’s gourmet hotspot.

For those who want a different scene, consider staying at the city’s other Four Seasons. It’s larger than the 65-room bou-tique hotel at the historic core and sits on the shore of the Bosphorus. With all that room come amenities like pool and cabanas along the waterfront and a spa that rivals any in

Switzerland. Down the street from this ho-tel is the hottest nightclub in the city: Reina. Most of it is outdoors, under the Bosphorus Bridge, in a set-up that reminds New York-ers of that city’s hip DUMBO scene.

A party warning, perhaps: Don’t go to Reina on an empty stomach. All that rev-elry with the most beautiful people that Istanbul has to offer will take its toll on even the heartiest of constitutions. Not to mention that a night of Red Bull and spir-its at Reina can do a number on a man’s memory, too. So be sure to write down “Topaz” in your list of must-visit restau-rants in Istanbul.

Topaz sits atop a bluff in the fashion-able Taksim neighborhood with a view that, despite as many Red Bulls and spir-its as you can down, will be one of the

most memorable, for dinner or otherwise. What Topaz does best is to fuse tradition-al Turkish cuisine – dolmas, stuffed grape leaves, buttered rice, and anything made of chickpeas – with Western classics like the Chateaubriand for two.

A walk down the hill from Taksim will take you to the largest – and one of the oldest – bazaars in the world. The Grand Bazaar boasts 4,000 shops devoted to car-pets, jewellery, copper, and ceramics. The other notable bazaar in the city is the Spice Bazaar, which sits next to the New Mosque, so named because it was built in 1663, a baby by the city’s standards.

When it’s time to fly home, they might have to drag you to the airport. But if you’re flying Turkish, chances are you’ll have a di-rect flight to wherever you’re going.

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zure shoots are bubbling up in the yachting industry. Just in the past few weeks, Brazilian shipyard MCP, Turkey’s Sun-

rise Yachts, and Italy’s Benetti have all an-nounced orders for boats above 40 meters.

Even better, Christensen Yachts in Vancouver announced the first North America contract signed since the finan-cial crisis – for a pair of identical 50-meter yachts, each costing roughly $30 million. Why two? Apparently, for the anonymous buyer, one was not enough. This is not the first time an owner has treated himself to two identical boats; after all, when you jet from the Caribbean to the Mediterra-nean you don’t want the stress of having

to learn a whole new deck plan. What if you’re taking a romantic moonlight walk? You certainly don’t want to bark your shin on an unexpected outcropping.

It’s easy to poke fun at the excesses built into the luxury yacht trade. There is perhaps no market on earth where men compete more aggressively in measuring their… equipment. (I actually have nev-er heard of a woman ordering a super-yacht. These days, in America, women who have shattered the glass ceiling seem content to spend their fortunes on more humdrum opportunities like campaigning for the Senate.) Like skyscrapers, yachts continue to grow in size, with the new-ly affluent happily pushing the envelope.

Recently, the envelope soared from letter to legal size, as the latest, great-est super-yacht ever built steamed out of the Blohm and Voss shipyard in Germa-ny. The Eclipse, commissioned by Chel-sea Football owner Roman Abramovi-ch, is all of 557 feet long, surpassing by 36 feet the record previously held by the 532-foot Dubai, owned by Sheikh Mo-hammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Be-cause the Eclipse project has been carried out under the strictest security, descrip-tions of the boat (ship?) have bordered on the incredible, or possibly the ludicrous. The cost had been originally estimated by Huffington Post at between $400 million and $1.2 billion; even to a former stock

Riding the Wave

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We’ve found the mother of all economic indicators: As the Dow Industrials edge upward, so do orders for a new generation of decadent mega-yachts.

By Liz Peek Nantucket

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analyst, that seems like a large range. The current betting is $486 million.

The vessel is said to contain a missile defense system, a submarine, bullet-proof glass, swimming pools and hot tubs (of course), not one but two helipads (handy for large parties), gazillions of flat-screen TVs, 600 doors, and – my favorite – an “anti-paparazzi laser shield.” The shield can apparently detect and deflect the kinds of light impulses that stem from an intru-

sive camera. No yacht should be without one. The truth is, no one really knows what is aboard the Eclipse; the level of secrecy surrounding the project makes the Stealth Bomber look like one of those planes tow-ing advertisements above overcrowd-ed beaches. Recent press accounts that the owner has gotten into a row with the builder over whether the reptile and leop-ard skins in the massage room were ethi-cally sourced may or may not be true.

It is remarkable, perhaps, that the su-per-yacht industry is already recovering. After all, even our wealthiest global cit-izens took a beating during the finan-cial crisis, and other sectors, such as fine jewelry, are still struggling. And yet the signs are unmistakable. Miriam Cain of the British broker Camper and Nichol-son says that industry-wide there were 33 sales of existing yachts in April, up from 24 in March, for a rise of 65 percent. Sales were up 36 percent from a year ago, based on asking prices. Demand, she says, is particularly strong for the cream of the crop vessels – those made in Italy or Northern Europe. Buyers are Americans or English, as well as Asian and Middle Eastern. Kenny Wooten, the American editor of the Yacht Report, says orders tend to pick up when the Dow Jones In-dustrial Average moves above 10,000.

One would think that there is no more discretionary purchase than a yacht. On the other hand, just a couple of years ago, those craving the ultimate status symbol

There is perhaps no market where men compete more aggressively in measuring their… equipment

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557 feeT $225,00033

Length of the eclipse, the world’s

biggest yacht, ordered by

Roman Abramovich

Amount it costs to charter

the162-foot Remember When

for a week

Sales of existing yachts in April, up from 24 in

March, for a rise of 65 percent

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were stymied by the flood of purchasing, which led to long waits and rising prices for new craft. According to Boat Interna-tional, between 2005 and 2007, some 250 yachts measuring above 40 meters were delivered, up from a more normal 30-40 boats per year. Imagine wanting to spend hundreds of millions on a new toy and having to stand in line – Xbox fanciers had it easy by comparison.

