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WHAT do you know about Qatar?
Sri Lanka: A one family state?
The Banker Who Cant Get Out of Qatar
David
Proctor thought he had found a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a Gulf
financial powerhouse at Al-Khaliji Bank. It didn't work out. But almost a year
after he was removed as chief executive Proctor's life is in limbo, as Qatar's
authorities decline to grant him an exit visa that would reunite him with his
family. Eric Ellis investigates
Thailand has found much-needed stability under the Abhisit Government but maintaining it is a problem
Sleepy Dili, capital of East Timor, doesn't have much going for it. Its tallest building is just three storeys
Crony v reformer; fight becomes feisty in
Jakarta
IT IS Asia's feud of the year, and one that could define whether Indonesia makes it to international investment grade, or will spend some more time in the economic basket-case category
Fire rages over Red Dragon "prawn ultimatum"
A spat between a company controlled by one of Asia's richest families and a group of well-known western investors is turning ugly. Owners of Red Dragon's exchangeable bonds have moved to put the company in default. Parent company CP Prima is fighting back hard. As Eric Ellis reports, it's all part of the bitter cocktail that is Indonesia's capital markets
Dubai's debt crisis - A 'new paradigm' built on sand
At Dubai's soaring, spurious peak, one factoid the emirate's bling-burdened battalion of 'corporate communications consultants' liked to slip to junketing media was that Dubai had the world's densest concentration of cranes. Impossible to verify but too good to ignore, the glib observation almost always made it into media reports. It compelled people to want to go where the action was: subliminally, it suggested an economy where the fast buck came easy
The Dubai 'miracle' was always a mirage of spin
NOW that the external impact of Dubai's sovereign debt crisis seems to have passed, for now at least, what's the big lesson from this drama-in-the-dunes? I think it boils down quite simply...
After the war comes Sri Lanka’s refugee crisis (shorter version or longer)
Indonesian reform the path to investment
PESKY corporate regulators sniffing around the business? Stock exchange on your
case? Not in Jakarta, where it's plain sailing for all manner of corporate
governance fiddles
Indonesia’s elite has too much to lose from addressing its actions in East Timor - part 1 - part 2
From financial powerhouses to the houses of power
Former bankers are emerging as political leaders across a region that could desperately use the economic smarts of expert high-financiers, perhaps fixing the impact of mistakes made by colleagues elsewhere
WITH Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) re-elected for a second term as Indonesia’s president, the big question Jakarta bankers are asking is whom he will appoint to his cabinet
World turns disapproving eyes on Singapore banquet
WERE every high school as wonderful as Singapore's United World College....
Each morning, a convoy of chauffeur-driven Mercedes, BMWs and SUVs sweep up to the expansive campus, dropping well-shod students dangling all manner of modish teenage bling; mobile phones, computers, designer this and that. The sumptuous grounds are more suggestive of a five-star resort than a secondary school
The World’s Most Powerful Women - Emilia Pires
Exiled to Australia at age 15, she spent 24 years away from East Timor. Good experience for her job as finance minister
East Timor's Finance Minister, Emilia Pires, remembers well her first days at Moreland High School in the tough Coburg of the 1970s
Afghanistan needs an economic leader
The Karzai regime has lost the will to rule
Postwar Sri Lanka Holds Promise, at Last
After a long civil war, Sri Lanka looks ready to do business
East beats West in the Land of Morning Calm
CROWDED, dynamic, bewildering Seoul — the thrusting capital of Australia's third-largest trading partner; the world's most technologically wired nation-city, boasting the world's fastest broadband; home to the world's best airport; and, thanks to its kimchi-loving commuters, the only mass transit system that permanently reeks of garlic
City Life: Morning calm in financial markets despite mad Kim’s nuclear endgame
I feel like Forrest Gump, a barometer of Asian Armageddon
Kookmin has good news for Asian bond market
Fear and incomprehension still dominate our perception of Asia
Kevin Rudd’s plan to make Australia the West’s most ‘Asia-literate’ country has nothing going for it except geography
Kidnappings, extortion and mayhem make Nepal a tough place to do business. But an American woman and her son have managed to keep their distillery company going
Climbing the world’s highest peak is the ultimate adventure, says Eric Ellis, but with trips costing up to $100,000 each and numerous fatalities each season, it can be an expensive one too
Thailand's lesson For the West
East Timor: Learning on the Job
East Timor's politicians can't agree on how to handle its oil and gas wealth. So Venancio Alves Maria puts the cash into T bills. Smart move.
