Ka$hakhstan
August 10th, 2008
Via Arabian Business, an interesting look at the wave of Middle Eastern investment targeting Kazakhstan. Up for grabs is the vast and untapped commodity wealth of a country the size of Western Europe, with all the wheat, copper and uranium that Gulf states need. As the article notes: “…The head of investment banking at Renaissance […]
Read more »Dialing for Dollars (or Dirhams?): Gulf Arab Telcos Expanding Their Area Codes
January 21st, 2008
Two recent reports on Gulf Arab telecom operators continuing their expansionist trends out of their home markets, where most have been riding a wave of economic growth spurred by a five-fold increase in oil prices since 2002. First, an article detailing Saudi Telecom’s – the largest Arab telecom firm by market value – $2.6 billion […]
Read more »A Thirsty Dragon Strikes in Turkmenistan
January 14th, 2008
Via Energy Daily, reports that one relatively obscure Western oil company – Ireland’s Dragon Oil – managed to beat out mega-competitors such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Royal Dutch Shell to develop Turkmenistan’s nascent Caspian oilfields, the result of years of careful planning during a time when oil traded for below $20 a barrel, and […]
Read more »Challenges & Opportunities Facing Emerging Markets in the Middle East & North Africa
January 10th, 2008
In a recent article published by Knowledge@Wharton, Howard Pack (a professor of business and public policy at Wharton) and Marcus Noland (a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics) examined how Arab countries are coping with globalization & exploiting the recent influx of hydrocarbon-based money into their economies. We found the following notes […]
Read more »Frontier Markets: Turning Tables on Traditional Concepts & Making Up for Lost Time
January 8th, 2008
As noted in this report from Seeking Alpha, frontier markets are apt to continue to become more and more common considerations for investors. In fact, even though this blog is partially oriented around such maverick investing environments, one can’t help but wonder – given the number of articles recently focused on frontier markets – if […]
Read more »Peak Nationalism: The New Seven Sisters in an Era of $100 Oil
January 4th, 2008
Two very interesting looks at impact that the high price of oil is having upon petro-states and the New Seven Sisters. The first, from the Economist, notes that while oil is now almost five times more expensive than it was at the beginning of 2002, the price increase is primarily a result of geography, not […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.