After two years of house price falls, property prices in Qatar have been stable during 2011, according to property consultant, Asteco.

At Viva Bahriya-Pearl, whose 29 towers are located in The Pearl-Qatar:

• The average sales price of new apartments was QAR15,500 (US$4,254) per sq. m. in Q4 2011, unchanged from last year, but down by almost 28% from two years ago.
• In Q4 2011, the average price of existing apartments was unchanged from the previous year, but down by around 15% from Q4 2009 to QAR14,500 (US$3,979).

At the Porto-Arabia Pearl, the first phase of The Pearl-Qatar, which has a total of 31 towers:

• The average apartment sales price in the primary market was QAR13,500 (US$3,705) per sq. m., the same as last year, but down by 16% from two years earlier.
• In the secondary market, the average apartment sales price was QAR10,750 (US$2,950) per sq. m., down by 7% from two years ago.

At the Lagoon Plaza, an extravagant twin towers complex in Doha:

• The average sales price of new apartments was QAR12,500 (US$3,430) per sq. m. in Q4 2011, down by 17% from the same period two years ago.
• For existing apartments, the average sales price was QAR9,500 (US$2,607), down by 24% from two years ago.

Qatar issues permanent residence visas to foreigners buying freehold properties, under Law No. 17 of 2004, which permitted foreign freehold property ownership for the first time.  A property boom followed, fuelled by Qatari purchasing power and by an influx of expatriates, triggering a property price surge from mid-2000s to early-2008.

However, property prices declined sharply between Q4 2009 and Q2 2011:

• In 2009, house prices dropped by as much as 40%, according to estimates.
• In 2010, house prices fell by about 4%, according to Saudi-based banking firm, Samba Financial Group.

Positive long-term outlook

Consumer and investor confidence is now rising again, due to Qatar’s spectacular economic growth.

“With prices having stabilized for the fourth consecutive quarter, there is now strong evidence to suggest that prices have finally bottomed out and will not decline further,” said Jed Wolfe of Asteco Qatar.

Three areas have been set aside for this visas-for-sale scheme: the Pearl-Qatar, West Bay Lagoon and Al Khor Resort.  The visa remains valid as long as the foreigner keeps the property in his name. Foreigners and expatriate residents account for about three-fourths of the population. About 82% of the population lives in Doha and Al Rayyan, according to the Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA).

Demand for residential property in Qatar will rise in the coming years, according to the investment bank Alpen Capital, because the population is likely to grow at compound annual rate of 4.7% (CAGR) between 2011 and 2016.

Land price variations

Massive construction developments in preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup are already affecting land prices.  Al Shamal, home to the proposed Al-Shamal Stadium—one of the venues for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, experienced the highest increase in land prices in October 2011 – about 20% up on the previous month, according to Century21 Qatar. It was followed by Umm Salal (19.5%), Al Khor (19.1%) and Al Rayyan (14.6%).

But other areas have seen land price falls over the same period—Doha (-18.7%), Al Wakra (-8.4%), and Al Da’ayen (-1.1%).  Doha has Qatar’s most expensive land, at QAR538 (US$148) per sq. ft.

Housing demand and supply

There were about 259,066 housing units in Qatar as of April 2010, according to QSA. About 193,376 units were apartments, while the remaining 62,496 units were villas.  Of the total housing units, about 81.4% (or 210,955 units) were occupied.

Of the total value of real estate transactions in November 2011

• 43% or QAR988 million (US$271 million) were in Doha.
• 17% were in Al Rayyan
• 16% in Al Da’ayen
• 14% in Al Wakra.

Source: Century21 Qatar.

More than 74,000 residential more units are expected to be completed by 2020, according to Asteco. Of which, about 66,000 units will be apartments and the remaining 8,000 units, villas and townhouses.

Foreigners can buy in massive freehold areas:

• The Pearl-Qatar

The Pearl, in which Qatar offered its first freehold properties, is a QAR36.4 billion (US$10 billion) Riviera-style development, on a vast man-made island off the coast of Doha, the capital city.  It will provide over 40 kilometres of new coastline, linked to the mainland by a 4-lane, palm-tree lined highway. Doha´s international airport is only 20 km away.

Developed by the United Development Company, The Pearl-Qatar offers 16,000 villas and 25,000 apartments.

