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Business
Total Expo-sure
Wall Street’s elite support Dubai’s bid to host the 2020 World Exposition and say it will be an opportunity for the region to showcase
to the world that countries and cities in the Arab world are capable of holding global events.
By Jay Akasie, New York
“C
onnecting Minds, Creating the Future.” That’s the theme of Dubai’s
ambitious and enthusiastic bid for
the 2020 World Exposition.
Hosting the commercial and economic
extravaganza has been a mission of the
emirate for some five years. But everything is coming to an exciting climax
now that the Bureau International des
Expositions, the 100-year-old governing
body of world expos, is set to choose the
2020 host city. Like every civil project
it undertakes, the United Arab Emirates
has thrown an enormous amount of time
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and funding behind its bid to become the
2020 host city.
So far that effort has met with impressive results. For instance, the Netherlands’ foreign affairs minister, Frans
Timmermans, recently said that his country supported the UAE’s bid to host the
World Expo in 2020. But nowhere is support for Dubai’s bid more apparent than
Wall Street. The world’s financial hub
knows a thing or two about the interconnected nature of the global economy, and
Dubai’s theme of Connecting Minds, Creating the Future has become a resounding
success among the financial elite of the
United States.
“I think it’s great that the World Expo
will likely come to Dubai,” says the
president of Aetna International, Richard
di Benedetto. “The purpose of the World
Expo is to put citizens and countries front
and center, and to display their innovations.” The prospect of a World Expo
being held for the first time in a MENA
country excites Mr di Benedetto, who
says he is particularly impressed with
the emriate’s slogan “Connecting Minds,
Creating the Future.” When you consider

2. © Corbis
© Corbis
how far Dubai has developed in the past
15 years, bringing the World Expo there
is a testament to its rapid success in the
fields of infrastructure and finance. Dubai
has been consistent in what they want to
do and how they want to do it.”
Aetna’s di Benedetto says that the world
economy has become interconnected because of the financial markets and the information revolution. But the globe is also
connected through advances in healthcare.
“World Expos allow you to see what brings
people together,” he says. di Benedetto
points to the Gulf’s commitment to building
healthcare infrastructure as a reason Dubai
should become the host city of 2020. “They
have built everything from primary care facilities to top-notch specialty care hospitals
that are state-of-the-art in the region. Part
of the Gulf’s “leapfrog” in healthcare technology involves the various GCC national
healthcare management programs. Mr. di
Benedetto says he’s honored that Aetna is
working with Qatar to build a healthcare
system for Qatari nationals starting with
maternity care for 95,000 women.
In less than two months, the Bureau International des Expositions, which represents
167-member states, will choose a country
as the standard-bearer of its continuing mission: to embody “a global commitment to
engage the public in promoting innovation
in the service of human progress.” Indeed,
since 1851, when London amazed onlookers with its innovative Crystal Palace pavilion, the city that hosts the World Exposition
joins a rarified league. The title of host city
confers upon it a level of prestige that few
municipalities – outside Olympic cities
themselves – can claim.
According to the American financier
Oliver Pursche, Dubai is about as modern and business-friendly an environment
as one can find. Pursche, a co-founder of
both Montebello Partners LLC, and Legacy Benefit Assurance LLC and president
of Gary Goldberg Financial Services, says
that choosing Dubai to host the Expo is a
validation of its global financial presence.
Putting the global financial crisis aside,
he says that the choice of Dubai as a venue
Indeed, since 1851, when London amazed onlookers with its innovative Crystal
Palace pavilion, the city that hosts the World Exposition joins a rarified league.
also underscores the significant rise in attention given to Islamic finance. “Wall
Street is slightly behind the curve compared to the City of London and hubs in
Asia, but it is certainly recognizing that
Islamic finance is at the forefront at the
minds of asset managers, especially when
it comes to sovereign wealth funds in the
Middle East-North Africa region.”
Dubai’s demographics have a huge influence on investment cycles, according
to Pursche. Because the MENA region
claims the youngest demograhic in the
world, investors are looking to the area
for long-term investment plays. “From
our perspective, Dubai plays a very big
role,” says Mr. Pursche. “We all know
what ageing populations in Western Europe and the United States mean to the
investment world. We are experiencing a phase of more asset withdrawal
than asset gathering on an overall basis.
That’s what makes countries such as the
UAE so attractive.”
167
2010
FIVE PERCENT
is the number of member
states of Bureau International
des Expositions. The bureau
will choose a country that will
host the fair in 2020.
Was the year when Shanghai
in China hosted World Expo.
It is estimated that some 73
million people from around the
world attended the event.
Of the estimated 70 million
visitors to 2010’s World Expo
in Shanghai were foreigners,
and the rest of the visitors
came from within China.
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Business
Paris again hosted the 1900 Expo, at which inventions such as the diesel
engine, the escalator, the ferris wheel, and talking movies, made their debuts.
Pursche says he had the pleasure of attending a recent Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs Forum in Monaco, where one of the
most compelling stories involved a MENA
businessman named Akram Khreis. He
continues to build food and beverage infrastructure across the region. “Whereas Western companies couldn’t figure out how to
make things work over there, Khreis knew
how to unlock the opportunities present in
the MENA region,” he says.
