This country is still for $ale people. This is just a meeting where as greedy executives who have sold America are going to calm fears with investors in the Middle East who have lost big time and are thinking about pulling their money out and going elsewhere. So please dont mistake this as a meeting to save the American public who are feeling the brunt of this economic meltdown.
via Reuters
“Imagine a private meeting in a room far from the US; a decision is quietly made and billions of dollars that were invested here find a new and more hospitable home,” wrote Schwarzman in a recent column in the Financial Times. “Or billions of dollars that could have been invested here are reallocated to other more benign markets.”
High profile investments have included U.S. bank Citigroup Inc (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which in January raised $12.5 billion from a private sale of convertible preferred securities to investors, including Kuwait and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Citigroup’s shares have lost about half their value this year.
Other investments include Abu Dhabi buying a $1.35 billion stake in Carlyle Group in September 2007 and Dubai taking a $1.26 billion stake in U.S. hedge fund Och Ziff Capital Management Group (OZM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in October 2007 before it went public, priced at $32 a share. Och Ziff shares have lost about 80 percent of their value since then.
Middle East investors bought $42 billion worth of U.S. assets last year and have spent $14 billion so far this year, data from Thomson Reuters shows. That vastly outweighs funds flowing the other way, with $1.4 billion invested last year by U.S. firms buying Middle East targets.
Private equity investments in the Middle East by U.S. firms totals $652 million so far this year.
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