• West Bay Lagoon

West Bay Lagoon is a 2 million sq. m. private beachfront compound, centred on the Zigzag Towers. At the northern tip of Doha’s West Bay district, it is surrounded by artificial lagoons.

• Barwa – Al Khor City

The Barwa – Al Khor project is a complete city, including seafront chalets, villas and elite apartments, covering 5.5 million sq. m. in Al Khor, 57 km north of Doha. The QAR30 billion (US$8.24 billion) Barwa Real Estate development will house 63,000 residents in 24,114 elite residential units.  It will also have hotels and sports facilities.

Phase 1, with a total cost of QAR7.3 billion (US$2 billion), is expected to be completed in 2013.

No less than 18 leasehold areas for foreigners

Foreigners can alternatively buy leasehold property for 99 years, renewable, in 18 designated areas, including the multi-billion dollar Lusail project, under Cabinet Decision No. 6 of February 2006.  Foreigners can use the properties commercially or residentially, transfer the lease to another party, and sublet or rent.

Lusail City is an QAR18 billion (US$4.9 billion) waterfront community on the northern coast of Umm Salal, 15 km north of Doha. It is expected to house over 200,000 residents in 10 hotels, 3,000 villas, 12,000 apartments and retail areas.

Developed by Qatari Diar, Lusail will cover an area of around 21 million sq. m. This mega project, in 16 zones, will contain an Energy City costing QAR9.5 billion (US$2.6 billion), and an Entertainment City, costing QAR5.5 billion (US$1.5 billion). It is expected to be completed in 2014.

Another mixed use development project is Al Waab City, owned by Nasser Bin Khaled Group, which will cover about 1.2 million sq. m.  Incorporating “green strategies” and sustainable design principles, it is expected to cost QAR13 billion (US$3.6 billion). This development is slated to be finished in 2015.

Another notable development is Asia Towers, which will have four 55-storey towers near West Bay. Each tower will contain about 1,600 residential apartments. Developed by Ezdan Real Estate Company, it is estimated to cost QAR2.5 billion (US$686 million).

Other leasehold property developments in Qatar:

• Musheireb (Area #13)
• Frij Abdul Aziz (Area #14)
• Doha Jadeed (Area #15)
• Ghanem Al Qadeem (Area #16)
• Al Rifa Al Hitmi (Area #17)
• Al Salata (Area #18)
• Bin Mahmoud (Area #22)
• Bin Mahmoud (Area #23)
• Rawdat Al Khail (Area #24)
• Al Mansoura & Bin Dirham (Area #25)
• Najma (Area #26)
• Umm Ghuwailina (Area #27)
• Al Khulaifat (north and south) (Area #28)
• Al Sadd (Area #38)
• New Mirqab & Al Nasser (Area #39)
• Doha International airport (Area #48)
• Al Dafna & Onaiza & Al Qitar (Area #60 & 61 & 63)
• Al Kharaij & Jebel Thiya (Area #69 & 70)

Interest rates slashed

The benchmark overnight lending and repo rate was cut by 50 basis points to 4.5% in August 2011, while the overnight deposit rate was slashed by 25 basis points to 0.75% over the same period, a move to support private sector credit growth.

Qatar National Bank (QNB), the leading financial institution in the country, offers home and land financing at rates as low as 4.35%. For expatriates, the maximum loan amount is QAR3 million (US$823,280) with a term period of not more than 15 years.

The size of Qatar’s mortgage market is estimated at about 14% of GDP. To further develop the mortgage market, Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry is now drafting the country’s first mortgage law, according to The Peninsula, a local English newspaper.

There are a total of 14 banks in Qatar. Seven are Qatari-owned, two are Arab banks and the rest are branches of foreign banks.

The rental market is stabilizing

After a two-year fall, rents for residential properties have already stabilized across all locations in Qatar, according to property consultant, Asteco.

Average rents were almost unchanged during 2011. In the wake of the global crisis, residential rents dropped about 25% during 2009, according to Century 21 Qatar. In the Pearl, rents have fallen by as much as 50% over the same period.

