201 - TZL - Raouf Ghali

dragged down because of the pandemic, but I see a lot of light in the tunnel and I think we're doing it. We have a similar situation in Europe. The European Union approved probably the largest stimulus package ever, with $870 billion, that's going to be spread throughout the Eurozone countries mainly and even the [inaudible 41:04] countries. In most of those countries, we have an operation, so that's another addition to us so we're very bullish on this. Africa and North Africa, where we're doing business, the business climate in the last two to three years has been very positive. Even with the pandemic, there has been a lot of activity going on. And the Middle East, given the oil prices, I think with the pandemic now recessing with vaccinations, and most of the populations have been vaccinated in the Middle East. And when I say the Middle East, I’m referring to the Arabian Gulf countries, because they were closed for a lot of the time because they were very, very careful because of the pandemic. It's opening up. You've got oil prices that have rebounded, and you've got the local conflicts that were there that have been settled. So whichever region I'm looking at, I only see positive, rather than any negativity right now.

Randy Wilburn [42:21] And are you guys doing any work in Mainland China at all?

Raouf Ghali [42:25] Yes, we are. We're doing work in Shanghai on an industrial project. Unfortunately, I can't speak to which one exactly, because it was just a [inaudible 42:38] , but we're doing a major industrial investment for one of the Fortune 100 US companies there.

Randy Wilburn [42:49] So, let's talk about this because, Raouf I know that there are a number of construction management firms out there, and some other firms that have similar footprints to yours. In essence, what do you think is the true separator between you, and a lot of your peer competitors out there? What's the secret sauce of Hill International?

Raouf Ghali [43:18] Well, the real secret sauces are our people. We take that apart. Now that we know we have the best people, what really is our biggest differentiator between us and our competitors, and I like to divide our competitors into two areas. One is the global and international players like us and domestic players. With domestic players, they have limitations to how much they can take on within the markets that they're in and once we come in as an international player, we usually partner up with them. We usually do other things to augment both the local content as well as the

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