Opportunity Dubai

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Jacket text for Opportunity Dubai

Opportunity Dubai is the autobiographical account of a real-life business adventure in the modern city of Dubai. The author was a financial journalist in the city before deciding to join the internet revolution in 2000 by establishing the financial information website AME Info (www.ameinfo.com).

However, this book is far more than the story of a relatively small business and its success (albeit a business that became a resource now used by millions of readers and sold for a multi-million dollar fortune in 2006). It is also an inside track on what is happening in modern Dubai, the focal point of hundreds of billions of dollars of investment, and a city whose GDP has quadrupled in a decade, outperforming any other in the world, including China.

The author charts the progress of Dubai in the 2000s and setbacks such as the Second Gulf War and 9/11, which actually proved the source of a remarkable injection of repatriated capital into the increasingly ambitious projects of the Maktoum family under the leadership of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Perhaps, as the trading hub of the Middle East, it should be no surprise that Dubai has been able to capitalise greatly on the Third Oil Boom. But Sheikh Mohammed's restless business vision never stands still. He created the Dubai Internet City in late 1999, just in time in fact to give the author of this book a dedicated free zone with 100 per cent ownership for his small business. And other developments such as the Burj Dubai and The World Islands proceed at an amazing pace.

Opportunity Dubai asks where this is all leading to and whether it can be sustained. However, the author's own experience of prospering from the opportunities presented by this incredible city point in a positive direction; and many of his insights will benefit anybody thinking of joining this adventure, whether doing business in Dubai, buying a home there, or just taking up a job as an expatriate.

Chapter headings for Opportunity Dubai

1. The Eureka moment
2. Meeting Klaus and Lars
3. Darkest days for Dubai and AME Info
4. The largest English language media in the Middle East
5. Dubai steals the limelight for regional news
6. The Dubai Real Estate Boom
7. The Dubai real estate boom matures
8. An apology to Dr. Marc Faber
9. Good and bad investment calls
10. Business trips and holidays
11. Lunch again with David Price
12. Epilogue: The Future of Dubai

About Peter Cooper

Oxford University educated financial journalist Peter Cooper found himself made redundant by Emap plc in London in the mid-1990s and decided to rebuild his career in Dubai as launch editor of the pioneering magazine Gulf Business. He returned briefly to London in 1999 to complete his first book, a history of the Bovis construction group. Then in 2000 he went back to Dubai to become an Internet entrepreneur, just as the dot-com market crashed. But he stumbled across the opportunity to become a partner in www.ameinfo.com, which later became the Middle East’s leading English language business news website. Over the course of the next seven years he had a ringside seat as editor-in-chief writing about the remarkable transformation of Dubai into a global business and financial hub city. At the same time www.ameinfo.com prospered and was sold in 2006 to Emap plc for $27 million, completing the career circle back to where it began a decade earlier, and leaving Peter Cooper a multimillionaire. He remains a lively commentator and columnist as a freelance journalist based in Dubai and travels extensively each summer with his wife Svetlana. His financial blog www.arabianmoney.net is attracting increasing attention with its focus on investment in gold and silver as a means of prospering during a time of great consumer price inflation and asset price deflation.

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