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MerchantBridge
MerchantBridge & Co. Ltd. was a London-based boutique private equity firm that specialized in investments in the Middle East and especially Iraq, where it was one of the largest such firms. It was in existence from 2001 to 2018. Origins The firm was founded by Basil Al Rahim – who came from a wealthy Iraqi family and was a former executive for The Carlyle Group – in 2001, with a number of wealthy figures from Arab and Gulf countries as partners. (Its origins lay in an earlier private equity firm, Safron Advisors, which had been founded in 1998 and which covered the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey.) Within the next couple of years, MerchantBridge expanded into the areas of corporate finance and government advisory work. The firm sought to embody a foreign direct investment aspect as well. The firm's headquarters were on Sloane Street in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea within London. A number of prominent Britons became advisors to MerchantBridge, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privately Held Company
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned, traded, exchanged privately, or Over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter. In the case of a closed corporation, there are a relatively small number of shareholders or company members. Related terms are closely-held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company. Though less visible than their public company, publicly traded counterparts, private companies have major importance in the world's economy. In 2008, the 441 list of largest private non-governmental companies by revenue, largest private companies in the United States accounted for ($1.8 trillion) in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to ''Forbes''. In 2005, using a substantially smaller pool size (22.7%) for comparison, the 339 companies on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2003 Invasion Of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland invaded Iraq. Twenty-two days after the first day of the invasion, the capital city of Baghdad was captured by Coalition forces on 9 April 2003 after the six-day-long Battle of Baghdad. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "end of major combat operations" in his Mission Accomplished speech, after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq unt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Norris Capital Partners
Stephen L. Norris is one of the co-founders of The Carlyle Group, an American private equity firm and previously the Chairman of Gulf Capital Partners. He is a former member of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, who was appointed by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate in 1990. In July 2014, it was announced he had joined the Florida-based company Global Digital Solutions. Corporate career Carlyle was founded in 1987 by five Washington executives: William E. Conway, Jr., Stephen L. Norris, David M. Rubenstein, Daniel A. D'Aniello and Greg Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum left in 1987; Norris left in 1995. The three remaining founders are reported to collectively own around a 50% interest in the group's general partnership. The rest of Carlyle is owned by a group of individuals, most of whom serve as managing directors, and by two institutional investors. Prior to co-founding the Carlyle Group, Norris was a senior executive at Marriott Corporati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UnXis
Xinuos is an American software company that was created in 2011 and was first called UnXis until assuming its current name in 2013. (Both names have been variations on the spelling of the Unix operating system.) Xinuos develops and markets the Unix-based OpenServer 6, OpenServer 5, and UnixWare 7 operating systems under SCO branding, as well as the newer OpenServer 10 operating system. Background The SCO Group (SCO) was a Utah-based software company that had over time acquired the operating system products SCO OpenServer and UnixWare, which dated back to earlier companies The Santa Cruz Operation and Unix System Laboratories and to the early history of Unix before that. But by the late 1990s these products found themselves losing in the marketplace, first to Microsoft's Windows NT and Windows Server line and then to open source Linux. Beginning in 2003, the SCO Group began issuing proclamations and lawsuits, including '' SCO v. IBM'', based upon a belief that SCO Unix intellec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gulf Cooperation Council
The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf ( ar, مجلس التعاون لدول العربية الخليج ), also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC; ar, مجلس التعاون الخليجي), is a regional, intergovernmental, political, and economic union comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The council's main headquarters is located in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The Charter of the GCC was signed on 25 May 1981, formally establishing the institution. All current member states are monarchies, including three constitutional monarchies (Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain), two absolute monarchies (Saudi Arabia and Oman), and one federal monarchy (the United Arab Emirates, which is composed of seven member states, each of which is an absolute monarchy with its own emir). There have been discussions regarding the future membership of Jordan, Morocco, and Yemen. During the Arab Spring in 2011, Saudi Arab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sectarian Violence In Iraq (2006–2008)
