Category: Economy

General Motors engineers were well aware of serious problems with ignition switches in GM small cars, but rejected several opportunities to make fixes, according to dozens of confidential documents released on Friday by a Congressional committee investigating the deadly defect.Parts supplier Delphi Automotive also repeatedly tested switches and found they did not meet GM specifications, according to emails and other memos.The internal documents from GM, Delphi and a U.S. safety agency chart numerous examples of switch failure, of the sort

Grand Prairie-based Six Flags Entertainment Corp. is again attempting to broaden its international reach beyond North America into the Middle East.The theme park owner and operator said it’s partnering with Meraas Leisure and Entertainment, a Dubai-based real estate development company, to open a Six Flags-branded park in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.The project will open in 2017 and be located in a multi-themed park project in Jebel Ali, Six Flags said. Jebel Ali is Dubai’s leading port.Terms of the

An exodus of senior executives and staff at India's second largest IT outsourcing firm, Infosys Ltd, could hamper efforts to win lucrative contracts in the United States and Europe, and weigh on its profit growth outlook for this year.Nearly a fifth of the workforce had left the company in the quarter ended December following the return from retirement of founder N.R. Narayana Murthy in June to turn around the company after a string of disappointing results. So far, nine senior

The U.S. government warned banks and other businesses on Friday to be on alert for hackers seeking to steal data exposed by the "Heartbleed" bug, as a German programmer took responsibility for the widespread security crisis.On a website for advising critical infrastructure operators about emerging cyber threats, the Department of Homeland Security asked organizations to report any Heartbleed-related attacks, adding that hackers were attempting to exploit the bug in widely used OpenSSL code by scanning targeted networks.Federal regulators also advised

Vodafone Group Plc said it expected to close on Friday a deal to buy an 11 percent stake in its Indian business from minority partner Piramal Enterprises Ltd, giving it full ownership.Piramal said on Thursday it had agreed to sell its 11 percent stake to the British group for 89 billion rupees.A Vodafone spokesman separately said the group had already completed a transaction to buy about a 4.5 percent stake in the business from Indian businessman Analjit Singh.The deals are

The company planning the first initial share offering on Dubai's main stock market for five years says it will spend the proceeds on opening more than 100 fashion stores, restaurants and cafes across the Gulf Arab region over the next five years.Marka, created by prominent businessmen in the United Arab Emirates, will offer for sale 55 percent of its capital or 275 million shares at 1 dirham ($0.27) each, in a 12-day sale beginning Sunday.Initial public offers (IPOs) of shares

Warburg Pincus, the private-equity firm managing about $37 billion in assets, is considering investments in Africa and the Middle East as capital starts to flow back into emerging markets.“We are looking beyond the core euro-zone markets into the rapidly growing emerging markets around Europe for investment opportunities,” Joseph Schull, head of Warburg Pincus in Europe, said in an interview yesterday. “Africa is the next big frontier in private equity and we are spending an increasing amount of time investigating opportunities

Fears that high-speed traders have been rigging the U.S. stock market went mainstream last week thanks to allegations in a book by financial author Michael Lewis, but there may be a more serious threat to investors: the increasing amount of trading that happens outside of exchanges.Some former regulators and academics say so much trading is now happening away from exchanges that publicly quoted prices for stocks on exchanges may no longer properly reflect where the market is. And this problem

A top Dubai economic policymaker said on Monday that an agreement to merge the two main stock markets in the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Financial Market and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, had been reached in principle but nothing had been finalised."It is going to be very positive. The agreement has been reached between the two - there is a dialogue but it is not yet finalised," Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, head of Dubai's supreme fiscal council, told

Dubai-based real estate investment trust Emirates REIT IPO said it had expanded the size of its initial public offer of shares on NASDAQ Dubai, the emirate's first IPO since its financial crisis erupted in 2009, because of strong demand.Emirates REIT will raise $175 million in the IPO, which was 3.5 times oversubscribed, by selling 128.68 million new shares, it said in a statement on Sunday. In addition, up to 19.30 million shares will be sold under over-allotment arrangements.The offer was

General Motors should make restitution to victims' families and face criminal action if merited for the way it handled defective ignition switches that caused fatal auto accidents, U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill said on Sunday.McCaskill, as chairwoman of the Senate subcommittee on consumer protection and product safety, led a blistering round of questioning of GM chief executive officer Mary Barra last week. In an appearance on ABC's "This Week" show, McCaskill said GM now faced "a real moment of truth" as

When Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi gave a speech on the virtues of smaller government and privatization on April 8 last year, supporters called him an ideological heir to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died that day.Modi, favorite to form India's next government after elections starting on Monday, has yet to unveil any detailed economic plans but it is clear that some of his closest advisers and campaign managers have a Thatcherite ambition for him."If you define Thatcherism

