[2007-08-13]  Lore of 'Casablanca' Lures Investors to Morocco
The midnight fog rolls off the Atlantic on cue, wrapping around Casablanca's Anfa airfield, where Rick's goodbye to Ilsa in 1942 was portrayed by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

Today, the folks at the Casablanca Stock Exchange say the classic film about romance and redemption on a stage of global strife helps woo Western capital to Morocco's financial hub as the fear of terrorism has left much of the Muslim world grappling with ways to entice foreign investment.

"There's no doubt 'Casablanca' attracts investors," said Touda Loutfi, the exchange's corporate-planning director. "After Morocco, our biggest subscribers come from Great Britain, the U.S., France and Japan, places where the film has a cult following."

A lifetime seat on the 14-member electronic-trading floor costs brokers $670,000, compared with $50,000 a year for a New York Stock Exchange license. But with a market capitalization of $47.2 billion representing 69 companies, the 77-year-old exchange is hardly visible compared with the $13.4 trillion market value of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. Still, Casablanca's and Kuwait's exchanges are the two best-performing of the 10 in the Arab world.

"It's a burgeoning market with a great deal of potential," said Henry Azzam, Deutsche Bank's chief executive for the Middle East and North Africa. "Casablanca is the business center of the Maghreb."

Badr Alioua, fixed-income and equity manager at the local branch of Attijariwafa Bank, said King Mohamed VI has made the city the hottest place for business in the Arab world. Morocco's gross domestic product grew 8.1 percent in 2006, compared with growth of 1.7 percent in 2005. Moody's Investors Service rates the country "stable," with credit strengths that include a young population, as well as structural and democratic progress.

Alioua said the king's embrace of capitalism and free speech, as well as a tolerant interpretation of the Koran, encourages educated young Moroccans to stay in the country.

"The youth factor of this market is critically important to our continued success," Alioua said. "Casablanca is like the movie: a place where young people are willing to take risk. 'Casablanca' is the main reason why Americans know about us, and we must take advantage of that."

Along many of the noisy streets outside the waterfront exchange, the brokerage that exploits life imitating art is out of sync with some Islamists who view Hollywood movies, liquor and interest-bearing financial instruments as taboo.

In May 2003, five bomb attacks engineered in Casablanca by al-Qaeda militants killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers. Another blast in March 2007 injured three people in a cafe and killed the assailant.

Another global clash of ideals was in the news Nov. 26, 1942, the day "Casablanca" premiered at the Hollywood Theatre in New York, and a silkworm-breeding company was the most actively traded of the Moroccan exchange's 34 stocks.

When asked how the exchange copes with 21st-century tensions and whether it intends to create a Shariah-law-compliance committee with the power to veto investments, Loutfi said, "No imams."

"We don't want them here," she said.

"The strict prohibition on charging interest still prevails in the Muslim world and has largely prevented it from robustly developing the foundations of capitalism," said Feisal Abdul Rauf, imam of the Masjid al-Farah mosque in lower Manhattan.

"Not being able to accept these ideas is one of the primary reasons the Muslim world lagged behind the West," said Rauf, who is known as "the Wall Street imam" because his mosque is blocks from the New York Stock Exchange.

Kathy Kriger is proprietor of Rick's Cafe and president of the Usual Suspects, its owner. "Call me Madame Rick," said Kriger, who in 2004 resigned as a U.S. diplomat in Morocco to open the cafe in the city's Moorish quarter, a mile from the exchange.

Kriger spent almost a year raising $1 million for her venture. She found 43 investors, 32 of them U.S. citizens.

"And, of course, the U.S. Treasury Department tracked down the Americans because they transferred funds into a Moroccan company," Kriger said. "They were all investigated. The government thought Rick's Cafe was a terrorist front."

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