Wooten says that “the over-100-foot market was on a rage through the first quarter of 2008.” Cain confirms the froth. “Some buyers were ordering and then selling their contract halfway through the build period,” she reports. “Most builders globally had full order books, with wait periods of up to three years.” Wooten says that in the third quarter of 2008 – after Lehman failed – the market turned “squirrely” and then three months later “went vertical,” with orders simply dis-appearing off the page. Boat Internation-al reports that some 100 new orders were placed in the first three quarters of 2008 alone; in the final three months of the year, only two. In 2009, there were fewer that a dozen new commissions. Because of healthy backlogs, builders were busy through most of 2009, but then the down-turn began to force layoffs and closings. Cain says that the industry produced 77 new custom super-yachts in 2008, but the number tumbled to 66 in 2009.

For builders, new orders are arriv-ing in the nick of time. When the larg-est yards quickly sold out, new entrants emerged; many have since gone under. Backlogs have been sinking, thanks to a dearth of buying and rising cancellations. Some yards had begun to build hulls on spec during the heady buying spree, and so were stuck with un-bought inventory, as well as falling workloads.

Buyers today can count on quicker de-liveries, but are unlikely to find that pric-es have receded much. Wooten says that yards have chased cheap labor around the world, but that most of the costs of a new vessel are fixed. A good portion of the to-tal cost of a mega-yacht is focused on the

interiors; flat screen TVs and Wolf ranges haven’t gotten any cheaper. This is not true for existing boats, where prices have fall-en as much as 40 percent from their highs. Boat International reports that while 21 ex-isting yachts over 24 meters were sold in May, 36 boats went on the market, and 33 price reductions took place.

Tom Perkins, a venture capitalist who got in early on the phenomenal success of Google, unloaded a super-yacht last year called the Maltese Falcon – the larg-est sailing craft in the world, and consid-ered by some the best designed. His ask-ing price was $165 million; the sale took place at $100 million. This discount is ex-treme, but since boats in this category are typically highly personalized, they can be tough to unload.

They are also tough to keep, if your fortunes have taken a turn for the worse.

Wooten says that a rough rule of thumb is that it costs 10 to 15 percent of the build cost per year to operate a vessel. So, if you plan to spend $100 million on your dream boat, you should count on laying out $10 million or so each year just to keep it afloat. And that’s only the tab for crew, dock fees, insurance, and other necessities. In oth-er words, you pay $10 million to sit still. If you actually decide to travel, the price tag soars. Add in fuel (these vessels are not exactly fuel efficient) and food (five-star chefs are considered essential), and you start to talk real money. This brings us to the legendary banker J.P. Morgan’s oft-re-peated quote that if you have to ask how much one costs, you can’t afford one.

Although that advise seemed to have fallen on deaf ears a couple of years ago, it may have played a role in the sudden col-lapse in new orders. After all, there are oth-

Venture capitalist Tom Perkins unloaded the stunning Maltese falcon last year for $100 million

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er ways to enjoy a yachting vacation. For instance, you can always charter. Though most of the biggest and most renowned ves-sels are not available to the hoi poloi, there are hundreds of boats available from repu-table yacht brokers like Edmiston, Camper and Nicholson’s, Burgess, and others. Cain says that charters are strong. “The charter business fell 30 percent off the boom years, but since has come right back.”

Chartering isn’t exactly cheap, but there is a variety of boats available at dif-ferent price points. Figure on spending as much as $1 million a week for the very largest and most luxurious craft. More reasonable (funny how quickly you can lose your bearings in this sort of analy-sis) are the boats measuring between 100 and 200 feet, built in the past 10 years, that cost around $250,000 to $350,000 per

week. For example, a week on the Chris-tensen-built, 162-foot Remember When costs around $225,000. The boat may be chartered anywhere in the world – in-cluding the Caribbean or the Mediterra-nean, can accommodate up to 12 guests, and has a crew of 10. That fee probably does not include tip for the crew, and oth-er oddments. The boat is gorgeous, and has a number of luxury features, includ-ing heated marble floors in the baths. In other words, you may never want to re-turn home.

While practical issues such as finance have impacted the super-yacht market over the past few years, the allure of sail-ing the world’s oceans in a customized su-per-yacht has not faded. In fast-growing parts of the world like Asia and the Mid-dle East, appetites for all sorts of luxury

goods are soaring. The recent Dubai Inter-national Boat Show attracted tens of thou-sands of visitors and 700 companies. The sale of a 72-meter Sunseeker boat on the show’s first day set the tone. Participants noted that demand for yachts was stronger in the Middle East than in the Mediterrane-an or Caribbean. Similarly, orders are be-ginning to flow from Asia, which has in re-cent years accounted for less than 5 percent of demand. While Taiwan and China have emerged as credible suppliers, producing boats for one-third to one-half off the go-ing rate in Western Europe (and reportedly some reduced quality in the bargain), they have recently begun to produce buyers.

The current oversupply of luxury craft will eventually recede, and the industry will stabilize. Wooten, though, remains cautious. “I have the feeling the market will never get back to the overheated lev-el of 2007,” he says. If indeed the Dow Jones is the best indicator of demand, let’s hope his caution is misplaced.

Yachts continue to grow in size, with the newly affluent happily pushing the envelope

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he steely blue Kingdom Tower distinguishes itself from the rest of Riyadh with a semicircular cut-out that can be seen from everywhere

in the city. But the sad fact is that for most of its recent history, Saudi Arabia’s glam-orous office buildings haven’t been enough to attract the kind of free-spending tourists that make the economies of other prosperous Gulf countries hum.

To be sure, Saudi Arabia has always been a destination for religious tour-ists. But strict visa laws and even strict-er social codes have prevented the country from becoming a destination for sun-seek-ing leisure travelers and year-round con-vention tourists.

But that’s changing in a big way. En-ticed by government spending on mas-sive infrastructure projects, Gulf hotel-iers are betting big on Saudi Arabia. With a population on par with a mid-sized Eu-ropean country, internal migration, and a shortage of housing options, the country’s hospitality industry is now more appeal-ing to hotel developers than the Gulf’s more traditional centers of business and leisure tourism.

