Doha is a game.
On July 10, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), based in the capital city of Doha, announced that it was buying a minority position in Monumental Sports & Entertainment – owners of the NBA’s Washington Wizards and NHL’s Washington Capitals, to name a few. The QIA is no stranger to Washington. It is the principal owner of CityCenterDC, a mixed-use real estate development which brought a little bit of Doha swag to the capital.
“From a political standpoint, this legitimization of Qatar more as a commercial spouse in the West, adding to the center of American politics,” Yoav Dubinsky, a sports business at the Lundquist College of Business, told ESPN. The University of Oregon.
Qatar has long drawn a political path from its neighbors. Unlike rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar has had no openness to sign up for the BRICS Motion: an organization of countries led by Brazil, Russia, India and China that seek to create an option for the G7, politically and economically.
“The high energy costs and the increase in demand for a preferred herbal fuel source for Western Europe will continue to promote the development of Qatar,” says Hajhamad.
Investors were rewarded in relation to the general market reference.
Since 2020, without the help of a printing press or Covid stimulus checks, Qatar outperformed the MSCI Emerging Markets Index by more than 700 basis points.
Qatar is AA rated. Its bonds pay around 4% yield. They’re not a debt risk.
Fitch Ratings updated Qatar’s profile in May.
Restrained current spending trends will allow Qatar to maintain budget surpluses until 2025, even with natural gas prices in decline from its Ukraine war peaks last year, Fitch analysts, led by Cedric Berry, wrote in their report in May. North Field natural gas expansion will bring in more revenue and lower Qatar’s debt ratio. Fitch forecasts their debt/GDP ratio to fall to about 45% of GDP in 2023 and 42% in 2024, from a peak at 85% in 2020.
Qatar is considered to be a best friend and friend of the United States, but also recently that 2017, President Trump, tweeted Qatar for terror and congratulated his neighbors for having taken a more complicated line opposite to extremism.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who gained strength ten years ago in June 2013, when he was only 33 years old, now his entire community opposed him. Qatars were not welcome in Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Water. Restricted trade.
“A few weeks before that, we were meeting, all of us together, in one room, including President Trump,” he told CBS’ Charlie Rose at the time. “We were discussing terrorism, financing terrorism. And nobody brought any concern from those countries,” he said of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. “Nobody told me anything. We were praising each other, laughing with each other.” When asked why he thinks Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Cairo ganged up on Doha, he told Charlie Rose on Oct. 29, 2017: “They don’t like our independence, the way we are thinking, our vision for the region. We want freedom of speech for the people of the region. And they’re not happy with that. And so they think that this is a threat to them.”
Qataris were never part of the Arab Spring movements, and they supported Sheikh Tamim during the tumultuous blockade, which only ended two years ago, in 2021.
When Shiekh Hamad handed the reins of power to his son, observers at the time noted that it was a “first in the modern history of the region.” The norm is for Gulf leaders to rule for decades until their death or until circumstances conspire to overthrow them.
In recent years, the domestic objective of Sheikh Tamim has brought new leaders, basically to Qatar Petroleum and Qia. He also directed the creation of a popularly chosen legislature, repressed corruption by presenting opposite rates to the Minister of Finance, hard work regulations and enforcing new restrictions on the use of capital punishment, among other narrow ones.
With the finished blocking, geopolitics from a point of view of Americans is less dictates now.
Sheikh Tamim has positioned Qatar as Washington’s favorite intermediary across both Republican and Democratic administrations.
At the U.S.’s request, Qatar served as the go-between for negotiations to end the conflict in Afghanistan. Its trust within the leaders of Afghanistan proved critical in managing the chaos of the fall of Kabul.
Both the United States and Israel have relied heavily on Qatar to restrain Hamas and to provide a much-needed financial lifeline to Palestinians.
The Biden administration has found the Qatari relationship with Tehran of value in negotiating the release of Americans held by Iran.
On the BRICS+ front, while Qatar is a participant in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to some extent, they have not made any overtures to wanting to join forces with the BRICS crew, which meets in South Africa next month.
David Desroches, a professor in south-south Southeast Asia for strategic studies at Washington’s National Defense University, has a clever take on why Qatar is involved.
“The UAE and Saudi Arabia appear to have concluded that the U.S. is a somewhat unreliable partner, at least under Biden, and that they are wise to decrease their reliance on them. But Qatar, on the other hand, appears to have concluded that it is only the moderating influence of the U.S. which helped preserve its national sovereignty,” he said about the blockade days.
A man prints a poster of Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at a printing house in Doha … [+] on June 12, 2017. People in Qatar hung posters of Sheikh Tamim in support during the blockade against Qatar. (Photo by Mohamed Farag/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
“Since the resolution of the blockade, Qatar’s policies have taken a notable shift towards Washington. The UAE and Saudi Arabia seem to be engaged in measures that would reduce their vulnerability to any coercive American measures, be they sanctions or embargo of key military equipment,” says DesRoches.
In the Gulf States, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha are now chic and cities, with Doha increasingly open to expats and foreign companies. It has a solid hold on investors, and with the war opposed to terrorism a picture subsequently reflected in Washington, the Invesolid region is no longer seen as a potential dustbin across Wall Street.
After Qatar’s example, King Salman of Saudi Arabia disappointed the dynasty last in 2017 by designating his son Mohamed Bin Salman, 31, as a long -term heir and sovereign prince in the country.
Bahrein rejuvenated their leaders in 2020, when the 84 -year -old prime minister, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Salman to Khalifa, the oldest head of the world in the world, was successful in his death through the 50 -year -old prince Salman Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al Al Khalifa.
In what appears to be a tacit acknowledgment of Qatar’s position of maintaining relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – with China as a mediator – leaned into Qatar’s position on Iran by opting to reopen embassies there this year.
Did that get investors advantages? It is based on what Qatar is doing and more on what period.
“The Qatari story is also a win for Europe if they want to freeze out Russian supplies of gas, because Qatar can be shoe-horned right into European energy needs,” says Vladimir Signorelli, head of Bretton Woods Research, a macro investor research firm. “It was cool that they were on the other side of the Yemeni struggle, and I think that was what drove the boycott. Their leadership weathered that well. If that whole region cools down, Qatar will reap the benefits. But as a MENA investment, Qatar is a lagging play for now.”
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