In Q4 2011:

• The average rent for one-bedroom apartments ranged from QAR3,000 (US$823) to QAR10,500 (US$2,881) per month
• Three-bedroom apartments rent for QAR6,000 (US$1,647) to QAR17,500 (US$4,802) per month
• Five-bedroom villas rent from between QAR10,000 (US$2,744) and QAR30,000 (US$8,233) per month

The number of residential leasing transactions slightly increased in Q4 2011 from the previous quarter.

The Pearl-Qatar offers the most expensive rental properties in Qatar, with an average monthly rent of QAR9,500 (US$2,607) for one-bedroom apartments and QAR16,250 (US$4,459) for three-bedroom apartments. In contrast, Al Muntazah, located in Doha, has the cheapest with an average monthly rent of QAR3,500 (US$960) for one-bedroom apartments and QAR6,250 (US$1,715) for three-bedroom apartments.

Currently, gross rental yields in the country stands at around 10%, based on a report published by Alpen Capital, an investment bank.

In 2012, residential rents are expected to increase, which will also result into a rise in rental yields, according to Alpen Capital.

About 59% of all occupied housing units in Qatar are rented, according to QSA.

Economic growth to slow

Qatar’s economy grew by 16% p.a., on average from 2006 to 2008. Then in 2009, real GDP growth rate slowed to 11%. But the economy bounced back with 18.7% growth in 2011, after 16.6% growth in 2010.

In 2012, Qatar’s growth is expected to slow to around 6%, due to a self-imposed moratorium on new hydrocarbon projects – still the GCC’s highest growth rate.

In 2012, inflation is projected to be 4.1%, up from 1.2% in February 2012, according to Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA).  Consumer prices fell by an average of 3.6% per year from 2009 to 2010, but from 2006 to 2008 annual inflation was 13.5%.

This article was republished with permission from Global Property Guide.

I can say that Lionel Messi is probably the best footballer in the world at the moment. The Argentine football sensation has just won about every award and accolade in the sport. Here are five outtakes from his success.

• Desire to win. Messi has won the 2009, 2010 and 2011 World Player of the Year awards. Though expectations fuel his desire to be the best on the field, it’s his own drive that eggs him on. “Something deep in my character allows me to take the hits and get on with trying to win.”
• Grit. Being tough isn’t just about dominating physically, it’s about showing you have the dogged determination to get out there and make things happen. Messi wants to play every game and doesn’t like to be sitting out a match – not even to rest.
• Kaizen. Messi’s team mates have praised his influenced on their games. He has taught them to keep improving in every match they play. Continuous learning is the difference between mediocre and great.
• Mental toughness. The ability to compete, innovate, improve and ultimately win has a lot to do with how tough a person is ‘upstairs’. Messi has overcomed the adversity of his growth abnormality and used speed and agility to out play his peers.
• Loyalty. Messi has the ability to move anywhere he wants but he’s committed to his club and has said he’d only leave to play for his country. I can’t think of anything better than doing what you love with and for the people you love.

As reported by Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi in his blog

The LEA Global is an international alliance of independently owned accounting and consulting firms. Established in 1999, The LEA has more than 180 member firms worldwide with collective revenues of 2.6 billion USD. There are approximately 100 countries represented in the association.

“By utilizing technology, developing innovative special interest groups, and connecting internationally to the knowledge of our member firms, LEA Global members are able to compete on a substantial scale, throughout the country and across the globe,” stated Michael Davis, Managing Partner HW Fisher & Company, London & LEA Chair. “LEA provides the resources that support their consistent growth and, subsequently, its own. The combined knowledge of the many top firms in LEA is shared across all firms, and contributes to the continuing success of each

“When the idea for LEA was conceived, the plan was to introduce an independent association that helped firms compete with the Big Four. The competitive landscape changed since our inception in 1999 as other large national and regional firms emerged. Yet the continued growth of the Alliance is a testament to the independent successes of member firms and their ability to understand and proactively deal with new challenges. The appeal of an accomplished association that consistently meets the needs of its membership is indisputable,” said Gary Shamis, Managing Partner SS&G Financial Services, Inc. & LEA Chair Emeritus. “Accounting has come out of the dark ages. The most successful firms operate as strategic businesses, and this view extends to its client base, centers of influence and the alliance it belongs to. Over the past 12 years, LEA’s success has proven that the attention and support it provides to its members, including their overall operations special interest groups, has been a major factor in the success of its member firms.”

