Here's a Bloomberg story titled "Pakistan, Land of Entrepreneurs":
On a warm Sunday morning in November, Arif Habib leaves his posh home near the seafront in southern Karachi and drives across town in a silver Toyota Prado SUV. About half an hour later, he arrives to check up on his latest project: a 2,100-acre residential development at the northern tip of this city of 20 million. He hops out, shakes hands with young company call-center workers who are dressed for a cricket match, and joins them at the edge of the playing field for a traditional Pakistani breakfast of curried chickpeas and semolina pudding. After a quick tour of the construction site, he straps on his leg pads, grabs his bat, and heads onto the field. The principles of cricket are very effective in business, says Habib, 59. The goal is to stay at the wicket, hit the right balls, leave the balls that dont quite work, and keep an eye on the scoreboard. I feel that my childhood association with cricket has contributed to my success.
Habib, who started as a stockbroker more than four decades ago, has expanded his Arif Habib Group into a 13-company business that has invested $2 billion in financial services, cement, fertilizer, and steel factories since 2004. His group and a clutch of others have become conglomerates of a kind that went out of fashion in the West but seem suited to the often chaotic conditions in Pakistan. Engro (ENGRO), a maker of fertilizer, has moved into packaged foods and coal mining. Billionaire Mian Muhammad Mansha, one of Pakistans richest men, is importing 2,500 milk cows from Australia to start a dairy business after running MCB Bank, Nishat Mills, and D.G. Khan Cement.
These companies have prospered in a country that, since joining the U.S. in the war on terror after Sept. 11, has lost more than 40,000 people to retaliatory bombings by the Taliban. Political violence in Karachi has killed 2,000 Pakistanis this year, and an energy crisispower outages last as long as 18 hours a dayhas led to social unrest. Foreign direct investment declined 24 percent to $244 million in the four months ended Oct. 31, according to the central bank.
At the same time, some 70 million Pakistanis40 percent of the populationhave become middle-class, says Sakib Sherani, chief executive of Macro Economic Insights, a research firm in Islamabad. A boom in agriculture and residential property, as well as jobs in hot sectors such as telecom and media, have helped Pakistanis prosper. Just go to the malls and see the number of customers who are actually buying in upscale stores and that shows you how robust the demand is, says Azfer Naseem, head of research for Elixir Securities in Karachi. Despite the energy crisis, we have growth of 3 percent.
Sherani of Macro Economic Insights estimates the middle class doubled in size between 2002 and 2012. Those who understand the difference between the perception of Pakistan and the reality have made a killing, Habib says. Foreigners dont come here, so the field is wide open. The KSE100, the benchmark index of the Karachi Exchange, has risen elevenfold since mid-2001. Shares in the index are up 43 percent this year alone. Over the past decade, stocks have been buoyed by corporate earnings, which were bolstered in turn by rising consumer spending.
---------
Today, Habib has 11,000 employees and annual revenue of 100 billion rupees. He plans to expand into commodities trading and warehousing. Ive created all my wealth in Pakistan and reinvested all of it here, says Habib, who drives himself to his cricket matches and is never accompanied by security guards. In 1998, when Pakistans share index fell to a record low after the government tested nuclear weapons, Habib bought shares even though people thought I was mad....
Pakistan, Land of Entrepreneurs - Businessweek
