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Given its location, political actors and recent history, Lebanon has long been under the international regulatory spotlight. The US Treasury’s fingering of the Lebanese Canadian Bank in 2011 for money laundering concerns rocked its financial sector. Beirut has since been scrambling to address any short-comings, while at the same time dealing with sanctions on neighbouring Syria.…

While Syria is mired in its bloody civil war, it remains targeted by multilateral sanctions. But despite being essentially cut off from the international banking system, Damascus is evading these sanctions by using Russian banks, and is being financially propped up by Iran.…

PAKISTAN meat sector executives believe their export sector is underperforming, failing especially to seize sales in affluent international halal markets.

With an estimated annual output of 2.2 million tonnes, Pakistan is the 19^th largest producer of meat in the world.…

ANTI-CORRUPTION campaigners Transparency International have criticised sustained cuts in the UK’s Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) budget after the SFO lost 3% of the evidence from a high profile corruption investigation.

“A strong and well-resourced SFO is critical to the fight against corporate bribery,” said Robert Barrington, executive director of Transparency International UK, after the SFO admitted losing data from its investigation into defence contractor BAE Systems over alleged bribery in winning a massive defence contract from Saudi Arabia.…

ISLAMIC banks are big business in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, but not thus far in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), however, recently took a USD5 million, 15% equity stake in Kenya’s Gulf African Bank (GAB) to support corporate finance and lending to small and medium businesses – its first in the sub-Saharan Islamic bank sector.…

PERSONAL care product market in the Middle East can be divided into two current trends: sales in the affluent Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are booming, while on the other side of the region, in the Levant, markets are feeling the effects of the Syrian conflict, with the loss of tourists and low consumer confidence impacting bottom lines.…

FOR some time, scientists have been aware that the concept of something being ‘bigger’ on the inside than outside’ is not entirely locked away in the realms of science fiction. This is particularly the case with researchers working on the storage and utilisation of natural gas who have focused on metal organic frameworks (MOFs), which can store much more gas than an empty cylinder of the same size.…

much of the rest of the Middle East, with political and economic instability causing a slowdown in construction and new projects on hold, Saudi Arabia’s paint sector is expanding fast and attracting international players to this currently stable growing market. A key reason has been a USD131 billion government stimulus package launched in 2012, which is fuelling construction.…

EUROPEAN Union (EU) heads of states and governments have urged their ministers to agree important pieces of draft EU legislation that could potentially curb tax evasion in the bloc.

Meeting during a European Council meeting in Brussels last week (May 22), leaders were under pressure to act from media reports revealing how much untaxed incomes politicians, companies and rich business owners have stashed in tax havens.…

THE ARAB Spring may have increased short-term doubts about the political stability of Europe’s southern and eastern Mediterranean neighbours, but the long-term case for energy cooperation between these regions is surely unarguable.

Europe needs more energy than it can generate, and it has (for the time being at least) money to buy energy from north Africa and the Levant.…