EFG-Hermes' 6th Annual One-on-One conference reaffirms the Middle East as hub for foreign portfolio investment

Utilizing the market slow down in the US and Europe, high oil prices and new investment laws and government regulations in the region, Yasser El-Mallawany and Hassan Heikal emphasized in their speeches to the positive outlook for the Middle Eastern economies.

Yasser El-Mallawany began his speech by saying "As some of you may recall 8 years ago this conference started with 5 companies and 6 investors. Today we have 57 presenting companies from 10 countries; 400 plus investors; over 11 thousand one-on-one meetings requested and 1,800 were arranged being the maximum capacity."

"What we see today reflects the paradigm shift of the region as a must-have-allocation within a global portfolio. Such a position, hasn't been achieved out of vacuum but- based on strong economic fundamentals, where regional markets compete at varying degrees, to open up and attract quality investors at a time when we are experiencing volatility and gloom in the more mature markets," he added.

Meanwhile, Hassan Heikal began his presentation by comparing the MENA region's GDP per Capita to other region's GDP per Capita, for the former's has reached $20,763bn, whereas that of Eastern Europe is $10,528bn, Southeast Asia's about $7184bn and Latin America's GDP per Capita is $6,977bn.

Heikal also referred to the favorable market capitalization of the MENA region, declaring that it is currently $1.4trillion.

As for average daily traded value, Heikal stated that the daily traded value of the MENA region surpasses that of other markets, accounting for $ 4,279m. "It all happened in the last five years," Heikal added, referring to the increase of the average daily traded value of the region from $261m to the current value.