Sectarian violence in Iraq refers to the violence that developed as a result of rising sectarian tensions between the different religious and ethnic groups of Iraq, most notably the conflict between the Shi'i Muslim majority and the Sunni Muslim minority within the country. With the creation of a modern nation-state, sectarian tensions arose slowly and eventually developed into recent violent conflicts such as the War in Iraq (2013–2017) and the Iraqi Civil War (2006–2008). According to most sources, including the CIA's ''World Factbook'', the majority of Iraqis are Shi'i Arab Muslims amounting to around 64% to 69% of the population, whereas Sunni Muslims represent between 32% and 37% of the population. Furthermore, the Sunnis are split ethnically among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. Historical background Before the creation of the Iraqi state, Iraq's territory belonged to the Ottoman Empire and was divided up into three vilayets (provinces): Baghdad Vilayet (1869 - 1918), Bas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iraqi Insurgency (2003–2006)
After the invasion of Iraq was completed and the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled in May 2003, the Iraqi insurgency began. The 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency lasted until early 2006, when it escalated from an insurgency to a civil war, which became the most violent phase of the Iraq War. Background Build up to insurgency A number of factors played into the beginning of the insurgency in Iraq. Invading U.S.-led forces were unable to immediately fill the power vacuum caused by the sudden collapse of a highly centralized state authority, resulting in weeks of virtual anarchy. Due to the fact that Saddam Hussein terrorized his military and time constraints in the planning of the invasion on the United States' side a power vacuum was created once the invasion started. This was due to the fact that Iraqi soldiers abandoned areas before U.S. forces could reach them and the fact that the United States failed to draw up plans on what to do once Saddam Hussein had been rem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Arab world, and the largest in Western Asia and the Middle East. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. Bahrain is an island country off the east coast. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. Its capital and largest city is Riyadh. The country is home to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam. Pre-Islamic Arabia, the territory that constitutes modern-day Saudi Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corporate Watch
Corporate Watch (The Corporate Watch Co-Operative Ltd.) is a research group based in the UK. It describes itself as a "research group that helps people stand up against corporations and capitalism." And as a "not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism." It was established in 1996. Corporate Watch is run as a workers' co-operative. It is incorporated as a company, limited by guarantee, and registered in the United Kingdom, number 03865674. Research Corporate Watch has two main research approaches: * "Targeted research for grassroots campaign groups". For example, researchers have worked with neighbourhood housing campaigns, precarious workers' trade unions, environmental groups, migrant solidarity groups, care workers, and families of prisoners. This research can support campaigns by "e.g. profiling a particular company, digging into its accounts, uncovering scandals, finding weak points." * "Bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rend Al-Rahim Francke
Rend al-Rahim Francke (born 1949) is an Iraqi political activist who often appears on various current affairs programs. She held the position as Iraqi ambassador to the United States. She is considered to be a secularist trying to enable Iraq to transition to a liberal democratic model. Personal life Francke was born in Baghdad to an affluent family and spent some of her childhood there. Her father is a Shiite Muslim and her mother is a Sunni Muslim. She went to boarding school in England and later studied at Cambridge University where she earned a master's degree in English and at the Sorbonne. She worked as a banker and a currency trader in Lebanon and Bahrain, as well as London. Her family moved to England in 1978 and later emigrated again, this time to the United States in 1981. She became an American citizen in 1987. Rend is married and has one child. Politics and advocacy In 1991, Francke established the Iraq Foundation in Washington, D.C., to lobby for democracy, huma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial News
''Financial News'' is a financial newspaper and news website published in London. It is a weekly newspaper, published by eFinancial News Limited, covering the financial services sector through news, views and extensive people coverage. ''Financial News'' was founded in 1996. Financial News is owned by Dow Jones & Company, who acquired eFinancial News in 2007. It is part of the Dow Jones Media Group division, which also includes ''Barron's'', ''Factiva,'' ''MarketWatch'' and ''Mansion Global''. Financial News launched a revamped, mobile-first website and new weekly print edition in January 2017. Titles In addition to the publication of the Financial News, the company also operates ''FNLondon.com'', an updated daily website version of ''Financial News'', and ''The Private Equity News'', which provides daily news and analysis for Europe's private equity industry. ''The Private Equity News'' website is the counterpart to the weekly Private Equity News hard copy and was launched ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. In 762 CE, Baghdad was chosen as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and became its most notable major development project. Within a short time, the city evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multiethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". Baghdad was the largest city in the world for much of the Abbasid era during the Islamic Golden Age, peaking at a population of more than a million. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
