KNOW Country and Industry Risk and Opportunity Assessment: New Markets for MENA Investment

Rajiv Biswas

Chief Economist – Asia-Pacific, IHS

Rajiv Biswas, Senior Director and Asia-Pacific Chief Economist at IHS, is responsible for coordination of economic analyses and forecasts for the Asia-Pacific region, contribution to the IHS global forecast, client support, business development and media interaction.

Mr. Biswas previously worked as Director for South-East Asia for The Economist Group. Prior to this, he worked for UBS as Executive Director for Asia-Pacific Country Risk and before that as Director and Senior Economist for International Public Policy and Group Economic Research covering the Asia-Pacific region. His experience has also included working for an international organization, the Commonwealth Secretariat, in their London headquarters, as a senior economist in the International Capital Markets Department.

His professional career as an international economist also includes the roles of Head of the Economics Unit for QIC, a large investment fund manager, and an international economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland. Rajiv also worked for one year in Japan on trade and investment issues for the Japanese government.

Rajiv is a graduate of the London School of Economics, with a BS (Honors) in Economics and received his MS and DIC from the Imperial College at London University.

Rajiv has published widely on a range of economic, trade and investment-related topics, with over 100 published articles.

Mike Ryan

Senior Economist, World Industry Service, IHS

Michael is a Senior Economist in the World Industry Service, providing clients with multi-dimensional forecasts on industry performance across the world. He authors globally focused industry reports on construction, chemicals and financial services, highlighting trends related to supply and demand conditions, capital spending and profitability.

Prior to moving to the UK, Michael worked within PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Advisory division in Washington, D.C. Michael studied Finance at James Madison University in Virginia and received his Master's degree (with Distinction) in Banking & International Finance from City University London’s Cass Business School.

Ralf Wiegert

Director, Consulting, IHS

Dr. Ralf Wiegert is Director Consulting with IHS Global Insight’s Economics and Country Risk (ECR) team, having joined the company in 2004. He has specialized on Economic Impact Analysis since December 2012 and is currently building a related team for the EMEA region.

Prior to that, he was Principal Economist, specialized on European and CIS emerging markets, and part of the global macro forecasting group within ECR. He conducted daily analysis of economic and political developments, risk assessment, and forecasting and was directly responsible for IHS Global Insight’s macroeconomic and risk models of Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He has written extensively about economic developments in Europe and the CIS, presenting analysis and forecasts at numerous client seminar and conferences.

In addition to his core role, Ralf Wiegert has been managing several projects on global macroeconomic scenarios for strategic business planning. He has also frequently presented IHS Global Insight’s European as well as the global economic outlook at seminars and conferences. Furthermore, he has been participating in and leading IHS-internal projects related to the evaluation of forecasts, to the improvement of forecasting processes and to tailored databanks for forecasting purposes. 

Prior to joining IHS Global Insight, Ralf Wiegert worked as head of the Russia research group at the European Institute for International Economic Relations, following his graduation from Potsdam University with a Ph.D. in Economics in 2002.