How to become politics-proof

摘要

Regime change has an awkward way of turning useful political contacts into liabilities. Just ask Ahmed Ezz, an Egyptian steel magnate and friend of Gamal Mubarak, son of the country's ousted president, when you next visit his jail cell. But businesses face political risk even in the absence of the kind of turmoil rocking the Middle East. Governments nationalise assets: in recent years, Congo has taken several mines from their private owners. They change the rules unexpectedly, making it harder to do business, as Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, found when some governments demanded access to users' messages. They can enforce the law in the most draconian fashion against firms that displease them, as Russia's Yukos found.