In light of the ongoing financial crisis in Lebanon, the government’s debt management strategy is at the center of a growing public debate. The government’s ability to pay its maturing Eurobonds in 2020, totaling $2.5 billion (of which $1.2 billion are due on 9 March 2020), is in question, as di..
Dan Azzi, Amer Bisat, Nisreen Salti, and Nada Mora
Dan Azzi has a B.S. from AUB and a M.S. in Computational Mathematics from the University of Illinois. He later added an Executive Master’s in Organizational Change jointly granted by HEC (Paris) and Oxford University. After working in a leadership role in C3I (Command, Control, Communications, and Information Systems), he obtained a MBA from Columbia University and pivoted into Investment Banking, rising to Managing Director within 7 years. He worked at UBS, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche, and Bear Stearns, in Auckland, London, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Dubai. Most recently, he was Head of Global Markets in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan, for Standard Chartered Bank, retiring in 2015 as CEO/Chairman of the Board in Lebanon. Dan has been involved in philanthropy and volunteering, setting up scholarships for disadvantaged students at AUB and IC. He recently completed an appointment as an Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard University. Currently, Dan is a regular OpEd writer and lecturer in economics, monetary policy, and political reform. His articles have appeared in An-Nahar, Al-Akhbar, Bloomberg, Daily Star, Raseef22, among others.
Amer Bisat writes in his personal capacity and the views expressed do not represent that of his employer. He is currently the Managing Director and head of Sovereign and Emerging Markets (Alpha) investments in a NY-based asset management company. Prior to that, he held portfolio management positions at Morgan Stanley and UBS and, between 1991 and 1998, he was a senior economist at the IMF. He taught graduate level economics courses at Columbia University. He is the former president of the Arab Banking Association of North America and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. He earned a BA from the American University of Beirut and a PhD. from Columbia University.
Nisreen Salti is an associate professor of economics at the American University of Beirut. She is also a visiting professor of economics at Harvard University in 2019-2020. She works on development economics and political economy. Her research is on inequality and inequity in resources, access, and outcomes, with a focus on health. She is especially interested in marginalized communities, particularly refugees. Her work has appeared in Social Science and Medicine, the Lancet, Tobacco Control, the International Journal for Middle Eastern Studies and the Journal of Economic Studies, among others. She has been an active participant in local and regional policy debates, engaging policy-makers and analysts in government and at various multilateral organizations and arms of the UN. She obtained her PhD in Economics from Princeton University in 2006, and a Masters in Public Affairs in 1999.
Nada Mora completed her Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2003. She taught at the American University of Beirut from 2003 to 2007 where she was an Assistant Professor in the department of Economics. She worked in central banking from 2007 to 2016 where she was an economist with the Bank of England, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and later a principal financial economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. She currently lectures at the Lebanese University. In addition to research on topics in financial economics, she contributed to supervisory modeling and quantitative bank exams for stress testing during her time in central banking.