“In Saudi Arabia it’s been the oil busi-ness and the petrochemical industry,” the director of development for Hilton Worldwide in the Middle East, Carlos Khneisser, says. “But now, internal tour-ism is driving demand.”

The missing piece of the puzzle for Saudi Arabia has been the internal, non-religious tourist. With its plethora of five-star resorts, entertainment facilities, and more liberal attitudes toward alcohol con-sumption, Dubai has long been the Gulf’s leisure and business convention destina-tion of choice. But the forces of hotel sup-ply and demand are at work in Saudi Ara-bia. Khneisser says the country faces a shortage of 1.3 million residential units, and that many families use long-stay res-idential apartments in hotels to cope with the problem.

Hilton’s budget over the last two years has targeted secondary cities like Jizan and other cities around the main

Boom Town

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There’s a seismic shift in the Gulf’s hospitality industry: The cash-cow hotel business, long the domain of Emirati cities, is headed to Saudi Arabia.

By Emily Meredith Riyadh

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urban cores, Khneisser says. Companies like Hilton are salivating over the pros-pect of the enormous populations shift within the country’s borders coupled with the alarming housing shortage.

Most of the companies are mid-mar-ket brands. The chairman of Kuwait-based Action Hotels, Mubarak Abdul-la Al Mubarak Al Sabah, says there is a

lack of available rooms in the industri-al cities where his company, which spe-cializes in mid-range brands, is trying to build hotels. “We believe this is one sec-tor that is in crisis,” says Al Sabah, “We believe the mid-market will benefit.”

And the government is helping, as it usually does in Saudi Arabia. The assist-ant vice president for investment serv-

ices at the Saudi Commission for Tour-ism and Antiquities, Dr. Hamad M. Al-Ismail, says the government is en-couraging developers to build in Riyadh. He says he’s working with developers and trying to help with some financ-ing as well. Al-Ismail’s department has set up a program with the government called “Loans for Hotels.” “The big names have been introduced into Saudi Arabia,” he says.

Some of the assistance will be directed at sites for religious tourism – Mecca and Medina. According to a recent report from consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle, many of the existing rooms in hotels in the holy cities are not up to what the report termed “international quality.” And supply is far outstripped by demand, pushing prices far higher than a comparable room in another city would fetch.

According to the report, even a medi-um-sized increase in the number of rooms

The Saudi government is working with developers and trying to help with some financing as well

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1.3 Million 60%3.7%

Additional residential units

that Saudi Arabia needs to meet

demand

of projects in the region have been

put on hold or canceled because

of the crisis

Tourism’s contribution

to the country’s

G.D.P. in 2009



helps bring some reality to the market. In Mecca, new rooms resulted in a 30 per-cent price drop in 2009.

Al-Ismail says the commission hopes the hotels in secondary cities will help raise the profile of those cities and will make those locations visible to create jobs. This is his main goal. Industry in Saudi Arabia needs encouragement, he says. In April, the government announced its ninth five-year economic plan and promised continued emphasis on devel-oping smaller cities.

Foreign tourism comprised 3.7 per-cent of Saudi Arabia’s G.D.P. in 2009, according to the head of statistics at the Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Munthir Al-Aansari, who says the gov-ernment is happy to focus on domestic tourism.

“The economic investments in Saudi include [investment in] a new budget air-line, King Faisal Economic City, devel-oping tourism. All of these initiatives are making Saudi attractive to investors,” the senior vice president for U.A.E. op-erations at Abu Dhabi-based Rotana ho-tels, Omer Kaddouri, says. Rotana’s projects will capitalize on the attention to economic diversification by eventual-ly employing locals in 30 percent of staff positions. “Most of them are doing this for the first time. Is it a challenge? Yes. Do they succeed? Yes,” Kaddouri says.

Tourist detourKaddouri, though, is not so positive on all of the markets in which Rotana is invest-ing. While the company will have 30 ho-tels open in the U.A.E. by the end of this year and 40 by the end of 2011, he calls the current market “oversaturated.”

For several years, the emirates of Du-bai and Abu Dhabi were the darlings of investors and hotel brands entering the Middle East. But the rapid development and oversaturation means that investors still looking for growth are searching elsewhere in the region.

Abu Dhabi suffered a shortage of rooms until last year, when Yas Island

came onto the market. With it came a del-uge of hotel rooms meant to cater to tour-ists when the emirate’s planned attractions come on line in the next several years. Ac-cording to the executive vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle, Jaliil Mekouar, reve-nue per available room has declined rap-idly in Abu Dhabi.

The market is less certain than it was two years ago and customers no longer book two to three months in advance. As a result, hotels compete with each other on price. The rate of decline in revenue per available room has slowed, but is still not near the old levels. “In Abu Dhabi, they are working hard to expand the lei-sure business with the development of the Louvre, the Guggenheim, all these attrac-tions,” says Khneisser.

But these developments won’t be ready for the public for several years still. In the meantime, competition is tough and hotels have had to lower their prices. Some of the more spectacular and troubling announcements for the hotel industry have been signals of fail-ure. Earlier this year, the head of Union Properties said everything was up for sale at a price when asked if the devel-opment company would consider sell-ing Ritz Carlton. “I don’t think we will be encountering what Ritz Carlton has been encountering with U.P.,” Khneiss-er says.

Hilton partnered with family and sov-ereign wealth fund businesses when en-tering the region’s markets. Hilton says the decision not to partner with property

now it’s Saudi Arabia. But for years Dubai was the darling of hotel developers entering the region

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groups was not a deliberate strategy on its part, but acknowledged that in the wake of the crisis it proved to be a lucky one. “There is still a way for us to develop our luxury brands, which are the Waldorf As-toria and the Conrad, and specifically tar-get Saadiyat Island and the Corniche area in Abu Dhabi,” Khneisser says.

Other areas of the region are growing as well. Hilton has announced projects in Lebanon and Jordan. According to Khneisser, Rotana looks at North Afri-ca, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt as growth markets. And the regional markets are coming back from their lows last year. Khneisser says the average daily rates in the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Leba-non have all grown more than five per-cent over the last year.

The biggest problem facing developers, then, is not demand. As more investors look to build while prices of materials are depressed in the wake of the financial crisis, the challenge they run into is the availability of cash.

