Beyond the Bazaar

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Fadi Ghandour, CEO of Aramex International, a company based in Amman that competes with the likes of Federal Express and DHL, didn't have oil money to back him. Ghandour founded the firm in 1982 after studying at George Washington University. His plan was to become the Middle East middleman for the big U.S. and European shipping firms.

Aramex made its name in part by going where others feared to tread, getting mail across Beirut's green line during the Lebanese civil war and using donkeys to get parcels past Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank. Ghandour got his break when FedEx and later Airborne Express made Aramex their Middle East partner. The U.S. firms gave Aramex invaluable lessons in everything from quality control to technology. When DHL acquired Airborne and dropped Aramex, Ghandour learned another lesson: the turnaround. He got busy marshaling the regional players that Airborne had left in the cold into a new alliance. A leader in the Middle East and South Asia, Ghandour is looking for acquisitions in the U.S. and China. "Things are very hectic," says Ghandour, who shuttles between Amman, Dubai, Beijing, Dublin and New York City. "It's a whole new ball game. But we are ready for it."

As will be more Arab businesses. A milestone toward integrating the 300 million Arabs living between Morocco and Bahrain was achieved in January when Arab states signed a Middle East free-trade agreement that had been in the works for decades. Some countries have slashed tariffs to zero under the pact. Already, according to Egypt's Trade Ministry, inter-Arab trade rose 22% in 2005 compared with a 4% rise three years earlier. Last month an Arab trade-ministers meeting in Cairo took up the technical yet crucial issue of adopting common product standards. "There is a reshaping of the landscape," says Hassan Heikal, CEO of EFG-Hermes Holding SAE, a Cairo investment bank, over cocktails at the Four Seasons First Residence--itself the product of a partnership among a local investor, a Saudi prince and a Canadian hotel mogul. "There is a new breed of CEOs who are willing to go outside their own borders and take risks. I'm very bullish on the Middle East for the next 10 to 20 years." With that, Heikal, considered the whiz kid of Egyptian high finance, was off to dinner with another of Cairo's leading young CEOs--ready to take on the world. [This article contains a chart. Please see a hard copy or a pdf.] A Region's Rise

The GDP of the Middle East and North Africa continues to expand

$547.5 billion In billions of current U.S. dollars '94-'04 Source: World Bank