2009 has been a very challenging year for the search and recruitment business in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the financial crisis in late 2008 and the severe economic downturn that followed a number of organizations called a halt to their expansion plans and many, perforce, had to downsize their existing businesses operations.

For Lobo Management Services, our challenge has been to sustain our business operations, keep our team strength intact through a period of uncertain demand and revenues and continue to service our clients with the same level of dedicated service that they have been accustomed to. A little over a year and a quarter has passed since the crisis. I am happy to say that with the continued patronage of our long standing clients and the dedicated efforts of our team, we have been able to go through this difficult and challenging year without having had to downsize our operations. In fact, as we start a new year, we have taken the opportunity to add to our team strength as we take an optimistic view that Dubai and Abu Dhabi and the GCC in general will continue to offer attractive opportunities for organizations to grow.

We have, during this period, revamped our IT systems and our website.Both of these would have a beneficial impact on our ability to service our clients effectively and efficiently. Likewise, for our candidates for whom our new website, we hope, would provide ready access to the assignments on hand and an easy way to interface with us.

A major initiative, we take pride in announcing, is our representation across the GCC for Caliper, a global human resources consulting and assessment firm, which nearly for a half-century has advised more than 25,000 companies on hiring, developing, team building and organizational concerns.

Caliper's unique range of objective, accurate personality assessment instruments, provide data for measuring personality characteristics, individual motivations, likely behaviors and potential for success in a specific job. These assessments then become the basis for not only customized solutions for hiring but also employee development, team building and organizational development.