Acxiom Corporation (ACXM) recently announced that it has acquired DMS (Direct Marketing Services), a premier provider of direct marketing services in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) market.  This acquisition will enable Acxiom to enter the markets of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The company plans to service its current global partners who plan to expand in the Middle East as well as regional marketers in that region.  The new Acxiom MENA organization will serve global and regional clientele from offices in Jeddah and Dubai. The operation will be led by DMS Managing Director Yousef Hamidaddin, who becomes CEO of Acxiom MENA.  Other terms of the deal were not disclosed.  Acxiom Corporation integrates data, services and technology to create and deliver customer and information management solutions for companies. Acxiom has a customer base that includes firms in the financial services, insurance, information services, and ...

Per hospitality research firm STR Global and Deloitte & Touche Middle East, Middle East hotels in 22 cities in the region during the first half of 2009 witnessed an average 10.9% decrease in occupancies and a 17.2% drop in revenue per available room (RevPAR), an industry benchmark.  Among the worst RevPAR performers were Dubai (down 35%) and Muscat (16.6%), while other cities outperformed tremendously, including Abu Dhabi (3.2% increase), Jeddah (11.5%) and Beirut (125.2%).

Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) has posted impressive returns YTD (up over 16%), but last week’s correction, coupled with a recent report issued by Riyadh-based Samba Bank–which warned that the recovery of oil prices to above $60/barrel and a forecasted 24% increase in government spending will not be adequate to offset a sharp slowdown in private sector activity–raises concern.

The Bank asserted that while public spending in both oil and non-oil sectors has been robust, private investment, in contrast, remained tepid, constrained by lingering tougher lending standards due at least in part to poor export prospects, especially in petrochemicals (polyethylene prices are still down roughly 50% from their mid-2008 highs) and refined products, the country’s main exports after oil and natural gas. It added that the country’s GDP would contract by 1.2% in 2009 (following 4.5% growth last year), but predicted that growth would climb to 4.4%

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Saeed Jawed Ahmad, an Islamic banker and investment analyst based in Jeddah, has this to say regarding the “basics of Islamic finance”:

The conceptual difference between an Islamic finance and a conventional finance transaction lies in the fact that in conventional finance, the financial institution generally lends cash for a length of time, often direct to the client or borrower, of course based on a credit rating or evaluation, on the basis that the borrower would return the borrowed amount plus an interest amount. The interest amount and the original borrowed amount is required to be repaid to the lender over the loan period or by the end of the loan period. Thus the transaction in essence is the lending of cash against the return of a higher amount of cash, and not necessarily for a specific purpose. One of the basic ideas behind the

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Finally some good news, Saudi Arabia is ready to pump more than 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil for the rest of this year if there is demand, and could add an extra 2.5 million bpd of capacity above a current plan to reach 12.5 million bpd by the end of next year, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said at an emergency meeting of oil producing/consuming nations in Jeddah on Sunday. PERTH (Reuters) - U.S. crude futures fell over a dollar to near $134 a barrel on Monday after Saudi Arabia said at an emergency meeting over the weekend it was ready to increase oil output capacity by another 2.5 million barrels per day if there was demand. * NYMEX crude for August delivery CLc1 fell was down 55 cents at $134.81 a barrel by 2238 GMT, ...