Category: Economy

Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways is examining Alitalia's books and is expected to decide by Christmas whether to take a stake in the troubled Italian airline, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.Alitalia offers access to Europe's fourth-largest travel market and flies 25 million passengers a year. But the airline, which loses 700,000 euros a day and has net debt of more than 800 million euros, needs to find a partner willing to invest in its fleet and make

The UAE will add 29.2 million passengers over the next four years at a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 6.6 per cent as total global air passenger numbers are expected to rise to 3.91 billion by 2017, the International Air Transport Association, or Iata, said on Tuesday.As airlines across the globe expect to see a 31 per cent increase in passenger numbers between 2012 and 2017, the Middle East will report the strongest international passenger growth with a

General Motors Co said it would stop making cars in Australia by 2017 due to high costs and a cripplingly strong currency, fuelling fears rival Toyota Motor Corp will follow suit and put the entire local autos industry at risk.The decision by the world's second-largest auto maker to close its Holden plants in South Australia and Victoria states is the latest blow to Australia's manufacturing industry and the auto sector in particular."No matter which way we apply the numbers, our

Julius Baer Group Ltd.  took over businesses in Lebanon, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates as Switzerland’s third-largest wealth manager integrates the Merrill Lynch operations acquired last year.“Gaining new footholds in the Middle Eastern markets of Lebanon and Bahrain and strengthening our existing Dubai presence is an important step for us and will enable us to further expand our footprint in this key growth region,” Remy Bersier, a member of the Zurich-based bank’s executive board, said in an e-mailed statement

The US National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable, The Washington Post reported.The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, according to the officials

Dabur India Ltd, the household goods maker controlled by the billionaire Burman family, is expanding in the rural market of the world’s second-most populated nation to revive sales that grew at the slowest pace in two years.The company increased its rural network to cover 36,000 villages as of October from 14,000 in March 2012, Dabur said in an e-mail. That helped the maker of Hajmola digestive candy boost sales in villages to 50 percent of revenue in the year ended

The giant inflatable duck that appeared on Dubai Creek this week has caused a stir after it emerged it is not a piece of art that has toured the world - but is in fact a replica bought in China.7DAYS reported on Monday how people went quackers for the 18m rubber bird that was launched on the creek on Sunday. It was part of a campaign by green mobile car wash firm GeoWash to create awareness about the importance of

Just a few days after being chosen to host the 2020 World Expo convention, the glittering city of Dubai was also named the world's leading destination at the 20th edition of the World Travel Awards which took place in Doha over the weekend.The city of superlatives, home to some of the world's most impressive architectural and engineering feats and holder of several Guinness records, now also boasts the world's leading hotel (Burj Al Arab, instantly recognizable for its sail-like design), leading new

Etisalat  could resurrect talks to sell its Sudanese telecom arm Canar to Kuwait's Zain , as both sides remain keen on a deal despite a breakdown in negotiations earlier this year, a source close to the matter said.Zain Sudan is the African country's No.1 mobile company. Buying Canar - the top fixed-line carrier - would be in line with Zain's broader strategy, as outlined by chief executive Scott Gegenheimer in October, of moving beyond mobile to provide bundled services to

Middle East crude for immediate delivery traded at its biggest premium in two years to later shipments last month after Royal Dutch Shell bought an unprecedented number of cargoes.The price gap between the earliest loadings of the benchmark Dubai grade and those for two months later climbed to $2.82 a barrel on Nov. 21, the widest spread since 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The increase coincided with Shell’s purchase of 12 million barrels last month via the Middle

The Palestinian poet and filmmaker Hind Shoufani moved to Dubai for the same reasons that have attracted millions of other expatriates to the glitzy emirate. In 2009, after decades in the storied and mercurial Arab capital cities of Damascus and Beirut and a sojourn in New York, she wanted to live somewhere stable and cosmopolitan where she also could earn a living.Five years later, she’s won a devoted following for the Poeticians, a Dubai spoken-word literary performance collective she founded.