According to data compiled by Jones Lang LaSalle, as many as 60 percent of projects in the pipeline have been put on hold or canceled. Because credit is so tight, the spread on loans for devel-opments have been very high, the presi-dent of I.F.A. Hotel Investments, Joe Sita, says.“While [the Emirates Interbank Of-fered Rate] and Libor are still very low, spreads are very high. When you’re talk-ing about total cost, debt is available, but at a very high price at 15 percent or more,” he says.

And in a region where financing can be subject to Shariah compliance stric-tures, hotels can have an even hard-er time finding sources of funding for projects, according to the director of the hotels and hospitality division at Pre-mier Group, Roger Blackwell. “I think most of that type of money is likely to come from an international bank that is operating in the region that is really the leader, and then maybe able to assemble the loans from different banks,” Black-well says.

Without easy access to funding, own-ers and developers are more focused on current properties, he says. “I think that people are definitely much more yield-focused today. They’ve built all sorts of things and now they realize these things have to make money, and maybe they’re not able to pay their debts at the moment. So they’re really conscious of cash flow at the moment.”

According to Khneisser, Rotana looks at north Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt as growth markets

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sizeable chunk of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims travel to Islam’s holiest cities of Mecca and Medina every year.

Government officials have talked about increasing the number of visitors. They’ve said that infrastructure and de-velopment plans will increase the coun-try’s capacity for handling tourists.

Yet tour operators say strict enforce-ment of visa regulations is constrain-ing their ability to do business. Brought on by concerns that some religious tour-ists would remain in Saudi Arabia, tight-er applications of visa rules have caused the number of tour operators to drop by as much as half.

Tour operators in the country escort travelers from the airport and through-out their journey from Mecca to Medina. The Ministry of Umrah and Hajj has al-ways reviewed the record of these opera-tors, penalizing those who do not adhere to the regulations.

Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is enticing, and the market is appealing for young people from impoverished Muslim coun-tries. Some enter on a religious tourism visa and then stay, working odd jobs and sending money home.

“A lot of Muslims, they want to come to Saudi, but they don’t want to go back,” the chief operating officer of Hajeej tour operators, Fayyaz H. Siddiqui, says.

Unlike other countries in the G.C.C., Saudi Arabia’s already substantial popu-lation is economically diverse. Expatri-ates comprise 28 percent of the country’s 27 million residents. The government, though, cannot babysit the more than 4 million tourists entering the country for pilgrimage each year. In an attempt to keep people from overstaying, it is crack-ing down on tour operators.

Operators say the government is re-viewing company records more frequent-ly. “What they have done this year is close the period. So instead of annual it will be monthly,” the general manager of business development and marketing at Elaf Trav-el tourism and hotels, Ehab A. Eid, says.

Visas Rule In Saudi Arabia

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Demand for travel services is on the rise. So why is the number of tour operators in the country shrinking?

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Operators cite different figures, but agree that the number of agents has fallen by nearly half.

For Eid, who says his company has been in business since 1981, this has meant greater demand for his services. For the time being, he says this is good. Fewer competitors means more certain business-But if the trend continues, he says there

could be a problem. “We are very much worried about the number of agents.”

The only way for operators to guard against people who may overstay is to do extensive background checks on the tour-ists, ensuring they have reasons to return: A family, a home, and a job. “When we are reviewing requirements for a visa, we don’t accept the young. We prefer to take fami-

lies,” Eid says. He says Elaf works with just 65 agents – companies in a travel-er’s home country that reviews their ap-plication for a visa – rather than expand-ing to access more tourists. He says this has helped the company keep problems to a minimum.

Siddiqui says he has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of operators since the peak of approximately 200 from sev-en years ago. “These are the companies that do not follow the rules,” he says.

But Siddiqui says he will not be able to gain market share even with fewer oth-er tour operators. “We have limited capac-ity. I have limited rooms. A serious prob-lem would be accommodation in Mecca.”

The government appears to be tighten-ing restrictions on the agents that help tour operators in Saudi connect with travelers. Abdullah Al Rukaibi, the assistant mar-keting manager for Al Marway Hajj and Umra, based in Kuwait, says he once was

The only way for operators to guard against people who may overstay is to do background checks

Tourism

1.8 BIllIon 13.75 MIllIon27 MIllIon

number of Muslims around the world, making Islam the second biggest religion globally

Tourists expected in the country

based on planned infrastructure and

development

Number of people in Saudi Arabia, which is the

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able to find tourists from around the globe to assist in applying for visas. “If we want-ed, we could get a client from Egypt.”

Now, the company can only vet Ku-waiti citizens and residents – those with a permanent visa for Kuwait. “We can’t get most of the markets like North Africa, South Africa, or Egypt,” he says. Those markets made up as much as 40 percent of Al Marway’s business in the past.

The strict enforcement comes at the same time as massive infrastructure projects aimed at building the country’s capacity for religious tourists. The Har-amain High Speed Railway will shut-tle pilgrims between Mecca and Medina and will circumvent the current heavily traversed roads. A monorail within Mec-ca will enable tourists to travel more free-

ly within the city. And the government is helping hotel operators with financing.

The efforts to improve infrastructure in the holy cities coincide with a concert-ed effort by the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities to bring in tour-ists interested in historical sites the coun-try has to offer. Speaking in March, the vice president for marketing and media at the authority wanted to increase the number of tourists by 4 percent in 2010.

“This is a new market,” Eid says. Elaf is trying to diversify its operations away from religious tourism by investing in ho-tels and bringing in non-religious tourists.

Siddiqui says his company works with a more diverse set of tourists. “We have seen an increase in interest in every part of the world and from people from coun-

tries like England, America, and Malay-sia,” he says. “The Saudi Supreme Com-mission is advertising more. People were not aware of the historical sites.”

A recent report from consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle shows that the number of an-nual pilgrims to Mecca and Medina could increase to 13.75 million based on planned infrastructure and developments.

