A letter to Santa: What UAE Inc. wants for Christmas

Dear Santa,

Some say you don’t exist but we know you do! They’re just being smarty-pants, thinking they know everything. We believe in you, Santa, we know you can help us.

We’re hurting pretty bad here in the land of plenty; all the joy is gone out of making a quick buck – no one laughs anymore. No one believes anymore – we’re too smart, too sophisticated or too cool to believe.

We’re trying to be good Santa, so we didn’t over-leverage our stock markets or the property portfolio beyond our means and look what happened to the valuations. Can you put a ceiling below the falling real estate markets, please? Pretty please?

Thank you indeed for buoying up the oil price a bit but that hasn’t helped matter much – at least not yet. Maybe you need to push it up a bit more, perhaps to the magical $100/barrel level. Could you please do that?

The likes of World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are telling our governments to introduce new taxes on us – can you make those organisations disappear for a while? You can make them re-appear once our profitability is good again so we are in a better position to cope with the additional burden.

As you know, Santa, we have been trying hard to improve our corporate governance and have made a lot of headway already. I know it is something that we’ll have to do alone but can you at least improve its perception among the wider world so they also start seeing the good in our companies? Thanks for that in anticipation.

The European debt crisis is killing not just the markets there but is also impacting liquidity and credit quality here. Can you please stabilise their markets so we don’t get the credit freeze here?

We could really do with improved liquidity and less expensive bank lending here. We know that banks here indulged in name-lending and got caught in the default spiral, but they haven’t been bad at all this year – they’ve been very cautious (too cautious, we say) in lending and have improved their provisioning levels. Can you help them help us?

Santa, can you make us reflect on our past in a way that helps us make our future better? One of us, Imad Ghandour, who is the Chairman of Gulf Venture Capital Association, says: “Your friend Confucius observed that we learn by three ways: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. We had enough of the bitter experience in the past two years. Please inspire us how to pursue our prosperity through the first two options.” He also sends his regards.

Another representative of ours, M.R. Raghu, Senior Vice President – Research at Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz), says that we are getting hurt regardless of the fact that we didn’t start the fire. He says: “We step into 2011 with lots of trepidation... Unlike the US, we did not create the global financial crisis yet we seem to suffer the most. Unlike emerging markets that withered the storm very well, we at GCC floundered at many levels including corporate governance.

Even strong and stable oil price does not seem to assist our cause. Santa, remember this is perception but reality is at a corporate level companies have turned wiser and have learnt enduring lessons. Governments are investing as never before. Santa, help us spread this message to the outside world in 2011. This is all we are asking for.”

Indeed, this is all we are asking for. Okay, we know we’re asking for a lot but we need everything we asked for (and more).

If you can’t get it all for us, then can you pass along the things you can’t get to that New Years baby in the diaper so he can bring them to us?

Thanks,
UAE Inc.
 

P.S. We’ll be leaving you yummy cookies for all the trouble

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