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October 02, 2007
Victory of Image and Capital: Emirates & Hollywood
Quite frankly while not entirely surprising, the Time Warner - Abu Dhabi Entertainment Hub (or city in Dubai parlance) does not strike me as a match made in heaven.
On one hand the Emirates are sucking in a certain kind of talent, but I have a hard time believing that the cost issues in the Emirates plus the lack of a vibrant real culture, a salon and artists culture as it were, can make this anything but "a 6,000 acre theme park" rather than a space "to produce Arabic-language film, TV and video games" (well maybe video games, although I still imagine doing video game Arabization is likely cheaper to do in say Cairo or even better Amman, although maybe one puts HQ in Abu Dhabi for money raising purposes).
But that the idea is being floated speaks to the problems of getting investment off the ground and also, ahem, doing business in much of the region.
The Emirates specialize in providing an air-conditioned bubble for Western Expat execs and for company start ups.
Besides the murky flow of cash going into investments that I have a hard time believing are earning any proper rate of return (but that's a function of murky Gulfie funds whose objectives are not always financially rational to say the least), there's a certain utility in having an HQ in the Gulf for fundraising and sales.
But in the end I just don't believe the current set up in Dubai and Abu Dhabi makes sense for real production.
Posted by The Lounsbury at October 2, 2007 07:42 PM
Filed Under: Economic Development
, Gulf
, MENA Region General
, North Africa
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