Generation Dubai by Bijan Khezri

• A new global generation is emerging, driven not by the urge to win political freedoms, but by the desire to live without economic and aspirational constraints. This is “Generation Dubai”.
• Modern Dubai, founded upon an autocratic system dedicated to “Daring the Improbable”, parallels the emergence of this generation and is its new spiritual home.
• The credit crisis has exposed the failings and contradictions of Western democracies in answering the needs of this new generation. We are at a crossroads where democracy will have to reinvent itself in order to survive.

Dubai is now firmly on the map as a leading tourist destination, emerging cultural meeting point and Islamic finance powerhouse. But what allowed the tiny desert town with small off-shore oil reserves to become the Middle East’s economic power centre? Generation Dubai is a thought-provoking and controversial examination of Dubai as a mirror to assess a changing world as well as Western democracies’ shortcomings in particular since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Taking the form of a discursive essay, the book frames Dubai’s success in a historical, socio-economic and global context forcing us to re-evaluate our understanding of Dubai. Given the autocratic nature of Dubai’s political system and its emphasis on high-quality public services to foster investment and trade, the author questions whether modern democracy in its current form, in particular in light of the current credit crisis, will be able to address citizens’ needs.

Generation Dubai is published in full-colour hardback and combines selected artworks from the Khezri Collection together with a unique set of photographs documenting a world in transition – a massive construction site – where the contours of the new are still emerging.

About the Author

Bijan Khezri is a corporate financier who has gained extensive experience with Dubai-based business projects at various stages of his career. Bijan studied law at the University of Bonn and is a graduate of the Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales, University of Geneva. After building the technology practice within the Equity Capital Markets Group of BNP Paribas in London, Bijan assumed his first public board position at the age of 28, and has since held roles as Chairman,

Chief Executive and non-executive Director of publicly traded and private companies in the UK, the US and Germany since 1998.

He is a co-founder and partner of Saphire Finance LLP, a London-based FSA authorised and regulated corporate finance partnership. Bijan is an active private equity investor across a range of sectors with growth, restructuring and consolidation potential. In 2006 he co-founded Enovation Resources, a gas & oil exploration and production company.

Bijan is a published media commentator and has written for the Financial Times, Gulf News, International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal.

Bijan Khezri is a renowned art benefactor, and pioneered one of the first artist-controlled Middle Eastern contemporary art collections (APT Dubai, www.aptglobal.org). Public and private museums around the world frequently turn to his private collection, Khezri Collection, which is dedicated to significant young artists.

For further information, please visit www.generationdubai.com.