But while capacity may rise dramat-ically, that does not mean the number of tourists necessarily will. “The only prob-lem would be visas and regulatory con-strains. So [it could be lower] if they decide they don’t want that number of people in,” the head of research for the Middle East and North Africa in Jones Lang LaSalle’s Dubai office, Craig Plumb, says. Citing the number of Mus-lims worldwide, he says: “There is suffi-cient demand to accommodate more than that. It’s only being held back by the ca-pacity constraints.”

While capacity may rise dramatically, that does not mean the number of tourists necessarily will

Tourism



he scene was the Sawy Cultur-al Center, a multi-stage per-formance space tucked un-derneath a busy bridge in

the upscale central Cairo district of Zamalek. The room was badly venti-lated and sweltering hot, with blinding stage lights that forced some audience members to don sunglasses. The event was essentially a massive night-long so-cial and comedic experiment.

One after another, with the capaci-ty crowd roaring at almost every line, more than a dozen comedians took what is essentially an Anglo-American art form and gave it a decidedly Egyp-tian spin.

Tamer Farag, a 35-year-old pro-fessional tour guide, riffed cleverly on the bizarre linguistic games Egyptians play – incorporating English words like “coffee shop,” “upgrade,” and “jack-et” into Arabic, then randomly apply-ing Arabic grammar rules to them.

“So what’s the plural of jacket?” Farag asked the crowd in Arabic. “No, it’s not ‘jawaacket,’ that’s low-class! All the chic people say ‘jacketaat.’ What’s wrong with you?”

Noha Kato, a young woman who wears the hijab, talked about how hard it is for veiled women to find places to swim. Her options are either to find a pool with women-only hours or opt for the slightly

ridiculous “Islamic swimsuit.” “For peo-ple who don’t know, it’s like a diving suit with a ballet dress stuck on it. So you end up looking like a Muskateer,” she said, drawing a huge laugh.

Kato, delivering her routine in flu-ent English, joked that at age 22, her parents are already fretting about her never getting married. “I feel like a yogurt cup with an expiration date stamped on my forehead,” she said.

The year 2010 may just be remem-bered as the one that homegrown stand-up comedy turned the corner in Egypt. If so, the Feb. 19 comedy show-case known as Hysteria may be the mo-ment that proved Western-style could

Perspectives

I Gotta Tell Ya…

T

The year 2010 may just be remembered as the one that homegrown stand-up comedy turned a corner in Egypt.

By Ashraf Khalil Cairo

Cor

bis

00-TRE144-Pers Stand-up Comedy.indd 92 7/7/10 11:35 AM


I Gotta Tell Ya…

Cor

bis



thrive here. The stand-up scene has been bubbling below the surface for several years. Clubs and coffee shops have start-ed hosting occasional stand-up nights, drawing on a growing pool of locals eager to perform. “It’s going to be very gradual. It will still take time for people to catch up to it,” the manager of the Cairo Jazz Club, Shady Hamza, said.

Hamza started experimenting with stand-up nights earlier this year, bring-ing in two or three comics to perform brief routines as an opener to the night’s band. To his surprise, he discovered that his nightclub – which normally doesn’t start filling up until 11 p.m., was packed by 8:30. “I’m excited about the idea and I want to be part of its growth,” Hamza said.

Maha Hosni, an advertising executive who organized the Hysteria mega-show, described the event as a crucial test to see whether Egypt had both the talent pool of comedians and the audience interest to make regular stand-up shows a viable business venture.

By almost any standard, the experi-ment was a raging success. The 500-seat cultural center was sold out for two sepa-rate shows – at a comparatively high price of 60 Egyptian pounds ($12) per ticket. Despite an air-conditioning malfunction that left both the audience and the comics sweating profusely, the crowd was clearly primed and laughed hard at almost every-thing – including some gags that weren’t really all that funny.

The comics moved back and forth be-tween English and Arabic – with the au-dience seemingly following along in both languages. “I thought it would go well, but this was beyond my expectations,” said Hosni, the events and media manager for the Benchmark Advertising Agency. “This shows people want to laugh. They know stand-up comedy and they love it. All the university students know this cul-ture and watch the comedy channels.”

Egyptians are, of course, no strangers to comedy. The country is famous for pro-ducing generations of iconic comedic ac-tors (from Ismail Yassin to Adel Imam and Mohamed Heneidy), and Egyptians in general are known throughout the Arab world for their humor. “Egyptians are the best comedians,” said Hosni, using a common local colloquialism. “We’re known for our ‘light blood’.”

But that comedic spirit has always been channeled into slapstick movies and raucous four-hour plays. “We’ve always had comedy, but it wasn’t an individual thing. It was in the framework of some-thing else,” Farag said.

This new explosion of the solo stand-up form actually owes its roots to a group of Middle Eastern immigrant chil-dren from the United States. Somewhere around 2006, a quartet of Arab- and Ira-nian-American stand-up comics started to gain notoriety in America, perform-ing together under the banner of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. The group (Ahmed Ahmed, Dean Obeidallah, Aron Kader, and Maz Jobrani) had spent years hon-ing their craft on comedy stages across the country.

Ahmed, Kader, and Jobrani were based in Los Angeles and rose through the ranks at legendary clubs like the Comedy Store and Laugh Factory. Obeidallah, based in New York, worked the East Coast clubs, and helped found the now wildly popu-lar annual Arab-American Comedy Festi-val in New York City.

The collaboration produced a success-ful stand-up tour and an hour-long special on the American channel Comedy Cen-

Twenty-two-year-old Noha Kato jokes about how hard it is for a veiled woman to find places to swim

Perspectives



tral. Then the group decided to take their act to the Middle East, performing in Du-bai, Cairo, and Beirut. At each stop, they held open tryouts for local talent. Obei-dallah also helped found the annual Am-man Stand-up Comedy Festival in Jor-dan, which is now entering its third year. “We’re trying to build a comedy infra-structure” in the Middle East, Obeidallah, who is Palestinian-American, said. “I tell people we’re comedy missionaries.”

Sherif Zaher, who performed at the re-cent Cairo Jazz Club comedy night, got his first taste of the spotlight thanks to one of

these talent initiatives. The 29-year-old was encouraged to enter tryouts when Obei-dallah and company performed a show at the Cairo International Convention Cent-er in 2008. He won the competition and received the chance to perform briefly on stage. “For the first time in my life, I per-formed in front of 3,000 people,” he said.

