ABSTRACT

A growing awareness of these issues has led most MENA countries to undertake signifi cant fi nancial reforms over the last decade. Foreign investment is liberalized, and the region’s stock markets are active and developing (Lagoarde-Segot and Lucey, 2008). However, virtually nothing is known about private equity in the region. As shown in Table 17.1, the only available aggregated data highlights that the region is still lagging behind Emerging Asia and Eastern Europe ($5,027 billion invested in 2007 vs. $28,668 billion and $14,629 billion, respectively). In addition, Israel accounts for more than half of the region’s private equity investment fl ows (ANIMA, 2008).