Campaign fever and the corruption crackdown make Indonesia sweat
President Yudhoyono may seem to be pandering to Islamists, but the grafters will be running scared if he wins another term
O brave New Paper that has such people in it
A cornered tiger still has teeth
One of the world's most notorious terrorists seems to be cornered....
The return of the old-school Thais
Eric Ellis meets the Wykehamist and the Old Etonian who head recession-hit Thailand’s new government, and asks whether foreign investors can have confidence in them
The perils of insulting King Bhumibol
Eric Ellis ponders the Thai monarch’s political role as an Australian writer is prosecuted for lèse majesté
Abhisit Vejjajiva is the latest to lead Thailand in a tumultuous 12 months. Does he herald economic reform or simply a new round of governmental intrigue?
Putting Indonesian Governance to the Test
Where on Earth can you find a 500% return these days? Here's one that its sponsors claim is guaranteed. Hmmm.
Corruption is the hot election issue, but the biggest fish are yet to be fried
It’s early days in Indonesia’s election season, but already Jakarta is transformed into a riot of colour....
Are the Turks ready to be part of Europe? Brussels says no but Kylie says yes
It was Kylie Minogue who made me think Turkey and Europe might just about be ready for each other
Foster's hasn't achieved the success in wine than it's had in beer. But if the brewer can pare its products, investors should have reason to raise a glass
Australia: Out of pocket in the Outback
Turkey: Its about the journey not the destination
Australia: Swan is happy but not all Australians are as impressed
The Philippines: Teves faces up to taxing issues
As China struts the world stage in the lead-up to the Olympics, its behaviour has been more revealing about future relations than anyone could have imagined
THE best Asian budget airline story I’ve heard was in 2006, while taking a short walk in Pakistan’s Hindu Kush to visit the old princely state of Chitral, a Shangri-la where Osama bin Laden is said to be enjoying the alpine air and hospitality
He'd rather be nude: how an expat found peace and business success
IN AN ERA of Enrons and HIHs, Opes Primes and Chartwells, an unusual French-born businessman in India may well be the corporate antidote for this age of greed
Honey, disconnect the phone, I'm back in Soviet Central Asia
SHE'S young and glamorous, and rich too. Though still only in her mid-30s, there seems nothing Gulnara Karimov can't do
Thailand Looks for Return to Growth
IT WAS a simple act but, for Asia, an unusual one. But if it catches on, it could mark a new era for how economic policy is executed in coup-plagued Thailand
CHATTING with Ajith Cabraal, the amiable governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, in his lofty eyrie above Colombo, one could be forgiven that he’s presiding over some approximation of a Switzerland-sur-tropique
Whatever happened to Sir Richard Evans?
Eric Ellis tracks down the former chairman of BAE Systems amid the wintry steppes of Kazakhstan, where he is trying to introduce Western notions of corporate governance
A Tell-All Book
About Rupert Murdoch
Few of Rupert Murdoch’s former employees are eager to write about him. Likewise, few of his publications are eager to review a book about him. This review was turned down by the Far Eastern Economic Review, which is part of Murdoch-owned Dow Jones, after it was initially accepted. Nor was it reviewed by the Murdoch-owned Australian or the Australian Literary Review
The old is new again (minus ideas) in the murky world of Pakistani politics
AUSTRALIANS know how it feels. They felt it last November. A nation rises the day after an election with the warm inner glow of having voted for change, a fresh start. Everything seems new again. That's a bit how Pakistanis feel after last week's election. Civilian rule is to be restored after nine years of dictatorship. They voted out the pro-Taliban Islamists as well, so the terror-panicked West gets to feels the love too. Except that in Pakistan, it's always complicated.