Although I am an abogado in Spain and a barrister in England, I like to call myself Counsel as my main role is advising clients on courses of action affecting their own or their business’ well being.

As money, taxes and legal implications exist from the most mundane to the highest aspiration in this world, sound and friendly counsel plays a fundamental part in every client’s life.

Not trying to oversimplify the profession, the other roles we play in the context of Counseling are:

Advocacy – representing and protecting the client’s interests in relationship to private or public subjects, including negotiations, mediation and litigation.

Advisory – Analysing, assessing or researching legal issues and providing clear responses or reports to our clients 

Assets Management – Managing compliance, strategizing and supporting business or assets optimisation on behalf of our clients

Trusteeship – Owning and administering assets in trust for and on behalf of our clients

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring it has become clear that sustainable economic progress requires social cohesion, trusted political leadership and inclusion of all sectors of society. Such attributes, Kobsak says, can be found in Qatar. In this context, he points to the extensive reforms currently underway in Qatar in the context of The National Development Strategy 2011-2016. The strategy is being implemented to address the challenges of a more complex economy. The reforms aim to bring together decisions of national significance within an integrated framework for making deliberate and concerted choices about Qatar’s future.

UNCTAD XIII quadrennial conference will be held for the very first time in the Middle East. It will take place in Doha, Qatar, from 21 to 26 April.  The theme of the conference is “Development-centred globalization: Towards sustainable and inclusive development paths.”

Chair of the National Preparatory Committee, H.E. Dr. Hamad Bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari, Minister of Culture, Arts, and Heritage of the State of Qatar, recently dubbed  the upcoming UNCTAD conference the “Olympics of development,” as it will bring together high level investors, esteemed academics, renowned journalists, representatives of civil society and high ranking government officials from the organization’s 194 member States with a common goal to shape new and more sustainable development paths.

At the numerous events organized during the conference, participants will have an opportunity for wide-ranging debate and reflection on the state of the global economy and the major economic challenges facing developing countries, particularly in light of recent economic and social crises.

-Ends-

For more information, and press accreditation for the conference, please see http://unctadxiii.org and contact:
Sam Elie Bassile
APCO Worldwide
Dubai UAE
(m) +971 55 2426806
sbassile@apcoworldwide.com

Article http://www.fastcompany.com/most-creative-people/2011/wadah-khanfar-al-jazeera
Video http://www.youtube.com/embed/Xbn0taB5Yjk

The highlight of the conference was HE Dr Ahmad M Ali, the pioneer and most senior scholar on Islamic Finance and President of the Islamic Development Bank.

In the picture an animated conversation between Dr Ahmad and Fernando del Canto, barrister and founder of Konsilia.

When to trust your gut

The Quarterly: What distinguishes a situation when an executive should trust his intuition or his gut feeling, versus one where he should really pause and think?

Dan Ariely: One way to think about it is the following: imagine you stand on a field and you have a soccer ball and you kick it. You close your eyes and you kick it and then you open your eyes and you try to predict, where did the ball fall? Imagine you do this a thousand times; after a while you know exactly the relationship between your kick and where the ball is. Those are the conditions in which intuitions are correct—when we have plenty of experience and we have unambiguous feedback.
That’s learning, right? And we’re very good at it. But imagine something else happened. Imagine you close your eyes, you kick the ball, and then somebody picked it up and moved it 50 feet to the right or to the left or any kind of other random component. Then ask yourself, how good will you be in predicting where it would land? And the answer is: terrible.
The moment I add a random component, performance goes away very quickly. And the world in which executives live in is a world with lots of random elements. Now I don’t mean random that somebody really moves the ball, but you have a random component here, which you don’t control—it’s controlled by your competitors, the weather; there’s lots of things that are outside of your consideration. And it turns out, in those worlds, people are really bad. This actually, I think, brings us to the most important underutilized tools for management, which [are] experiments. You say, I can use my intuition, I can use data that tells me something about what might happen, but not for sure, or I can implement something and do an experiment. I am baffled by why companies don’t do more experiments.

The benefits of irrationality

The Quarterly: Lots of people ask us if making rational decisions all the time is necessarily a good thing. Is there a role for emotion? Is there a role for a little bit of irrational thinking in business decision making, in your view?
1 The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2010.
2Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2008.

