Greetings from a very warm Dubai and the the 2014 ACTME Annual Conference!
Always a pleasure to be here, gearing up for 2 days of the very best in corporate treasury learning, sharing and networking. We will be underway when this is uploaded, so once you have finished reading me, please follow us on Twitter @actupdate #meac14!
Like many other of the world's developing regions, man's ingenuity to build and develop is a feature of the Gulf, particularly when given resource and incentive. A consistent feature of the Gulf press in the past few months has been the balance between competing aspects of economic news. In one corner, solid 4-5% GDP growth figures, offset in the other by an element of inflation news against a backdrop of continued regional political and military uncertainty. Most commentators are positive however and it is hard to disagree.
What this means is that over the past 6 or more years in the Middle East, treasurers clearly have had to work their way through these challenges and in many cases are the ' last man standing' when it comes to interpreting their impact. We are going to be working through a wider range of issues than ever before in the next couple of days so there will be no excuses for not keeping up.
There is a zoological myth that sharks need to keep moving to keep breathing; for treasurers that probably means keeping up their coffee and Arabic pastry intake at the wide variety of events available for finance professionals in the region. The ACTME conference is no different and the 'Dubai pound' is not a unit of currency! Fear not, we are well fed and watered for our efforts!