Now Zaher, who works in asset man-agement at EFG-Hermes, dreams of go-ing full-time. But it’s going to take a while before that’s an option locally. “There are no comedy clubs in Egypt. It’s just you by yourself,” said comedian Mohammed

Shaheen, who estimated that there are 15 stage-ready Egyptian comedians try-ing to gain experience with any gigs they can find. “We need a comedy club or a big sponsor,” he said.

At the moment, none of the comedians is actually making a living from their per-formances. Kato, the veiled comic, has a day job at Egypt Air. The most she has ever made for a performance is 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($85) and most of her gigs pay her “50 pounds ($9) and a free meal.”

But Hosni, the event organizer, says she is thinking big after February’s suc-cess. She plans to host several such events a year and to continue to build up the lo-cal stand-up scene. Once the talent pool is ready, she wants to launch an interna-tional tour and “invade London and other places with Egyptian talent.”

The comics are also encouraged and looking for greater opportunities. Farag said he hopes to quit his tour guide job and become a full-time comic within a few years. Kato said she and other young co-medians have already formed a group with a shared interest in building a stand-up scene in Cairo.

“All of us stick together. If one person gets a show, they call the others and get them on it,” she said. “It helps that Egyp-tian crowds are very friendly. I’ve almost never seen someone get booed. At worst, the audience just sits there.”

And while the audiences tend to be encouraging and receptive, some of the comics have a harder time selling their own families on their dreams. Kato said her father remains very much on the fence about her passion for public perform-ance. “I told him it was like acting, and he asked if there would be any kissing or love scenes,” she said.

Her father has yet to attend any of her performances – which may be just as well since much of Kato’s act centers on observational humor about her own fam-ily dynamics. Her mother, however, has started regularly attending Kato’s gigs and is now suggesting new material to add to the act.

Perspectives

$12 $9$85

Price of a ticket at the Hysteria mega-show held in Cairo in February

And a free meal is what the 22-year-old, who performs wearing a hijab,

usually gets

The most that budding stand-up comic Noha Kato

has been paid for a performance

Cor

bis


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All Charged Up

In an era of consolidation in the auto-motive industry, the appearance an en-

tirely new car company, unrelated to any of the major established players, is some-thing of a curiosity. Such is the case with Tesla Motors, a California-based start-up that is applying a Silicon Valley philoso-phy to a field whose basic features were shaped a century ago.

Tesla’s all-electric high-performance cars are causing some observers to re-evaluate basic assumptions about how passenger vehicles can be powered and produced. That’s why it is surprising that such a forward-looking company should look backward, to an inventor from the first half of the 20th century, for its name. But Nikola Tesla’s AC motor lies at the heart of the car, and his sometimes out-landish imagination is well-suited to the company’s efforts to make practical Elec-tric Vehicles (EVs) a reality.

I recently had the opportunity to get a close-up look at a Tesla Roadster Sport at the Newport Concours d’Elegance, where the Tesla vehicle technician, Rap-hael Garcia, explained the features of the car’s unique power train and offered some of his perspective on the experience of introducing it to the public.

From the outside, the Roadster looks like an ordinary sports car. It’s a low-slung two-seater with aggressive but not groundbreaking styling. Its frame, custom manufactured for Tesla by Lotus, gives it handling and responsiveness on par with other cars in its price range (the Roadster that I tested sells for about $140,000). It is the engine that is, of course, the real difference in the experience. When it’s turned on there is no rumble, no indica-tion that the car is ready to pounce. Rath-er, stepping on the accelerator yields pure movement forward, accompanied only by

a slight hum. Unlike a conventional inter-nal combustion engine whose power var-ies based on RPM, the 288hp/215 kWh electric motor’s power is instant and con-stant. In fact, it is capable of reaching 60 miles per hour in a mere 3.7 seconds. And this is part of the car’s special appeal.

“You don’t have to be doing triple digits to have fun with this car,” says Garcia, who has worked with Lotuses and Lamborghinis, and races a BMW. “You don’t have to learn how to drive it to get the most from it.”

That rush of performance is appar-ent, even on city streets where there is no possibility of reaching its top speed of 125mph. When the traffic light turns green, getting to a mere 30mph is fun.

Tesla owners are a unique group too, says Garcia. “They have a commitment to what the company is doing. It’s a culture that you don’t get with ordinary production cars.”

At the Newport Concours d’Elegance, Dan Scanlan discovers the new Tesla.

On the Road

00-TRE-On the Road .indd 98 7/7/10 11:38 AM


This is, in fact, where the real inno-vation of the vehicle comes into play, for Nikola Tesla’s motor has been around a long time, as has the concept of elec-tric cars. What is new is the practical range the vehicle: About 200 miles per charge. Some of the earliest production cars were, in fact, electric. They benefited from a reputation for safety and reliabili-ty when gasoline was known as a smelly, volatile, and unsafe way to power a car. But things changed as the internal com-bustion engine was refined and a network of stations to supply the fuel sprang up.

Electric cars, though clean and qui-et, could not stray far from their charg-ing stations and soon became associated with impracticality.

The Tesla offers the possibility of the convenience of charging from ordinary household current with the ability to take extended trips without need for a recharge. This frees it from the restrictions and lim-

Garcia gets to see this first hand as he provides the company’s mobile at-home service. Rather than bringing their cars in to a dealer, a technician like Garcia makes house calls to troubleshoot prob-lems, perform routine maintenance, and help owners get the most out of their cars.

The maintenance, though, is most-ly on the order of software updates to the computer system that manages the pow-er that flows to the motor from 6,831 lith-ium-ion battery cells located just behind the passenger seats, over the rear wheels.

The car electronically keeps in touch with the manufacturer, who is able to monitor performance and even detect problems before the driver ever senses them. The real-time information derived from on-the-road performance influenc-es the software updates, allowing for the model’s performance to improve poten-tially beyond the original expectations when it rolled off the showroom floor.

itations of a network of charging stations that had accompanied earlier attempts at promoting EVs. Owners of Tesla Road-sters can pull into the garage, plug the car in overnight and be ready to travel the next morning. Having set out on a busy day only to find that my car was running on empty, I see the appeal of this feature.

