Summit Notebook

from Chrystia Freeland:

The revolutionary significance of job growth

It was striking to hear how encouraged both Klaus Kleinfeld and Dominic Barton sounded when Chrystia asked them about the effects of the recent turmoil in the Middle East on the business environment there. Barton believed the regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt were "the dawn of a new good thing that's occurring" and noted that it is likely that new capital will come into these countries as a new leadership emerges. Kleinfeld, whose company is in the process of building the world's largest integrated aluminum system in Saudi Arabia, said that Alcoa is still very comfortable in the region and that the only surprises with their Saudi partners have been positive surprises. For Kleinfeld, the most assured way to bring about stability in a region plagued by unrest is to have businesses come in and create jobs:

If there's one thing that the Middle East needs particularly for the young -- as well as well-educated people -- it's jobs. And it does it in a region which typically has not had much of an economic growth around Ras Azzour. So that's all very, very good. And not just for us as a company but also for the region. And it's gonna have a stabilizing as well as a kind of uplifting, positive element

Like Saudi Arabia, China has a large population that accepts a level of repression so long as the leadership can deliver economic growth. Barton, a China expert who headed McKinsey's Asia operations before ascending to the consultancy's top spot, said that he did not think that dissent in China would spillover and create a Middle-East-style uprising because the Chinese Communist Party has been able to stay on top of job growth. He had an interesting anecdote about McKinsey's study on the effectiveness of China's stimulus plan that illustrated the leadership's obsession with maintaining growth:

During the financial crisis, there was a stimulation program that was being put in place. And we'd been asked, almost ordered to do work to figure out what sort of discount should you put on TVs in tier three cities? It was a very focused question. And the reason was they were trying to create consumer demand in a very sophisticated manner. Do you sort of drop the price by 25 percent or do you have people buy it and they get a 25 percent rebate from the mayor? That was literally the thing.

Is investor confidence returning to the Middle East?

A recovery in the Middle East and the prospects for investment are on the agenda at the Reuters Middle East and Investment Summit, taking place in Dubai, Riyadh, Cairo, Kuwait, Beirut, Bagdad, Abu Dhabi and London.

In the wake of Dubai’s debt crisis, which rocked financial markets globally and dented confidence in the region, top executives and officials will discuss whether the investment climate in the region is improving and confidence returning. 2011 will be a year of more restructurings, but the region’s capital needs will lead to a surge in debt issues and even a possible revival of the IPO market.

Note to OPEC: Siberia not Saudi

   An episodic courtship between Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter and its sometime rivals in the OPEC group of oil exporting nations, went cold at the beginning of this year when Russia failed to make good on hints that it might cut output in line with OPEC, dominated by Saudi Arabia and other desert states of the Middle East.     Prices for oil, the economic lifeblood of Russia and OPEC countries alike, had fallen below $40, OPEC argued, and supply cuts had to be made to boost prices and finance investment into the oil industry.     Alexander Medvedev, deputy chief executive of Russian energy giant Gazprom, told this year’s Reuters Russia Investment Summit that Russia had an excuse for avoiding the multimillion barrel cuts imposed by OPEC: the Siberian chill .    “It is a very simple explanation for this: We are not in a desert where it’s easily to regulate, we are in an extreme situation in Siberia where reserves could be damaged if you up and down your production levels.”     If Russia shuts down Siberian wells, its industry members argue, they could seize up forever as they go cold.     And Russia hardly left OPEC hanging, Medvedev argued: The financial crisis took its toll even on Russia’s cash rich oil companies: “Actually the supply was substantially lower in the first half of the year.”       Medvedev also said he was still struggling to understand where from the rival Nabucco pipeline will get its gas to rival Gazprom on European markets.      “Even at the (Nabucco) signing ceremony I looked at the photos and tried to find any gas supplier and with all my attempts I could not find any. And it looked strange.”