I saw this last in the newspaper last week -

U gotta love their attention to detail!

The Kuwait Investment Authority has always been one of the leading financial institutions in the region and one of the largest in the world. It is where all our future money is, and has been performing extremely well since its establishment, both with local investments and international ones.

I worked at the KIA for a while as a trainee six years ago, and I remember being very sad and disappointed at the state of things there. The building was extremely old and in shambles from the inside (it is in the ministries complex), people didn’t seem to be very motivated, and in general its reputation as an employer has gone down compared to the opportunities offered at most private sector companies. The website back then was a joke, even three years later (Nov 04), I remember posting about how bad the site is.

A quick look at how things are now, and you will see -

- Their offices have all been fixed up, and now it looks alot more professional! The old ministry design that was used inside has been replaced with a much more modern and businesslike design.

- The salaries have all been raised recently, which definitely helps in motivating the employees!

- The website is totally revamped, and looks really good now.

Yesterday, a colleague at work was telling me that there is a good article about the KIA on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, so I looked it up, and found a preview of it on their website, with the full article published by zawya.com.  It is a very nteresting read. While searching, I also found an article in the New Your Inquirer.

Finding all that lead me to thinking …. Is this part of a PR campaign by the KIA to increase its presence and positive image around the world? If so, is it done internally?

Its really great to see such an organization taking steps forward, and lets hope these positives changes are happening inside out!

I know that the one complain I hear from people working there is about the parliament. Basically, what I’ve heard is that they have been taking most of their time at work just replying to enquiries from parliament members instead of focusing on their core business! And most of these questions have been - “why invest in so and so and not this other investment?” or “why did you invest in something that lost?” It really is sad that they take so much time responding to questions by people who have zero knowledge about finance or investment!

So if we give all members of parliament a short course in finance, or send them on oneof the training courses that we took at the KIA, maybe the KIA can concentrate on making more money of us, and it will cover the cost of educating these ppl! Unless of course the questions are just politically motivated, which never happens in Kuwait

*UPDATE at the bottom*

So Im back!

I’ve been back for a while but for one reason or another I didn’t start writing on the blog. Unfortunately, the first thing I did write was a result of the sad events that occurred last week, totally not as planned!

Anyway, now that I’m back lets get back to business -

I found this interesting (at least for me and others working in marketing in Kuwait) chart today in AlQabas, which shows the top 10 advertisers in Kuwait so far in 2007 -

I dont understand why they have “tourism & travel” as number 5 when its an industry and not a company, but Im also surprised about MTC being below the three banks, that Mitsubishi is there, and that KFC or Americana in general is not included!

Forza’s question in the comments section about McDonalds spending more than banks led me to some research and I found this, from Advertising Age -

(click on the chart for better viewing)

You will find the rest of the 100 in the the original pdf file of top 100 spenders on ads globally from the website.

Whats interesting is that globally, Citigroup are the largest financial institutions in spending for ads, and they come in 46th place globally, while our banks here take 3 of the top 4!

Another interesting thing in the report is the country breakdown of spending, this is how they have Kuwait -

This obviously cannot be correct! There is no way in hell that Little Caesar spent more than Gulf Bank or KFH in Kuwait!! Yum foods is basically KFC & Pizza Hut, not sure if they added them together or what.

To be honest Im not a big fan of the research company that did that PARC (their website doesnt seem to work), so Im not so sure how accurate that is, I would believe the newspaper one more, although neither chart goes into detail on whether its just newspaper spending on spending in general!

خبر اعتقال الشباب الوطنيين جاسم القامس و بشار الصايغ تصدر صفحات الجرائد (إلا جريدة الوطن طبعا يكرم السامع) و انتشر أمس قبل الجرائد بالمدونات (بالكويتي الفصيح، الكوت، ساحة الصفاة .. و الكثير غيرهم) و المسجات بالتلفون

خبر مفزع و محزن و مبكي بنفس الوقت … لكن بكل صراحة خطوة متوقعة و منطقية من الدولة نظرا لتاريخنا الباهر في تحطيم أي أمل للتقدم و قدرتنا العظيمة في الرجوع إلى الوراء

نظرة سريعة لكويت اليوم مقارنة بالذي كان -

الكويت كانت مركز التجارة و الأعمال في المنطقة … الآن جميع الكويتين و العالم يرون دبي بإعجاب (و حسد) و انبهار

الكويت كانت منارة الخليج في التعليم بوجود ثانوية الشويخ و الجامعة … الآن نبعث ابناؤنا لقطر و الإمارات للتعليم بأحدث الجامعات المرموقة عالميا

الكويت كانت مثالا للتقدم الطبي بالخليج …. الآن نذهب إلى السعودية للحصول على أحدث الأجهزة الطبية بمستشفيات بمواصفات عالمية

الكويت كانت فخر الرياضة العربية و الخليجية بالوصول لكأس العالم و تسيد آسيا لفترة …. الآن لم نتأهل حتى لكأس آسيا و نطمح للمركز الرابع في الخليج بعد البحرين و عمان

الكويت كانت الأولى في الديمقراطية بوجود الدستور الذي يحتوي على مادتين –

مادة - 31
لا يجوز القبض على إنسان أو حبسه أو تفتيشه أو تحديد إقامته أو تقييد حريته في الإقامة أو التنقل إلا وفق أحكام القانون ولا يعرض أي إنسان للتعذيب أو للمعاملة الحاطة بالكرامة

مادة - 37
حرية الصحافة والطباعة والنشر مكفولة وفقا للشروط والأوضاع التي يبينها القانون

الكويت كانت منبرا لحرية الصحافة العربية حيث كنا نتصدر قائمة الدول العربية الأكثر حرية للصحافة (صحافيين بلا حدود 2006) و هذا اقتباس من صفحة المنظمة –

But except for Yemen and Saudi Arabia (161st), all the Arab peninsula countries considerably improved their rank. Kuwait (73rd) kept its place at the top of the group, just ahead of the United Arab Emirates (77th) and Qatar (80th).

… و لكن كوننا الأفضل بأي مجال يزعج البعض و قدرتنا على تدمير الذات لا متناهية، فاستطاعت الدولة أن تكمل مسيرة الرجوع إلى الوراء بإلقاء القبض على صحافيين شريفين من مقر عملهما أمام أعين المارة و حبسهما و ضربهما و بذلك تكون قد صفعت حرية الصحافة و ذلتها لتمشي على منوال المجالات الأخرى المشار إايها

أردد ما قلته …. خطوة متوقعة و منطقية و الله يحمي الكويت