Singapore’s Temasek Holdings to invest $147M in Pakistan’s NIB Bank

Pakistan's NIB Bank attracts a sizeable Temasek investment

Amidst all the talk of FDI and Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves, Singapore’s sovereign investment fund, Temasek Holdings, announced their intent to invest $147M in Pakistan’s NIB Bank. This is welcome news for NIB and Pakistan’s banking sector in general. Not only will the additional capitalization shore up NIB’s position, it will also illustrate how favourable Pakistani bank valuations are currently.

It should be noted that not one major (or minor) Pakistani bank has been shut down thus far despite the global financial crisis. Unlike the situation in many countries, particularly the USA, in Pakistan there have been no runs on banks or other reactions that showcase a widespread trust deficit. The fact that NIB, one of the country’s smaller banks, has attracted a high profile foreign investor may point to a impending larger trend. Clearly, with the arrival of Barclay’s, HSBC, Dubai Islamic Bank and many other international institutions, Pakistan has already demonstrated its ability to attract top-tier names and deliver growth.

More on the story after the fold.

Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Tower to be world’s tallest building

The Jeddah skyline showing the future Kingdom Tower

Price Alwaleed, the billionaire businessman, one of the richest men in the world, the largest shareholder in Citigroup, owner of the Georges V in Paris, stakeholder in Saks Fifth Ave, Disney Corp and dozens of other companies, has decided to add one more feather in his cap. The Prince is reported to have embarked on a $40BN quest to build the world’s tallest building, and to focus more attention on the Middle East as a rising economic powerhouse.

The Prince is known for his penchant for the biggest and the best. Earlier, he also ordered the world’s largest private aircraft, an Airbus A380 refitted to carry him and an entourage around the world.  

Siemens Pakistan’s SAP business going great guns

Siemens has been doing numerous SAP implementations in Pakistan over the years. The very first implementation at Packages Ltd. was started back in 2003. In the intervening 5 years, even though other services firms have been deploying SAP solutions also, Siemens has gone to the very top of the list in terms of number of succesfully deployed SAP installations in Pakistan. It was no surprise, then, to learn about their newest win at Aisha Steel.

Siemens will be implementing financial, supply chain and project management modules for Aisha. There was no word on when the deployment is expected to be complete, but these projects normally end up taking a while so we would imagine the Siemens team will be staying busy for the next year or so. No deal-size details were disclosed, but SAP implementations 5 years ago were running in the $3M range, inclusive of professional services and training. We would expect that this implementation would be in the $5M range. More on the deal after the fold.

US recession hits Indian tech firms… and economy… hard

The recession in the US is hurting Indian outsourcing companies quite significantly. In a conversation I recently had with a Pakistani tech CEO who maintains numerous relationships with Indian outsourcing companies, I learned that the closure of large financial services institutions has caused the loss of thousands of jobs already in India.

Today, I came across this Reuters piece that more broadly analyses the impact the US recession is having on India. Job losses are not the only problem. Freefalling real estate values in cities like Bangalore, loss of revenue for all major outsourcing firms, a plummeting SENSEX stock exchange (down 50% since Jan ‘08) and even a paucity of shoppers in malls are significant issues linked to the recession.

Some interesting quotes and a link to the article after the break.

Warid Zem’s wzone brings popular movies and music to your phone

A monstrous Warid billboard in Lahore, introducing wzone

Driving around in Lahore the other day, I came across these large Warid banners at several places in the Cantt. area. As you can see from the image, Warid is investing quite a bit in advertising their newest service, wzone.

wzone is a mobile destination you can visit using your cell phone which provides you with real-time access to a huge selection of movies (Hollywood and local cinema) and music. Pretty cool! In fact, seen together with Telenor’s TV service, and Mobilink’s multimedia offerings, the trend is quite clear. Multimedia based value added services are the really the next frontier in the cellular war.

We wrote recently about the change in leadership at Telenor Pakistan. Clearly, one of the key challenges facing the new CEO would be to continue Telenor’s innovation in the value added mobile services arena. Warid, for a long time was focusing and competing pretty much solely on price. Not so much anymore. They’re growing up and getting to be a worthy competitor. Mobilink and Telenor both better watch out.

Pakistani exports to UAE rise to $1.8B – Software growing fast

A rapidly growing Dubai is increasingly using Pakistani software

Mansour Bajwa, Commercial Counselor for Pakistan in Dubai, was quoted in this story highlighting the rapid growth in exports from Pakistan to the UAE. “Pakistan is also increasing exports of [..] IT software products, particularly to the UAE“, he said. Pakistani software shops have been developing solutions for UAE companies for many years now, but perhaps an even greater contributor of Forex receipts is the large Pakistani IT diaspora at work in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It’s not a stretch to say that Pakistanis play a – perhaps the - pivotal role in the UAE’s IT industry.

Back in 2007, Pakistan exported about $1.2B worth of goods and services to the UAE, and so the $600M increase in just one year represents growth of 50% YoY. Given the UAE’s own explosive growth, the potential for Pakistan exports to the Emirates as well as the GCC countries, appears limitless. More from the story after the fold.