Le Pen’s plan to jettison euro spooks French business

$8 billion pipeline. Keystone would strengthen US energy security by increasing access to Canada’s “dependable supply of crude oil,” said the State Department.

The decision follows a long scientific and political fight over the project, which became a proxy battle in the larger fight over global warming.

Without the pipeline, Carr said the oil would move by the more dangerous method of rail. A 2013 derailment killed 47 people when a runaway oil train from North Dakota jumped the tracks and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

“The more pipeline capacity there is, the higher proportion of the oil will be moved by a safer method of transport,” Carr said.

This is great news for Souq and its shareholders, which include the US investor Tiger Global. There is nothing a vendor likes more than a competitive auction, which is guaranteed to maximize value. Souq was previously reported to have pulled out of a deal with Amazon because it failed to reach its own estimates of the company’s worth.

This was as high as $1 billion, according to the terms of its latest funding round, which raised $275 million in 2015, sparking the “unicorn” comparisons. Amazon’s reported lower bid apparently caused the deal to stall in January.

You could say that Souq — which is being advised by Goldman Sachs — has played a pretty shrewd game. It obviously felt undervalued in the January negotiations, so let the speculation cool for a while. When it got out that a deal was being done at a lower price, it left plenty of room for a rival bidder to come in.

It makes sense for Alabbar to do so. He runs the biggest shopping center in the region — the gigantic Dubai Mall — as well as several others. He too is bitten by the e-commerce bug, with advanced plans for the launch of Noon, slated as a $1 billion portal that will have a big initial focus on fashion and luxury products, but which will ultimately offer the full e-commerce range. Noon is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the PARIS: The euro — and her fervent wish to withdraw from it — is a central theme of every stump speech by French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen calls the single European currency “a knife that you stick in a country’s ribs to force it to do what its people do not want to do.”

The leader of the National Front (FN) blames the euro for driving up prices, hurting exports and adding to France’s already colossal trade deficit.

She has pledged that, if elected, she will throw off the shackles of the common currency and restore France’s monetary sovereignty by resurrecting the franc. With all opinion polls showing her getting past the first round of the election on April 23, making the once-unthinkable prospect of a farright presidency no longer completely implausible, economists and business leaders are worried.

Although Le Pen, 48, currently looks set to lose the May 7 runoff, probably to independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, no one is being complacent.

“No one knows what will happen,” said Jean-Lou Blachier of France’s Confederation of small-and mediumsized businesses, referring to Britain’s surprise vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s shock election in the US last year.

Le Pen argues that bringing back the franc would help retool France’s group singled out as a leader of the Kingdom’s strategy of economic diversification.

Noon versus Souq was one thing; Noon versus Amazon is another, quite different proposition. Alabbar would not like to come up against the US giant so early in his venture’s existence. If he can head off that proposition, his plans stand a much better chance of success. Noon plus Souq versus Amazon is a fair fight.

The fortunes of other big corporates in the Middle East are also involved in the Souq auction. Aramex, the courier business that can claim to be one of the region’s few international brands, counts Alabbar as an investor and could be expected to benefit from lucrative fulfillment contracts from Noon. All the more so if Souq were part of the package too.

Majid Al-Futtaim (MAF), the UAE-based malls operator, was also intensely interested in the outcome of the Souq sale at the beginning of the year, to the extent that it was also mentioned as a possible bidder. CEO Alain Bejjani makes no secret of his admiration for the Souq business, and, with mall retail business under threat from the online trade, digital strategy is an imperative at MAF.

The outcome of the Souq sale also has resonance beyond the Middle East. Amazon is a company that — largely thanks to the skillful and long-term strategy of its founder Jeff Bezos — usually gets its way. It is such a giant of the US business scene that very few corporations can stand in its way, or hope to compete against its gigantic economies of scale.

It dominates US online retailing and has a commanding position in the cloud-computing business via its Amazon Web Services division, and is expanding fast in online media content. There is barely a part of the everyday US consumer experience in which Amazon does not play a significant role.

Some speculate that such a massive presence will eventually draw the unwelcome attention of the regulators. The US president has threatened as much.

But Amazon has not had its own way in the rest of the world, especially in the fast-growth countries in the East. In China it bangs up against Alibaba; in India, it has to contend with big local rivals.

The Middle East and Africa are the last great and unexploited regions of the world for e-commerce but have their own peculiarities, which may not make the Amazon behemoth the most appropriate partner.

The ball is in Souq’s court at the moment, as it considers Emaar’s offer and wonders whether cash-rich Amazon will come back with a higher bid. It is a battle royal for the future of e-commerce in the Middle East. ailing industrial sector. She believes a devalued national currency would make exports cheaper, boosting job creation. Emboldened by Britain’s taboo-breaking Brexit vote, Le Pen also promises to hold a “Frexit” referendum, saying the EU “shuts us in, constrains us, bullies us.”

Most experts, however, say that scrapping the euro would be disastrous, and not just for France. Frank Kane is an award-winning business journalist based in Dubai. He can be reached on Twitter @frankkanedubai.

Ratings agencies have warned that the euro zone’s second-biggest economy could be headed for a default if the country converts its towering €2.2 trillion debt into francs.

“If France leaves the single currency, the whole euro zone could disappear,” said Mathieu Plane of a French economic think tank, the OFCE, warning of an “unprecedented crisis.”