The chief financial officer of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's investment vehicle, Kingdom Holding , is to leave the firm, two banking sources aware of the matter said.Shadi Sadeek Sanbar, who has worked with the firm for more than eight years and is seen as a close aide of the Saudi billionaire, will leave the firm at the end of the year, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter has not been formally announced.Another source familiar with Kingdom Holding said

The United States on Friday congratulated the United Arab Emirates on landing the 2020 World Expo trade exhibition -- the first time that a Middle Eastern nation will host the event.The UAE on Thursday won its bid to host the six-month event in Dubai, beating out Russia, Brazil and Turkey."This is a significant first as the UAE serves not only as the region's business hub, but also as a global crossroads for a larger region including Africa and Asia, and

Gold trade between Turkey and Iran will resume, albeit at lower levels than last year, once sanctions on Iran are eased, Iran's ambassador to Turkey said on Friday.Turkey's gold trade with Iran boomed in 2012 when Ankara was paying for its natural gas and oil imports with Turkish lira and Iranians were using those deposits held in Turkey's Halkbank to buy gold."Certainly the gold trade between Iran and Turkey will resume," the ambassador, Ali Reza Bigdeli, told reporters in the

A maritime services company that had millions of dollars in contracts suspended by the U.S. Navy this week says the action stemmed from a billing dispute probed by the Justice Department several years ago, and it hopes to resolve the issue quickly.The Navy said on Wednesday it had suspended all contracts with British-based Inchcape Shipping Services Holding Ltd, a unit of Dubai World, because of questionable conduct.The firm is the main maritime services agent used by the U.S. Fifth Fleet

Dubai has proposed to the federal government of the United Arab Emirates that the UAE create a sharia-compliant retirement savings scheme for foreign workers, a step which could help to develop the Islamic funds industry.The aim is that the scheme will be nation-wide, though if the federal government does not want to participate, Dubai may implement the plan merely within the emirate, a source at Dubai's Department of Economic Development told Reuters."We've spoken to everybody - the public and private

Asian shares were in a buoyant mood, with Japanese stocks hitting their highest close in nearly six years after the yen fell sharply on relatively positive U.S. economic data, while two major regional currencies slumped.Financial bookmakers expected major European indexes to open flat to modestly higher on Thursday .U.S. jobless claims unexpectedly fell last week and the November Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer confidence improved from a preliminary reading, while the Chicago PMI held up better than expected last month

Dubai's government has to make sure its property market is driven by fundamental factors, not speculation, and be ready to act if it sees very rapid increases in asset prices, a senior International Monetary Fund official said on Tuesday."When you begin to see very rapid increases in any asset prices then you just need to be prepared to act," said Masood Ahmed, the IMF's Director for the Middle East and North Africa. "The government of Dubai is already beginning to

Emerging Asian currencies took a battering and regional shares tumbled to six-week lows on Wednesday as mixed signals from Federal Reserve officials raised fresh concerns about an imminent rollback of the U.S. central bank's asset-buying stimulus.The dour mood looked set to carry over into Europe, where financial spread betters predicted Britain's FTSE 100 to fall as much as 0.7 percent, Germany's DAX  off 0.4 percent and France's CAC 40  to fall 0.3 percent.Jakarta's Composite Index  stumbled 2 percent to a

Tropical Storm Haiyan, which killed thousands as a typhoon in the Philippines, has made landfall in north Vietnam, near the China border. It still carried gusts of up to 157km/h (98 mph) as it arrived close to the Ha Long Bay tourist destination.Some 600,000 people have been evacuated from at-risk regions in Vietnam and reports say 11 people have been killed.China issued a typhoon alert for Hainan island, Guangdong and Guangxi after Haiyan's path changed.Vietnamese state media say that although at

Merlin Entertainment, the Madame Tussauds and amusement parks operator, in which Dubai International Capital once held 28 percent stake, is setting up a Legoland park in Dubai along with other potential sites in Japan and South Korea.This is part of the company’s plans to expand globally, which will see the setting up Madame Tussauds in San Francisco and Beijing next year.Dubai had sold its stake in the entertainment company to CVC Capital Partners Ltd., manager of a 10.8 billion-euro ($13.4

Dubai’s economy expanded 4.9 percent in the first half of 2013, led by the hotel and restaurant industry, as the Middle East’s financial and transport hub rebounds from its debt crisis.Gross domestic product expanded to 169 billion dirhams ($46 billion), the statistics office said in an e-mailed statement today. Growth quickened from a 4 percent pace in the first half of 2012. The hotels and restaurants industry grew 14 percent, while manufacturing expanded 13 percent.Dubai’s economy is rebounding four years

A surge in passenger car sales across most Gulf Arab countries underlines the momentum behind the region's consumer spending boom, and sales are likely to continue rising strongly for at least a few years, automobile sector executives said.Car sales are an important indicator of business activity in a region where official macroeconomic data, such as gross domestic product, is often unreliable and released with delays of many months.Analysts estimate GDP in the richest Gulf Arab economies - Saudi Arabia, the

