You were saying that there is something missing here in Davos. What is it? Well, I am shocked, actually, more than anything else by the unanimity with which everyone is so euphoric about the prospects of the year ahead. Normally, as a conservative person, I just find that we need to stop and think. Yes, there are many, many good things to be happy about but, equally, there is a challenging road ahead. But I don’t find economists and policymakers here talking about any of those roadblocks or any of those negative issues. There is an enormous unanimity in this euphoric feeling, which leaves me a little bit disturbed. I feel that the themes are interesting, but there seems to be a little too much feel-good. It means we are scratching the surface; we are not really digging deep into the issues that should really concern us. Climate change is being discussed here but I wonder how deeply. We are talking about religious tolerance … But the voice of reason says that never, in my view, in the past who knows how many centuries, have the major religions been as polarized in their thinking as they are today. So we need to try a little bit harder to find a solution as opposed to just locking them all out and saying everything is wonderful. And where could the solutions lie? Well, I am neither an economist nor a policymaker. I just run a private equity firm, and quite happily at that, but I think that greater focus and a greater amount of time at the forum should be spent on building the bridges with steps that need to be reported back on aggressively and followed up on. I don’t think that enough, for example, was done in this year’s forum to discuss Islam versus Christianity, Judaism, the tolerance issue and the very important issue that people are talking about - the religious divide. Even within Islam, for the first time in 1,500 years, people are talking Sunni and Shi’ite. Why are they talking Sunni, Shi’ite? It’s the same religion; why are we getting so aggressive about the potential divide? I think that we should be looking to build bridges, not sticking a sort of wedge in to widen the divide. But inasmuch as your own business is concerned, what is the feedback you are getting from your interactions with colleagues from across the world? I share the views of the economists in being euphoric [laughs]. Everything is going very well. As you know, we have grown in the past year and we have more than doubled in size in terms of funds under management. Today, with the seven funds that we have, we are approaching $4.3 billion in total size. We increased our capital during the course of the year at the holding company level up to a billion dollars, and some of the best institutions in the region and outside the region are our shareholders. What this has told me is that there is a greater focus on the Middle East. I am seeing that certainly at this year’s forum. I have attended and participated in a number of sessions that are geared to understanding more of the Middle East. I think people are fascinated by the explosion of liquidity in the Middle East region, how to tap it and how to exploit it. My own personal feeling is that the quantum of money that needs to be spent on infrastructure in the coming years just in the Middle East region exceeds a trillion dollars, $600 billion on power alone. Look at the numbers for Saudi Arabia, look at the numbers for India, Pakistan, the UAE and so on. You realize that if nothing else happens, the excess oil surpluses that have been generated by governments over the course of the past few years are going to be put to very good use in the infrastructure space, which will have a fabulous knock-on effect on the private sector, on job creation and on the general wellbeing of the economy. Besides infrastructure, which sectors are you most aggressive on and where are your putting your money? First of all, we can divide our business into two very clear areas - one is the private equity space and the other is the infrastructure space. On the traditional, standard private equity space, we continue to maintain that there are enormous opportunities in the region - extending from Morocco to India because we define our region as Menasa - and now I am very pleased to see that a lot of people are talking about the region as Menasa as opposed to Mena. Because, you know, India has more in common with the Middle East than it has with China. Pakistan certainly has more in common with the Gulf than it has with any of its neighbors. So, I am seeing a lot of people buying into that philosophy and when you look across the region from the private equity space when you are investing in telecommunications, healthcare, education, retail, the opportunities actually go on and on. So, there is a lot of money coming into the sector. I always urge investors: don’t throw money around, don’t change your perception of risk and don’t alter, in your rush to invest, the basic parameters that led you to invest in the first place. What kind of returns are we seeing on your investments? We continue to experience top returns. Every single return that we have experienced in the past two years has led to us returning many multiples of our investors’ capital. In no instance have we returned less than five times the original invested capital. So the IRRs are actually well ahead of the 50 percent mark. And that’s something that can continue to hold at that level? We continue to work toward that. That’s our aspiration. The themes at Davos this time are education and climate change. What role does a company like yours have in these two? Let’s take education first. Look, it’s very simple. Eighty million new jobs need to be created in the Arab world between now and 2020 - I am sure you have heard the statistics - to maintain the level of unemployment. Where are those jobs going to come from? They are going to come from the people who are well educated or have been through technical and vocational programs. In order to do that we have to invest in education, we have to invest in our region aggressively in the quality of education, and ensure that at least going up to high school level we are equipping our children with the tools that enable them to work in today’s technologically challenging world. And if we give them the ability to then proceed either to university or to a vocation, we would have done a good job. And from our part we have been evaluating investment in three specific education opportunities that span the Menasa region, one of which is very close to fruition. What about climate change? Our knowledge on this is a lot less. Of course, as responsible corporate citizens we are following this and we are aware of it and we are aware that we need to play a role in it. I don’t think from a private equity space perspective there are enough corporates out there that are involved in research or business that enables us to support them. But perhaps you could have benchmarks that companies must meet xyz standards of being green or environment friendly before you invest in them. We are working toward that. A task force that we have established is looking at socially conscious investing as a perspective of our investment philosophy and then taking advantage further and extending it into companies that have corporate governance consciousness. Do you think it might help if we had some kind of stock market index of green companies. Do you see something like that happening? Not regionally, but certainly on a global basis I can see something like that happening and I think it would be a popular yardstick by which companies could look at companies that they are evaluating, although I don’t think by any means that it should be the sole basis of an investment decision. What are your expectations about 2007? I think 2007 in the Middle East region will continue to be a year of growth. I think that there will be a large deal flow in our business. My fear is that with so many new entrants in the market, there may be a tendency to overweigh. There will certainly be a lot of competition for transactions. We are well positioned because we generally don’t compete; we source our own deals and to me with so many players we are going to see two instant consequences. We will see the price of asset being made up and we will see the price of talent being made up and these are the consequences that we have to live with.

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