Dan Ariely: You know the trust game? So the trust game has two players, A and B. A gets $100, and he said, “A, you can do one of two things: you can either take the money and go home, or you can send it to player B.
“If you send it to player B, the money would quadruple, so by the time player B gets it, it will be $400. And player B can do one of two things: they can send you back $200 or they can go home with $400.” If you are player A and you think player B is perfectly rational, you say, “Hey, I will never give him the money, because if I gave him the money he would go away.”
But it turns out that lots of people do that; lots of people give the money. A lot of people pass the money to player B, and very often player B pass[es] the money back. That’s kind of a place where people are irrational but it’s good, right? Trust is incredibly useful in society. If you’re a CEO and you don’t trust who you’re dealing with, it’s incredibly devastating.
Here’s part two of the story: imagine you’re player A, you send your $100, and player B decide[s] to go home with the money. They come to you and they say, “Sorry, player A, player B decided to go away with all your money, but I’ll tell you what: if you go into your checking account and you give me, then, money, for every dollar you would give me, I will go, I will hunt player B down, and I will take $2 away from him.” And now you can ask yourself whether you would spend more of your own money to make player B suffer.

The Quarterly: For revenge.

Dan Ariely: For revenge. What do you think?

The Quarterly: Oh, I would.

Dan Ariely: So here we have two instinct[s]. We have trust and we have revenge. [Neither] of them is rational, but together they’re incredibly helpful. Also, revenge has done lots of things in the business world. There are lots of wonderful examples of people who got really upset with their partners or clients and decided to take revenge and show them something, and often we’re incredibly motivated to come up with great things.
So I don’t think rationality is the golden standard. We need to think about what creates the best structures, incentives, motivation—and rationality is not always that. In fact, think about what [would] happen if you lived in a city where everybody was perfectly rational, where everybody was always calculating what’s just good for them—what’s my cost, what’s my benefit, what will I get. How much would people work? How much would people steal? This will not be a place that we would want to live in. In fact, businesses, I think, need to understand the irrationality of their employees, of their customers, and take it into account.

Internal motivation

The Quarterly: Motivation—companies don’t experiment very willingly about how to motivate people in different ways. You’ve done a lot of research about that, actually.

Dan Ariely: People don’t just care about money. We care about competition and completion, and we care about self-fulfillment and friendship and obligation—all kinds of things.
I sat in front of a group that spent two years designing what they thought was the best product for that company. The first thing they told me was that their CEO canceled their project a week before I came, and they were completely devastated. I asked them, I said, “How many people show up for work later?” They all raised their hand. I said, “How many people go home earlier than you used to?” They all raised their hand. I said, “How many people fudge their expense reports more than you used to?” They didn’t raise their hand, but they took me for dinner.

The Quarterly: Here’s a question for you, though. This will happen, right? Projects do get canceled, mergers do get pulled off. What’s your advice to the executives who manage those teams in terms of keeping the motivation of their people?

Dan Ariely: Yes. So I asked them, I said, “What could your CEO have done?” And they came up with ideas themselves. They said he could have let them present their ideas in front of the whole company. He could have created a few demos and let them run around the company.
He could have gotten them to tell him what part of the technology could fit better with other parts of the organization. Now here’s the trick—every one of those efforts to save people’s motivation would have taken time and energy and money.
The CEO, if he has the perspective that there’s no internal motivation, should not spend that energy. But not only is it important, people dramatically underestimate it, and lots of terrible things have happened to this group since.

Conflicts of interest

Dan Ariely: The basic question is as follow[s]: imagine you’re a banker on Wall Street, and imagine you could make $5 million a year if you could only see [the] mortgage-backed security as a good product. Don’t you think that, under those condition[s], you too could see them as better than they truly are. I don’t mean by [lying], that you would say, “Oh, I don’t think they’re good, but I’ll pretend”—I think really change your opinion.

The Quarterly: Really convincing yourself of something that happens to be in your interest.

Dan Ariely: I don’t think you can convince yourself from thinking that or convincing [yourself] that they’re wonderful, but you could move along this dimension. The more complex and difficult and demanding different equation and parameters, the more you could do that. And if you saw everybody around you, you could do it more easily as well. That’s the basic issue.
Here’s another thing: would you be interested in going in front of a judge—imagine you were accused of something—who got paid 10 percent of the verdict that he passed on you.