Shanghai hosted the World Expo in
2010. It took what was once an industrial
park and completely transformed it into
a glittering showplace. Some 73 million
people from around the globe passed
$4.2 BILLION
$45 BILLION
2015
Was spent by China in
organizing the world expo in
Shanghai. The amount was
double the money China spent
on the Olympics.
Was allocated to upgrade
Shanghai’s infrastructure,
creating the world’s longest
metro system for the expo held
in 2010.
Is the year when the world
expo will be held in the city of
Milan, Italy. The theme chosen
for the expo is ‘Feeding the
Planet, Energy for life’.
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through the exposition, which not only
displayed Shanghai’s industrial prowess,
but also showed the innovative and technological feats of the hundreds of countries that participated in the expo.
The 1889 Expo in Paris featured the Eiffel Tower as its architectural centerpiece.
When the United States first hosted the
Expo, during that nation’s centennial in
1876, businessmen introduced such innovations as the telephone, the commercial typewriter, and Heinz Ketchup. Paris
again hosted the 1900 Expo, at which inventions such as the diesel engine, the escalator, the Ferris Wheel, and talking movies made their debuts. At the 1904 Expo in
St. Louis, visitors marveled at the edible,
waffle ice cream cone (cones had until that
time been made of paper or metal).
Today, as the nations of the Middle East,
South Asia, and North Africa join the Western powers as economically developed
powerhouses, it stands to reason that bringing the World Expo to Dubai in 2020 would
be a logical choice. Dubai’s theme builds
upon the notion that the global economy
continues to become more intertwined. According to the UAE’s bid committee, “while
a single human mind, an individual country,
or a specific community is both unique and
remarkable, it is by working collaboratively
that we truly advance.” The Emirates, long
known for its commitment to sustainable
practices and progressive economic policies, is putting yet another foot forward in
its bid to become the host city.
If the Paris-based committee chooses
Dubai this autumn, it will be the first time
in the 150-year history of the expo that
the Middle East-North Africa-South Asia
region has hosted such an event. As such,
Dubai is touting the fact that its airports
and freight hubs are among the finest in
the world. Its selection of hotels and tourism infrastructure can easily accommodate the tens of millions of visitors who
will come to the expo in 2020.
“To their credit, Dubai has built up an
impressive infrastructure over the past 15
years,” says Jacob Yahiayan, a Wall Street
banker. “Getting the bid to host the World

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Business
...the Expo is significant for Dubai because it hasn’t yet reached the financial
status of Hong Kong or London as far as the capital markets are concerned.
Expo in 2020 further solidifies Dubai as
the geopolitical hub in the region. It’s the
icing on the cake for them.”
Mr. Yahiayan is the founder and
managing member of Continental Advisory Services LLC, a merchant bank and
family office on Wall Street. He is formerly an investment banker with Standard
Chartered Bank and was based for a time
in Beirut, among the bank’s other global
offices. The Expo bid adds to Dubai’s successful assimilation of best practices and
a willingness to create global standard in
trade, finance, infrastructure, and civil
engineering, according to Mr. Yahiayan.
It’s yet another example of the emirate’s
conviction to get to that global scale.
Mr. Yahiayan says that going after the
Expo is significant for Dubai because it
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hasn’t yet reached the financial status of
Hong Kong or London as far as the capital markets are concerned. “That’s the
real benchmark,” he says. “So having a
successful bid for the Expo will further
help Dubai in its quest to be the location
of a major bourse.”
More than simply a fair, the World
Expo means business. New partnerships
and economic agreements invariably
arise out of the networking that comes out
of bringing hundreds of prominent businesses together in one place.
Not to be outdone by the 1889 Expo in
Paris, which saw the construction of the
Eiffel Tower as its prime attraction, the
Dubai bid committee has said it plans
to build an arena for the 2020 Expo that
will be unlike anything the world has ever
scene. Dubai would build a new type of
exhibition and presentation space – the
so-called Expo Live – for the participating countries that will include a huge indoor “tent” that can accommodate thousands of visitors.
According to the bid committee, the
Innovation Pavilion and the Innovation
Laboratories will showcase projects and
solutions inspired by Expo Live through
its global effort to encourage innovation.
“These pavilions will be dynamic and
thriving centers of activity during the
Expo and will represent an important pole
of attraction for both the communities of
innovators as well as the general public,”
the committee stated in a release.
According to Christopher Doyle, Esq.,
the prospect of Dubai hosting a World
Expo in 2020 could be a boon to the region’s reputation and economy. Now in
private practice, Mr. Doyle was formerly
with a prominent Wall Street law firm.
In fact, he says, when a municipality
hosts a major international event of one
kind or another, doing so can generate a
tremendous increase in revenues over the
lifetime of the event.
“There are many collateral economic
benefits and perhaps cultural benefits
to the host city,” says Mr. Doyle. “One
does not have to look further than the
benefits a city receives when it hosts the
Olympic games.”
Because of rapidly increasing technology, industrial nations are more and
more interconnected. Dubai is an ideal
place to host an exposition focusing on
international business and commerce,
he says.
“Should Dubai be chosen as a site
for 2020, there is a real possibility that
world understanding of Islamic finance
will be enhanced, and hopefully with
that, the industrial world’s awareness
of Islamic culture,” Doyle says. “The
event will be a force for good in a world
that is increasingly fragmented by cultural and economic misunderstandings...distance between the two cultures
will diminish.”