The growth and development of the modern Egyptian financial sector

This thesis focuses on the Egyptian financial sector during the period between the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and the late 1980's. This was a period during which the country's political leaders sought to administer the economy by a variety of different means, all of which had a marked impact on the manner in which the financial sector was able to operate. An attempt is made to assess the nature of the changes to which the sector was subject, the manner in which the changes shaped financial operations and the potential of the sector to contribute to the removal, or alleviation of some of the problems faced by Egypt today. The techniques employed in pursuit of these objectives are various, concentrating initially on an examination of the 'ideal' role of the 'ideal' financial sector, the path of sectoral development commonly charted within the developing world, and some of the problems faced typically by financial sectors in the wake of such historic developmental experience. The thesis then goes on to discuss Egypt in particular - the background of foreign commercial banking which characterised the sector before the Revolution, and the impact of Gamal Abd al-Nasser's reforms - Egyptianisation, sequestration, nationalisation and central planning. President Sadat's Open Door Economic Policy is also examined. This leads to an assessment of economic conditions today. The activities of the sector are then discussed along with the regulatory environment imposed by the Central Bank and the government. The main findings of this study, discussed in the penultimate chapter, suggest that whilst the financial sector has undoubtedly grown and developed, the general political, social and economic environment in which it has had to operate has prevented it from realising fully its potential. Liquidity stands in excess of 130%, and this in itself points to a lack of both confidence and perceived investment opportunities. Suggested areas of reform to enhance financial performance and improve confidence are described, reflecting the opinions of a range of financiers and others working in Egypt today

Justice in indigenous land claims: a typology of problems

Different understandings of indigeneity have been used to justify who receives reparations or acknowledgment of historic injustices in white settler nations. This article seeks to interrogate definitions of indigeneity used in contemporary Australian land claims, with the aim of challenging the state’s legislative and judicial responses to indigenous Australians. Drawing on key legislative and judicial responses to indigenous Australians since the 1970s, I identify and analyze five problems generated by these responses: the problem of evidence, the problem of articulation, the problem of authenticity, the problem of character and the problem of legitimacy. Naming and characterizing these problems indicates the extent to which injustices against indigenous Australians are perpetuated through discourses based on poorly constructed legal definitions. It also generates certain ethical responses, such as the necessity for a more critical assessment of the role of the state in shaping discourses around indigeneity. I argue that identifying and addressing these five problems might result in recognizing indigenous alterities in ways that will engender new practices of justice. To the Australian courts … the Yorta Yorta peoples were not sufficiently Aboriginal to get one square meter of what was left over after the whites had taken all that they wanted. (Pearson 2003, 2)</p

Genome-wide association study identifies novel breast cancer susceptibility loci

Breast cancer exhibits familial aggregation, consistent with variation in genetic susceptibility to the disease. Known susceptibility genes account for less than 25% of the familial risk of breast cancer, and the residual genetic variance is likely to be due to variants conferring more moderate risks. To identify further susceptibility alleles, we conducted a two-stage genome-wide association study in 4,398 breast cancer cases and 4,316 controls, followed by a third stage in which 30 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were tested for confirmation in 21,860 cases and 22,578 controls from 22 studies. We used 227,876 SNPs that were estimated to correlate with 77% of known common SNPs in Europeans at r2 &gt; 0.5. SNPs in five novel independent loci exhibited strong and consistent evidence of association with breast cancer (P &lt; 10(-7)). Four of these contain plausible causative genes (FGFR2, TNRC9, MAP3K1 and LSP1). At the second stage, 1,792 SNPs were significant at the P &lt; 0.05 level compared with an estimated 1,343 that would be expected by chance, indicating that many additional common susceptibility alleles may be identifiable by this approach.<br/