Azerbaijan: When It Comes To Pipelines, It’s Not Personal, It’s Strictly Business
July 24th, 2013
Via Eurasia Review, an interesting commentary on the Nabucco pipeline failure: Just like the protagonist in the eponymous opera, the Nabucco pipeline, the one-time leading option for carrying natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, has been outmaneuvered and knocked from its preeminent perch. In the opera, Nabucco is a king of Babylon who is outwitted […]
Read more »Ace Is The Place With The Afghan Hardware Man
July 19th, 2013
Via Emerging Markets Frontier blog, an article on Ace Hardware’s planned entry to Afghanistan: Growing uncertainty swirls around Afghanistan’s economic climate as the country inches closer to December 2014, when U.S. and international combat troops are expected to withdraw from an increasingly unpopular war. Many Afghans believe the end of the war also means the […]
Read more »Market Focus: Cambodia
July 19th, 2013
Via Global Finance Magazine, a look at Cambodia: Often overshadowed by its regional rivals Vietnam, Thailand and, most recently, Myanmar, Cambodia has been undergoing a quiet transformation. After more than a decade of 6%-plus growth—with just one hiccup during the global crisis in 2009—the Southeast Asian nation of 15 million people has begun attracting serious […]
Read more »Russia’s Gazprom to Buy Kyrgyz State Energy Firm
July 17th, 2013
Courtesy of STRATFOR (subscription required), a report on Gazprom’s upcoming acquisition of a Kyrgyz energy firm: Russia’s looming acquisition of a key energy company in Kyrgyzstan will boost its position in the strategic country, with economic and security implications for the broader Central Asian region. Kyrgyz state energy firm Kyrgyzgaz head Turgunbek Kulmurzayev said July 17 that Russia’s […]
Read more »Extreme Franchising: Bringing RadioShack to Afghanistan
July 16th, 2013
Via Businessweek, an interesting look at Radio Shack’s efforts to enter Afghanistan: The next time you stroll through downtown Kabul, you might be able to buy batteries from a RadioShack (RSH) outlet, the result of a new effort by the U.S. to shore up Afghanistan’s economy: selling American franchises to Afghan entrepreneurs. The U.S. has […]
Read more »Somalia’s Somewhat Friendly Skies
July 12th, 2013
Courtesy of the New York Times, an interesting look at the nascent Somali airline industry: Aden Abdulle International Airport, Mogadishu, September 2011. One recent morning at the start of the Kenyan rainy season, I boarded a shuttle bus at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. At a distant corner of the tarmac, we stopped before an […]
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.