New research shows a steady increase in the extent to which Americans are geographically divided by income. Charts from a paper by Kendra Bischoff and Sean Reardon, professors at Cornell and Stanford respectively, on what they refer to as “residential segregation by income”  show a shrinking number of Americans live in middle class neighborhoods, and a growing number of people living in poor, affluent, or high income areas.Drum worries the trend means that the “well-off have less and less interaction with

Dubai luxury housing developer DAMAC Properties said it plans to raise as much as $500 million from an initial public share offer in London, betting on a recovery in a property market that crashed four years ago.If successful, DAMAC would be the first Dubai real estate firm to go public since then.DAMAC, which is building golf courses in the emirate with American real-estate mogul Donald Trump as well as a Hollywood-themed residential and retail complex, was one of the firms

With the D-day approaching fast for the award of the 2020 Expo, everyone in Dubai is excited about a most likely successful Dubai bid. Amidst all the fanfare, however, there is a lurking fear about the impact of a successful bid on the emirate's real estate sector.Those who do worry have one overriding concern: that Expo fever will tip an already overheating property market into bubble territory. Real estate values in Dubai halved in many areas in the wake of

Now that the foundation of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's statue - to be the world's tallest - has been laid, a small rocky island in the middle of the Narmada riverbed and facing Gujarat's Sardar Sarovar Dam is seeing a lot of activity.The first phase of the project, for which bids have already been invited, is estimated to cost around Rs 2,063 crore. This phase will involve construction of the main statue, a bridge connecting the statue to the river bank

Dubai is far from ready to relinquish its status as home to the world’s tallest tower.Emaar Properties Chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar has once again reiterated that a new tallest skyscraper in the world will be built in Dubai.“Emaar plans to build the tallest skyscraper in the world in Dubai,” Alabbar was quoted as saying in an interview to CNN, on the sidelines of launching of a $3 billion development in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region.Dubai is currently home

Jignesh Shah resigned from the board of Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd., the nation’s biggest commodity trading platform, amid an investigation into the failure of a related spot bourse.Shah, 46, quit as non-executive vice chairman, according to a filing yesterday from the company he founded in 2003. He said he’s leaving to help ensure investors aren’t harmed by “mud-slinging” over the probe.India’s commodities futures market regulator has sought an audit of MCX, which counts NYSE Euronext (NYX) and Fidelity

 Dubai Investments saw third-quarter profits nearly double on the back of higher rental income and an improvement in the fair value of its investments.The company, in which sovereign fund Investment Corp of Dubai owns an 11.5 percent stake, posted a third-quarter profit attributable to equity owners of 161.1 million dirhams ($43.9 million) compared with 81.4 million dirhams for the year-ago period, it said in a bourse statement on Thursday.Dubai Investments booked a gain of 26.1 million dirhams on fair valuation

Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange is planning to launch a spot gold contract next year, the first of its kind in the Middle East, which it hopes will help take the emirate from being a regional to a more international trading center for the precious metal.Nimesh Shah, a gold dealer at Richcomm Global Services in Dubai, said the spot contracts need to account for relatively small quantities of gold, smaller, say, than the indivisible kilograms that are traded as futures

Passenger traffic through Dubai International Airport, one of the world's busiest, rose 13.1 percent from a year earlier in September to 5.4 million people, airport authorities said on Tuesday.The September clip is well down from August, when passenger numbers jumped 23.8 percent to a record 6.0 million, partly because of travel related to the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.In the first nine months of this year, traffic grew 16.0 percent to 49.4 million people.Dubai Airports said eastern Europe was one

Emirates NBD  is looking for acquisition targets in Turkey as Dubai's largest lender scouts for opportunities beyond its home market, despite an improving economic environment within the emirate, its top executive said.ENBD, which completed in June the purchase of BNP Paribas'  Egyptian assets for $500 million, has been looking to diversify beyond Dubai after a real estate market crash in 2008-2010 severely impacted the bank.The lender aims for 20 percent of its revenues to come from overseas markets in five

Doubts are growing over the viability of Dubai’s recently announced plan to build a new oil refinery in the emirate with China Sonangol.The region’s top financial hub last month signed a memorandum of understanding with China Sonangol International, a joint venture between Angola’s state-owned oil company, Sonangol and Hong Kong-based New Bright International Development, to build what will be its second oil refinery. The hope is to reduce Dubai’s reliance on imported fuels and allow the desert-city to export to