Shareholders of Dubai property developer Deyaar have approved a plan to allocate 25 percent of its share capital to foreigners, the company said on Saturday.At present, investors in Gulf Cooperation Council countries can own up to 49 percent of Deyaar's shares; they currently hold 3.7 percent, bourse data shows, while those from outside the GCC have not been allowed to own any stake.The company said the shareholders approved the allocation at a meeting on Thursday. Its share price jumped 11.8

U.S. stocks fell, with the Nasdaq Composite Index sliding the most in two months, after large technology stocks from Google Inc. to Yahoo Inc. plunged as investors sold the bull market’s biggest winners.Google Class A shares sank 4.6 percent in the biggest drop since October 2012. Facebook Inc. lost 4.6 percent, bringing its two-day slide to 9.5 percent. Yahoo Inc. declined 4.2 percent to the lowest since November. An index of biotechnology stocks plunged 4.1 percent. GrubHub Inc. surged 31

India's high-profile RBI governor is likely to come under political pressure to retreat from his hawkish stance on inflation if opposition leader Narendra Modi wins power in the general election.Strategists in Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), confident that his jobs-first policy pitch will secure a strong voter mandate, suggest that they would prefer to have one of their own at the helm of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).That sets the stage for a confrontation with RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan,

With a youthful, well-educated population, strong relationships with both neighbours and world powers, and a strategic location on the Gulf, major oil producer Kuwait should be as dynamic a hub for the region as Dubai or Doha.But while others in the Gulf have powered ahead, attracting foreign investment and developing infrastructure, Kuwait has stagnated, frustrating the people of a country once seen as a Middle East trailblazer.This frustration is especially evident among young Kuwaitis, cosmopolitan and often educated abroad, who

Dubai will compete with London for a share of Islamic banks' liquidity management business by offering a new platform for murabaha trading.Many Islamic banks around the world manage their short-term funds with murabaha, in which one bank acquires merchandise and another agrees to buy it at a mark-up. Traditionally, banks from the Gulf and as far afield as southeast Asia use commodities traded on the London Metal Exchange (LME) as their merchandise.The NASDAQ Dubai bourse now hopes to grab some

General Motors Co CEO Mary Barra came under withering attack for her company's decade-long failure to deal with defective parts linked to fatal crashes, in a hearing where U.S. Senators accused the company of "criminal" behavior and "a culture of cover-up."Democratic and Republican senators, including some former prosecutors and state attorneys general, challenged Barra's assertion that GM had vastly improved its safety and management practices since emerging from bankruptcy.Repeatedly, she was pressed to explain why GM redesigned faulty ignition switches

Pricing guidance for a five-year sukuk issue by Dubai's DAMAC Real Estate was tightened further amid strong investor demand, with final guidance issued in the range of midswaps plus 310-320 basis points.The size of the issue was expanded to $650 million from the originally planned $500 million, a document from arrangers showed.Books, which are to close at 1000 GMT in London on Wednesday, now exceed $2.8 billion.On Tuesday, DAMAC set initial price thoughts for the sukuk at midswaps plus the

Companies with as little as 20 percent of their global assets in India could find themselves facing tax bills in deals involving their domestic units under changes to the tax code that the government proposed on Tuesday.The government’s Direct Taxes Code 2013 recommended the change along with a new income tax bracket that would require rich people to pay higher taxes.A previous recommendation in 2010 said that indirect transfers should be taxed in India if the companies involved have at least 50 percent

Oman's central bank has set new caps on banks' credit exposure to non-residents and funds placed abroad, giving lenders six months to comply.The move comes after the government and regulators last month set up a financial stability committee to monitor and manage risks in the banking and capital markets."The banks which are in excess of the prudential limits prescribed under the guidelines are granted up to six months from the date of this circular to bring down their exposures within

Saudi Arabian conglomerate Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers (AHAB) estimates its assets are worth less than a quarter of about $5.9 billion in claims made against it, a spokesman said as the group prepares a proposal to end one of the Middle East's biggest corporate debt disputes.AHAB this week invited more than 70 financial institutions, including Saudi, regional and international banks, to a meeting in Dubai on May 7 to propose "a comprehensive settlement" with creditors.Banks will be asked to

|By TAP Staff|Takeovers abroad and a boost in treasury income helped Gulf banks increase revenues by more than 10% last year – the best combined performance since the crisis hit five years ago – with regional lenders easily outperforming their international counterparts, says Boston Consulting Group.“We’re seeing again double-digit growth in the region which, however, comes to a large extent because of international acquisitions of the banks,” said Reinhold Leichtfuss, senior partner and managing director of BCG in Dubai.Operating in