The response of the public has been positive, according to Garcia, with cu-rious passers-by calling it “the wave of the future.” He has found it heartening, he says, how willing people are to get be-hind something so different.

The future plans for Tesla’s next model will take it into more familiar ter-ritory, however. The Tessla Model S, will be the company’s first foray into the field of the family sedan.

The car’s extended range, increased passenger capacity, and lower price could potentially make this a serious contender when it hits the road in 2012.

00-TRE-On the Road .indd 99 7/7/10 11:38 AM


Shoptalk with jay akaSie

‘Swyping’ SamSung SmartphoneS

The range of high-tech features in Samsung’s cell phone duo fills a book. One feature on the

Wave and the Galaxy S that stands out for us – and promises to change the way we communicate forever – is the so-called Swype technology. As it stands now, even the fastest textmeister can’t input a message faster than a wireless operator with a rudimentary knowledge of 150-year-old Morse code. But Morse’s speed supremacy on the telegraph is being eclipsed – and it’s about time. Screens on these little Samsung gizmos have gotten so good that you can drag your finger across them to input the information, not unlike a stylus, instead of typing onto those tiny keyboards.

If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t someone come up with a laptop case that’s lightweight, durable, AND fashionable?

Credit the people at IXA – and not NASA engineers – for doing so. Their latest line of laptop bags stand up to the rigors of the airport, the school bus, and the boardroom, all while protecting your precious computer. IXA also makes cooling pads and ergonometric stands so that you have no excuse for not finishing that big report.

Montblanc has long been known for its super-pricey pens. Now it’s expanding its product

offering in the Gulf with a series of two leather mobile phone covers. Whether you’re a serious businessman who connects to the office with a BlackBerry or a trendy teenager who surfs the Web on his Iphone, you now have the option of subscribing to the U.A.E.’s Du mobile elite plan and receiving a Montblanc cover for your device. The covers were designed by Lothar Lips, otherwise known as the “Man with the Magic Hand,” according to Montblanc. The company plans another special edition cover featuring a 43-faceted star-shaped diamond. Ring a ding bling.

iXa bagS

montblanc meiSter-Stück cover

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Fondation de la haute horlogerie

panaSonic camcorderS

chanel bleu

Ever wanted to see a Frenchman seethe with anger? Pick up a bottle of California sparkling wine and refer to it as champagne. The Swiss get bent out of shape

in much the same way when it comes to wristwatches. To make sure someone doesn’t dump a batch of stinky fondue on your head, the TRENDS maestro and the dean of watch journalism, Alfred Coachman, reminds us what makes a watch “Swiss-made”: The watch must have Swiss movement, the movement must have been cased in Switzerland, and the final inspection must have been carried out in Switzerland. Coachman learned all this nifty information from the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, a watch-dog group that has recently unveiled a new advertising campaign. Its slogan reads: “Fake Watches are for Fake People.” Well!

It seems there are plenty of people at Panasonic who have been forced to sit through home movies shot

by a cameraman with shaky hands. Panasonic has just unveiled its new line of high-definition camcorders that compensate for the kind of annoying camera shaking that so many amateur moviemakers can’t seem to avoid. The new camcorders, HS700, TM700, and SD700, incorporate sensors that reproduce color better than any camcorder out there. Plus, they’re designed to excel under those challenging low light conditions. All this technology makes sitting through home movies all the less painful.

Residents of Manhattan’s Upper East Side – count this hack among them – know that just about every company pines

to use their scenic neighborhood as a backdrop in television commercials. The outfit that takes the prize for capturing Uptown best is Chanel with its advertising campaign for Bleu cologne. Of course, hiring Martin Scorsese helped. The veteran director worked with the rising international star Gaspard Ulliel to make one of the best TV spots we’ve come across in ages. The character of Hector in the 60-second commercial says it best: “I’m not going to be the person I’m expected to be anymore.”




cyber clean

hoganolympia “artribe”

panaSonic panaboard

We have a colleague at this publishing company whose computer keyboard is so disgusting that we have a hunch it harbors several lost civilizations. In

fact, the ingenious gang at Cyber Clean tell us that her keyboard is dirtier than most toilet seats. No surprise there if, like us, you have to sit near this woman each day. That’s why Cyber Clean recently sent us its new product aimed at tackling those filthy keyboards. Children of the 1990s will recall the slimy play stuff called “Gak.” That’s pretty much what Cyber Clean amounts to – it’s a super-conductive putty that picks up all sorts of dust and grime off your keyboard. Now if they’d sent us a ton of the stuff to clean away our annoying colleague.

No sneaker better expresses the urban-chic philosophy of Hogan than the Olympia

“Artribe.” Ultra-clean athletic footwear has long been the footwear of choice for the hip-hop elite and suburban youngsters who want to emulate their trendy city lifestyles. That’s why Hogan has released yet another exclusive line of trainers. They’re perfect for strutting through the shopping mall with your homeys. Word up.

Say goodbye to those dusty chalkboards. Panasonic’s durable Panaboard touchboard holds up to the wear and tear of even

the rowdiest of classrooms. It has built-in stereo speakers and, if touch isn’t your thing, an electronic pen that changes color with a twist of the shaft. Play a movie while surfing the Internet – all on an 82-inch screen. “Our interactive boards are already used across the Australian state of New South Wales,” the director of Panasonic’s system sales and marketing group, Masao Motoki, said. He was in Abu Dhabi recently showing off the Panaboard and all of Panasonic’s other commercial products, like high-speed color scanners, broadcasting equipment, and projectors. “Our products are famous, so there’s no need to advertise, but it always helps to demonstrate our latest technology,” he said.



