Lebanon: Private-sector success cries out for public-sector reforms

Lebanon can boast something few developed economies have – growth and a well-capitalized banking sector. Sadly, this and the promise of a natural resource windfall cannot hide the dire need for structural reforms and leadership from the top to undertake them.

Jacques Jean Sarraf knows what he wants and has the courage of his convictions.

The tall and ebullient chairman of Malia Group, one of Lebanon’s largest companies, is the personification of an old-school, swashbuckling entrepreneur who equates high risk with high reward.

Since 2003 Sarraf has orchestrated the rapid expansion of the company his father founded as a pharmacy in 1936, taking the now diversified group from the streets of Beirut to Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Syria.

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