The U.S. stock market is rigged in favor of high-speed electronic trading firms, which use their advantages to extract billions from investors, according to Michael Lewis, author of a new book on the topic, "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt."High-frequency trading (HFT) is a practice carried out by many banks and proprietary trading firms using sophisticated computer programs to send gobs of orders into the market, executing a small portion of them when opportunities arise to capitalize on price imbalances,

General Motors Co is adding 971,000 cars to its global ignition switch recall, which began in February with 1.6 million vehicles and has been linked to at least a dozen deaths.The recall, which now totals 2,591,665 cars, includes all model years of the Chevrolet Cobalt, Chevrolet HHR, Saturn Ion, Saturn Sky, Pontiac G5 and Pontiac Solstice made from 2003-2011.Older versions of those cars, dating from 2003-2007, were recalled in February.Even before the expansion, the recall had sparked investigations by Congress,

The rupee rose above 60 to the dollar on Friday, marking its strongest in eight months, as hopes for continued foreign investor inflows send domestic shares to a string of record highs.The partially convertible rupee was trading at 60.04/05 per dollar at 9.27 a.m., after earlier hitting 59.99, its strongest since July 30. The rupee closed at 60.31/32 on Thursday.The BSE Sensex rose 0.4 percent, hitting its fifth consecutive record high earlier in the morning after overseas investors bought domestic

SpiceJet Ltd., the Indian budget carrier headed for its third straight annual loss, said it sees little chance of luring investment soon amid elevated debt and intensifying competition.Although the airline’s owners have injected more than 5 billion rupees ($83 million) in equity in recent quarters, that “has not been adequate” to reduce the carrier’s dependence on debt, S.L. Narayanan, the chief financial officer of SpiceJet’s parent Sun Group, said in an e-mail interview.“While the market in India certainly looks attractive,

Middle East fund managers are willing to buy most of the region's main equity markets on dips, believing corporate earnings and balance sheets will continue improving this year, a monthly Reuters survey shows.Markets retreated early this month as retail investors rushed to take profits during the worst of the geopolitical uncertainty over Ukraine. Dubai's bourse fell 6.7 percent from its peak close to its trough. Qatar's bourse dropped 3.8 percent.But many fund managers said they did not view the pull-back

The rupee rallied to an eight-month high, boosted by continued foreign fund inflows into domestic shares, but suspected dollar purchases by the Reserve Bank of India prevented the currency from gaining much further.The intervention on Wednesday was aggressive, with two traders telling Reuters that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) likely bought nearly $1 billion and swapped it in forwards markets.The RBI has long been expected to start buying dollars when the rupee strengthens to add to foreign exchange reserves

Qatar Airways Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker said he’s pursuing acquisitions after reviving an investment strategy that saw the company offered stakes in carriers including Italy’s Alitalia SpA.The second-biggest Gulf airline is “actively discussing opportunities” with other passenger carriers, Al Baker said in an interview, without specifying where talks are focused.“I would not like to pre-empt our decision,” he said. “We would rather keep it to ourself for the time being, of where we want to invest. When

UBS AG suspended foreign-exchange traders in the U.S., Singapore and Switzerland as its investigation into the alleged rigging of currency markets widened, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.They include Onur Sert, an emerging markets spot trader based in New York, and at least three more worldwide, said the person, who asked not to be identified because of the probe. Sert and Dominik von Arx, a spokesman for UBS in London, both declined to comment on the move.Switzerland’s

Citigroup Inc.’s capital plan was among five that failed Federal Reserve stress tests, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. passed only after reducing their requests for buybacks and dividends.Citigroup, as well as U.S. units of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc and Banco Santander SA, failed because of qualitative concerns about their processes, the Fed said today in a statement. Zions Bancorporation was rejected as its capital fell below the minimum required. The

The Bank of England is studying ways to increase the number of sharia-compliant assets that Islamic financial institutions can use in their liquidity buffers, a step towards reducing concentration risks in the sector.The move comes as part of a broader push to promote London as a top centre for Islamic finance, in the face of growing competition from other centres such as Dubai and Kuala Lumpur.Currently, sukuk (Islamic bonds) issued by the AAA-rated Islamic Development Bank are the only assets

Qatar's ruling family member Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad al-Thani bought a last minute ticket to win Saturday's $10 million Dubai World Cup by buying a 50 percent stake in Ruler Of The World, last season's English Derby winner."It is very exciting. We managed to get it done as of this morning. The horse vetted so that the deal would take place in time so Sheikh Joaan could run in the World Cup," racing advisor Harry Herbert told reporters in Dubai."This