The Quarterly: That probably wouldn’t seem like a good way for justice to be rendered.

Dan Ariely: That’s right. So why are we willing to do it in banking and why are we willing to do it in health care? What’s interesting is that people don’t see how conflicts of interest work on them. Again—you know, I gave a lecture to 2,000 physicians and I ask, “How many people here experience conflicts of interests?” Zero.
I say, “How many people here think that the majority of the people in the room experience conflict of interests?” Everybody raised their hands. The trick is that people just don’t see it coming. There’s a beautiful research by Read Montague.3 He put people in an fMRI4 machine that could image their brain, and he presented them art from two galleries—Blue Moon and Lone Wolf.
To some people he said, “Your participation in this study is sponsored by Blue Moon”; to the other one he said, “It’s Lone Wolf. Now go ahead, look at the art, and tell me how much you like it.” And people said they like more the art that came from their sponsoring gallery, as if it means something. But more than that, the [part of the brain] that reflects pleasure reacted more positively.

Power and irrationality

The Quarterly: Why is it that those people who have risen to the top of their professions, who are successful in every possible way, seem to be irrational at the time of making important decisions?

Dan Ariely: I think that the people who rise to the top are probably more overconfident than other people. Then again, it’s good, it helps them rise to the top, but it also has a curse within it.
And finally, there’s a question of what happens when we make really big decisions. Do we become more rational? It turns out that big decisions are not very different from small
3 Dr. Read Montague, professor of neuroscience and director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston.
4Functional magnetic resonance imaging.

decision[s]. In fact, when a decision is very big and very stressful and very complex, some of the irrationalities actually become larger.

Intuition in decision making

The Quarterly: You write, “I was just as bad myself at making decisions as everyone else I write about.” Is there any real hope for people who simply read your books as opposed to writing them, to improve the quality of their decision making, and to become less irrational?

Dan Ariely: Recently, we were working with a fast-food place. The CEO of that company came to my class and after the class he said, “Look, tell me what to do. I sell this fast-food Chinese stuff, we sell lots of it, and people love the most awful thing on the menu. There’s lots of good things on the menu that are not as bad.”

The Quarterly: But they don’t buy them.

Dan Ariely: “Seventy percent of my sales go from this thing that is double-fried, sweet, and unbelievably bad. What can we do?” So we did an experiment. He gave us one store and we wrote calorie information, labeling. What effect did it have? Nothing, zero. It’s not about information. It’s about the fact that you see this fatty food and it’s tempting.
So, for example, what would happen if we asked people, “Would you be willing to take half a portion of the main dish?” Turns out people are not that interested in that. But when we ask them to take half a portion of the side dish of rice, more than 40 percent of the people are willing to do it, and they cut 250 calories by doing that. That’s a big achievement.

The Quarterly: But you also cut the revenues.

Dan Ariely: No, we don’t. We don’t give them any discount.

The Quarterly: Oh, you give them a half order for the same price.

Dan Ariely: So we just say, “Would you be interested today [to] get half an order of rice?” Now, why are people doing it? It’s a little bit like Ulysses and the siren. You remember the story: Ulysses tied himself to the mast, put [beeswax] in his ear to make sure that when temptation comes he would not be able to be tempted. And it turns out that people have some intuition about those issues. When you propose to them a Ulysses mechanism, they take it

Committed with a high quality service, they combine personalized, traditional counsel with our passion to protect and promote genuine Intellectual Property.

Konsilia has been appointed to represent a prominent producer and writer and is finalizing arrangements to represent one of the top 4 Hollywood Artist Agencies in the Middle East.

Those new appointments, together with their existing portfolio of international artist and production companies in Spain, will support their further expansion in this exciting market.

One of the major projects they are currently working on is the production of a historical thriller film, which is expected to be launched in 2012.

Konsilia understand the creative industry, its financial patterns and international implications. They know that income is irregular by nature; projects may take longer than expected and royalties are not always easy to collect. For these reasons, they work closely with their clients, minimizing those financial challenges and creating joint venture opportunities with the best international tax planning and corporate structures.