GCC

Landscape of valuation services in GCC

Interview with Mr. M. R. Raghu, CEO, Marmore MENA Intelligence What is the market size of private firms in GCC? Private firms encompass of any non-listed firms, these firms could be large family run businesses or small and medium enterprises. Private firms have great importance in terms of its contribution to the GDP for their respective economies and for employment generation. In the GCC, SMEs constitute close to 90% (i.e. about 1.5 million SMEs) of the total companies’ base. The...

Why business and market intelligence important for GCC corporates?

Interview with Mr. M.R.Raghu, CEO, Marmore MENA Intelligence Do GCC companies actively seek market intelligence? Private organizations in the GCC often find themselves in a situation where they need to make decisions of considerable importance with substantial consequences under uncertainty. In such scenarios, they seek out more information to enhance their understanding and take calculated risks. The foremost procurers and users of market intelligence, the private sector, obtains research for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from strategic, economic, industry,...

ETF’s in GCC: How far have they come?

Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) was first introduced in the year 1993 and since then, it has made a long journey and won the interest and participation of many retail and institutional investors. Currently, there are more than 7,000 ETFs traded globally. The global ETF assets were worth about USD 7 trillion as of august 2020 (https://etfgi.com/news/press-releases/2020/09/etfgi-reports-assets-invested-etfs-and-etps-listed-globally-broke). Today ETFs are available in many countries, based on pure equity or a mix of equity and debt or fixed income instruments or alternative...

GCC retail sector in the post-covid world: Bound for a “K” shaped recovery

The pandemic has changed the lives of billions of global citizens. Businesses have been forced to adopt new ways of functioning. The post pandemic world is expected to be never like before and experts have christened it as the “new-normal”. The GCC retail sector is no exemption to this. Being one of the region’s important sector for the economy, the retail sector has witnessed one of its worst performance in 2020. GCC retail sector, unlike in other regions, is not...

Importance of Fintech amid COVID-19

Interview with Mr. M.R.Raghu, CEO, Marmore MENA Intelligence Has the role of Fintech become more critical, given the pandemic? With the subsequent waves of the COVID-19 in place, it might take longer than expected for the situation to get back to absolute normalcy. This puts a spotlight on the increasing need for digitisation with Fintech. COVID-19 has certainly fast tracked Fintech adoption, which is very much evident from the data points. According to Mastercard, in MEA region contactless payments has...

UAE’s 100% foreign ownership will boost investor confidence, cut cost of operations

The UAE’s announcement of 100 per cent foreign ownership across the board effective June 1, is touted as game changing and a master stroke. This was the biggest demand from various business councils for decades. The current system requires 51 per cent local sponsorship along with majority representation in the board with the Chair being Emirati. In a country where more than 80 per cent of the population are expats and where the economy is fairly better diversified than their...

How can GCC Banks reset for growth beyond COVID-19?

Interview with Mr. M.R.Raghu, CEO, Marmore MENA Intelligence How GCC banks reset for growth beyond the COVID-19 crisis? The performance of the GCC banking sector had already started to get impacted before the coronavirus pandemic on account of global economic issues, however, the whole situation got exacerbated rapidly on account of the pandemic. For instance, UAE listed banks’ cumulative net income in 2020 witnessed the first negative growth in over 5 years, falling by 42% over 2019 on account of...

GCC Asset Management and its challenges

Interview with Mr. M.R.Raghu, CEO, Marmore MENA Intelligence How big is GCC Asset Management industry and who are the major players? The GCC Asset Management Industry manages around USD 59 billion in assets, spread across 223 funds across the region. The Saudi asset management industry leads the region managing 87% of the assets and having 57% of the funds domiciled in the country. Kuwait comes in at a distant second, having 5% of the total AUM domiciled in the county....

الاستفسارات الشائعة’s: Break-even Oil price

1. What is Break even oil price? What does an increasing or decreasing BEOP mean? Fiscal breakeven oil price (BEP) can be defined simply as the “oil price that balances an oil‐exporting country’s budget. Ever since the fall of Brent crude prices in mid – 2014, the GCC countries have envisioned various plans to reduce their dependence on oil revenues. The COVID-19 pandemic sent oil prices tumbling owing to a global lockdown and travel restrictions in place since March 2020....

IMF forecasts steeper fall in GCC countries’ 2020 GDP

As the world charts its recovery from COVID-19’s impact amidst the resurgence of cases in some countries and lingering threat of spike in others, the countries’ recovery path and economic outlook are being closely watched. IMF in its recent World Economic Outlook (October 2020) has revised GDP forecasts for GCC countries downwards from its April forecast, citing deeper-than-expected impact of lockdowns on mobility and weak global growth. For GCC as a whole, IMF expects GDP to contract by 6% in...