Coachman the KingRe. TRENDS Watch Spectacular: I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened the June issue of TRENDS and saw the byline of the always-effervescent Alfred Coachman. My wife and I were living in Lucerne in the mid-1950s after I secured a job at a Swiss merchant bank. There was nobody we enjoyed seeing more on a reg-ular social basis than the vivacious Alfred. In those years he was working on the first series of wristwatch essays that would establish him as the king of timepiece journalism. My wife and I did some back-of-the-envelope calcula-tions and concluded that our friend must be 86 years young. We’re thrilled to see him back in front of a typewriter (does he still use that clunky Remington?) and displaying his enor-mous talent to the readers of your magazine. Alfred, here’s to your next column!Elliott Thorsen (Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands)

Mick, Keith, and AlfredRe. TRENDS Watch Spectacular: Hats off to the crew of TRENDS magazine for bring-ing Alfred Coachman out of retirement for the special Swiss watch issue. I have been following Coachman and his jet-setting life for years in the society pages of the world’s newspapers. My favorite story about Coach-

man was when he visited the Rolling Stones in the south of France when they were re-cording their “Exile on Main Street” album 40 years ago. According to some groupies who were partying with the Stones in their chateau, Keith Richards is said to have burst out laughing when he saw Coachman stride through the parlor buck naked – save for the enormous Swiss watch strapped to his wrist.Carl Bauer (Beverly Hills, Calif., U.S.A.)

Before Swiss NeutralityRe. TRENDS Watch Spectacular: I had no idea Alfred Coachman was back. I thought he had retired for good. A quick recollection of my knowledge of Mr. Coachman: My broth-er-in-law was a corporal with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division during World War II. It was December of 1944 and the Werma-cht surprised the Allies with a giant offensive across the Ardennes Forest; the Battle of the Bulge had begun. As the troops fought hard against the Nazis, my brother-in-law met a young reporter with the Stars & Stripes named Alfred Coachman. Granted, he was still a dec-ade away from achieving success with his ar-ticles about wristwatches. But there he was, reporting from the front lines and doing what he could to contribute to ultimate victory. I’m sure that the rest of his reporting career was far more leisurely – Swiss watch aficionados are more fun than Nazis, I would imagine.Floyd Forsythe (Boston, Mass., U.S.A.)

CLARIFICATIONA. Lange & Söhne is a German company that competes in the Swiss watch industry.

Home Cookin’Re. Last Word with Martin Sorrell: My company did several years of advanced temperature work at molecular levels to see the cause of urban heat and how billions in energy is used each year re-sponding to it. Solar interaction with buildings and exposed ground cover is causing them to gen-erate extreme heat they aren’t insulated for. We can’t give up on climate negotiations – we need to see the problem to address it. Paint your buildings – why do you think they whitewash build-ings? We did the opposite in North America and we are cooking the atmosphere while respond-ing with emissions that are toxic.Curtis Bennett (British Columbia, Canada)

LETTER OF THE MONTH

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hat do you see as the single greatest challenge to health in America, where you are based? What is the great-est challenge in the developing world?As a global business that serves more than 200 countries, I can tell you one of the challenges we see is the increasing so-cial and financial consequences of chron-ic diseases caused by poor nutrition and obesity, and the need for our business to do its part to help educate consumers and support their efforts to live healthy lives.

What is Coca-Cola doing to address this? We have a three-pronged approach. It in-volves education, variety, and physical activity. We educate on the importance of energy balance; we provide variety in the products and package sizes; and we encourage active, healthy living. In es-sence, our approach can be summed up as “think, drink, and move.”

There is consensus that weight gain is primarily the result of an imbalance of energy, basically too many calories in and not enough calories out. We believe that all foods and beverages can have a place in an active, healthy lifestyle that combines a sensible, balanced diet with regular physical activity. That’s why we actively support nutrition education and physical activity initiatives in more than 100 countries.

Part of the education process also involves us making it even easier for our consumers to make decisions about what they choose to drink. Last year, we were the first beverage company to commit to putting the calories on the front of our packaging.

While it’s important to reduce calories in many parts of the world, it’s equally im-portant to fill nutrition gaps in others. And we hope to use our beverage expertise to help in this area by increasing the variety of products we offer with added vitamins, minerals, and other beneficial ingredients. For example, in South Africa and Chile we offer Nurisha, a beverage enriched with 12 vitamins and minerals, to address a range of nutritional deficiencies in children, and in the Philippines we offer NutriJuice, a beverage focused on providing iron to children who have iron deficiency.

These are complex, challenging is-sues and we know we do not have all the answers. So we are focused on learning, contributing, and working with govern-ment, academia, health societies, and oth-er responsible members of civil society to address poor nutrition and obesity.

What role does Coca-Cola have to play in the future when there are noticea-ble moves toward eating unprocessed foods as part of a healthful diet?

For 124 years we’ve had an uncompro-mising commitment to product safety and quality, and to create great-tasting prod-ucts we can be proud to put our name on. We are all about providing options, so people have access to choices that suit their needs and lifestyles. Today, our bev-erage portfolio includes more than 500 brands, including sparkling beverag-es, juices and juice drinks, water, sports drinks, and ready-to-drink coffee and tea. And you can bet our portfolio will con-tinue to grow as we strive to stay ahead of what consumers want.

What plans does Coca-Cola have to make its products healthier?We think all of our products can fit into healthful lifestyles. That’s why we work so hard to provide a variety of products for every lifestyle, life stage, and occasion. Consumers who want to reduce the calo-ries or sugar they consume from beverages can choose from our continuously expand-ing portfolio of no- and low-calorie bev-erages, as well as smaller portion sizes of our regular beverages. Today, we provide more than 800 no- and low-calorie bever-ages, which make up nearly 25 percent of our global portfolio. This means we’ve got a great-tasting, no-calorie option for all of our leading sparkling beverages. Essen-tially, there’s a Coke for everyone.

The LasT Word WiTh John reid

Chances are that if you traveled to the remotest region on the face of the earth, you wouldn’t find much of anything. Except, perhaps, a Coca-Cola vending machine. Indeed, Coke is everywhere. There are few brands with more history and consumer loyalty than Coca-Cola. These days the company is attempting to address one of its most significant challenges since the New Coke debacle of the 1980s – questions about healthy consumption of food and drink. Coke’s John Reid tells TRENDS that the company is well positioned for this challenge because of the breadth of its product portfolio.

W

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Trends | July 2010 | Boom Town

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