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Meed

Found in: Media companies of the United Arab Emirates

MEED is a 50-year-old business intelligence tool for the Middle East, providing analysis and commentary on Middle Eastern markets, companies and people and data and information on the regional projects market.

History

The first issue of Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) was published on 8 March 1957.

MEED's founder and driving force for the next two decades was Elizabeth Collard, a champion of Arab causes who was to become an adviser to UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson on Middle East affairs and a friend of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan. She also helped to establish the Council for the Advancement of Arab British Understanding (CAABU). MEED

With two part-time secretarial assistants, MEED was produced on a hand-cranked Ronco printing machine. Every Friday evening, friends and relatives would help staple and stuff envelopes with the 12-page newsletter. Lacking any editorial resources, the Middle East Economic Digest was a compilation from newspapers and other reports. Newspapers were flown in weekly from Cairo and Beirut, translated and condensed.

By the time MEED was acquired by Emap in 1986 it had a staff of 20 full-time journalists and 12 researchers and newsroom assistants to cover Middle Eastern business and project news. It now has offices in Dubai, London and Riyadh and circulation of the weekly MEED magazine, according to a 2008 audit by ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations UK), stands at 5,993 ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations UK). In 2006 Emap also acquired business website AME Info.

When MEED celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2007, Abdullah II of Jordan wrote an open letter: Letter to MEED

"Allow me to express my warmest congratulations on MEED's 50th anniversary. The celebration of this milestone is a testament to the distinguished insight into the region MEED has provided to its readers for five decades. Your acuity has recorded the region's diversity and potential, not just its challenges and crises."

In December 2007, it was announced that Emap had agreed to sell its business-to-business titles including MEED to a consortium comprising private equity group Apax and the Guardian Media Group.