Pakistani elections encourage investors
Pakistanis spurn a dictator and religious extremists in a long-awaited vote
Eric Ellis
A look at polls in Peshawar through the eyes of an election observer
Dubai's rags-to-riches miracle built on the toil of exploited foreign workers
Today, in the Arabian emirate of Dubai, the great and good of the Australian Football League will slap the backs of local expatriates and home-grown potentates in a dollar-drenched celebration of all things Australian, Dubaian and corporate
Afghanistan's Central Bank numbers crunched by Indian accountant
WE ALL know Iraq’s bad but to hear many experts tell it, Afghanistan is the genuine headache of the age, military and economic
Farewell to Asia’s greatest kleptocrat
The death of Indonesia’s former dictator may spur attempts to recover the loot accumulated by his family
Keeping it in the family
After a decade of concealing their enormous wealth, the Soeharto offspring
suddenly have found themselves back in the limelight
Nazarbayev Inc: Inside Samruk, Kazakhstan's new state holding company
The curtain finally falls on Suharto, with
the actors still performing their roles
Singapore: Libel case a test for Murdoch
Dow Jones brought some unwanted baggage with it
The most pressing priority for Pakistan after today's brutal termination of the Bhutto dynasty is to stop this difficult nation plunging into civil war
Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev,
has decreed the creation of a state holding company, roughly on
Singaporean/Malaysian lines, to oversee
and rationalize the country’s lucrative but inchoate collection of state-owned
companies and foster corporate governance. Eric Ellis reports on a confrontation
of cultures
Interview with Sir Richard Evans, Samruk chairman
A British corporate warhorse, Sir Richard Evans, has been hired to pull the Samruk operation together
PERHAPS the best way to view Corporate Afghanistan — there’s a term you don’t often hear — is to regard it as a never-ending spigot draining sovereign wealth funds into the world’s biggest tax haven
Unease grows between Jakarta and Singapore
Resentment and envy still appear to underpin a testy relationship, writes Eric Ellis
In a sorry end to a glittering career, Australian cardboard-box king Richard Pratt was caught price-fixing
How business thrives in Pakistan's Epaulette Empire - Why Bhutto would be bad for business
PAKISTAN'S military dictator Pervez Musharraf has declared martial law, effectively mounting a coup on himself
Splintering Asia's glass ceiling
Choosing the region's top businesswomen is easy, writes Eric Ellis, but where are all the Australians?
"We have your pictures, and we are going to come and get you”
Our list of the most powerful women in global business demonstrates their rise in male-dominated fields, from nuclear energy to mining to oil
The temblors this time weren't nearly as devastating...
Web of cash, power and cronies
Singapore isn't just skilled at mandatory executions of drug traffickers, running an excellent airport and selling cameras on Orchard Road.
It also does a useful trade keeping Burma's military rulers and their cronies afloat
More chaos than calm in eye of the Tigers
City Life - Colombo
Peace would be a better business plan for the island of a hundred ministers...
Tea with the Tigers becomes a turbulent brew
Humbled but not off the Flight Path
A failed $9 billion takeover bid in May by a private-equity group for Australian flag carrier Qantas— which would have been the biggest deal in aviation history—seems to have humbled the airline’s pugnacious CEO, Geoff Dixon
NEW CENTURY BEJIING
Wendi Deng profile (in Chinese)
Sri Lankan tea maker Dilmah is taking a leaf from the wine industry to label its beverage as high-end and chic
Eyewitness account of Tamil attack
Sunday's Tamil attack was yet another embarrassment to President Mahinda Rajapakse's dysfunctional government
The Flying Tigers of Tamil Eelam Buzz Sri Lanka
A surreal air raid and gunfire awaken the snoozing guests of the Galle Face, Colombo’s famous old seaside hotel
The island state that wishes it could be towed to less murky waters
City Life - War has already been declared in Iran — between Coca-Cola and the theocrats
The Shah is Dead. Long live the Shah — and I don’t mean Reza Pahlavi, the 45-year-old pretender to his late father’s Peacock Throne, whom many in Washington would like to install atop this most vexatious nation
Squeezed between the mullahs and George W. Bush, and with war and a nuclear future looming, many moderate Iranian families are planning their escape
Sanctions? Coke and Pepsi found a way around them and are battling for market share in Tehran with local Zamzam Cola
It's difficult enough getting into the secretive theocracy that is Iran, but once inside, you enter a world locked in the past and riddled with corruption and cronyism
Cold, lonely, annoyed, uninformed and without toiletries in the heart of the Axis of Evil
India: just as messy as it has always been
Booming, business-mad India is not the full story, as Eric Ellis discovers, to his cost
Ferry expensive journey
Kangaroo Island is in the thrall of an overpriced monopoly ferry service to and
from the South Australian mainland
Hot spots, pot shots and gold pots for the brazen and the bold
Compile a fake CV, head for a war zone, and a fortune in taxpayers' dollars can be yours
A short walk with Eric
Newby
Warriors with scimitars and muskets have given way to warlords with AK-47s and
mobile phones, but there are still hidden valleys of timeless peace and beauty
War of words over a Sri Lankan literary festival
A flamboyant hotelier’s plan to pair his tsunami charity with a lit fest draws pointed questions from donors and book lovers alike
Eric Ellis suggests potential slogans and policy statements from new Labor leader and former Australian diplomat to Beijing, Kevin Rudd
The Iron Lady at the Heart of Pakistan's New Economy
IT WAS France’s wartime resistance leader and later President Charles de Gaulle who lamented how difficult effective governance was in a nation where there are 246 varieties of cheese. Pakistan’s new central banker Dr Shamshad Akhtar would sympathise