UAE. Project activity in the UAE is forecast to recover in 2017 after a difficult 2016 on the back of a strong recovery in economic growth, according to a new report from Middle East business intelligence service MEED. MEED’s annual UAE Outlook Report for 2016 says that a recovery in oil prices combined with growing public and private sector activity boosted by Dubai’s preparations for the Expo […]
LIBYA. A multi-million redevelopment of Tripoli International Airport is getting ready for take-off following the Libyan Local Investment & Development Fund’s (LLIDF) appointment of PwC as its strategic advisor. The LLIDF is supporting the redevelopment of Libya through its new Investment Programme which includes the redevelopment of Tripoli International Airport into a world-class international airport. Based within a secure hub on the former airport site, the ambition […]
ABU DHABI // Love the idea of Pokemon Go, but can’t be bothered putting in the leg work? There is a solution – but it doesn’t come cheap. Players at advanced levels are selling their accounts for up to Dh15,000 on classified websites. Omar Moued, 29, decided to try his luck on dubizzle.com after watching a video about a player in the UK who sold his account […]
INTERNATIONAL. Following the vote to leave the EU, the UK economy is expected to face challenges in the short term, with high levels of uncertainty leading to a slowdown in business investment and lower GDP growth. UK: In light of this, PwC has revised down its main scenario real GDP growth projection for the UK to 1.6% and 0.6% per annum in 2016 and 2017 respectively, down […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Saudi Arabia will build a maritime complex on its east coast, with shipbuilding capability, to provide sufficient capacity for exporting oil, Bloomberg reported quoting Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih. The country, the world’s largest oil-producing nation, eventually will have a shipping fleet that will match its oil capabilities, Al-Falih said in Riyadh. Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, will need more tankers to meet global […]
|By Matein Khalid|Brexit will have a profound impact on international banking. It was no coincidence that the shares of UK, German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish and other banks fell 20-25% in a single trading session on news of Brexit. Even American money center banks and investment banks with a large footprint in the City of London fell 8 – 10% on Friday, June 24, 2016. As Deutsche Bank […]
INTERNATIONAL. The Bloomberg Commodity Index, which tracks the performance of 20 major commodities split evenly between energy, metals and agriculture, continues to show a gain of more than 10% in the year to date. Some softness, however, has crept in during the past few weeks with some sectors, most notably energy, pausing after rallies in oil and natural gas ran out of steam. Industrial metals found support […]
INTERNATIONAL. Stock markets received a welcome boost during trading on Thursday following the Bank of England’s decision not to change interest rates which eased the ongoing Brexit fears, consequently lifting risk sentiment. Asian markets were elevated in the early sessions of Thursday after China’s better than expected GDP results alleviated concerns over slowing economic growth in the world’s second largest economy. Although European markets initially tumbled after […]
BAGHDAD — President Obama will deploy 560 more troops to Iraq to help retake Mosul, the largest city controlled by the Islamic State, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced on Monday. It is the latest escalation of the United States’ role in the Iraq war by Mr. Obama, who ran for office on a pledge to end America’s involvement in the conflict. Many of the newly deployed […]
Negotiators had been talking for hours with the hunkered-down killer of five police officers in downtown Dallas when the man suddenly resumed firing with an assault rifle. Fearing additional casualties, the officers deployed a small, remote-controlled robot to carry an explosive device near shooter Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, which they then detonated, killing him. “We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place […]
A Nintendo video game logo is seen at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, in Los Angeles, California, United States, June 17, 2015. Reuters/Lucy Nicholson TOKYO Shares in Japan’s Nintendo Co surged on Friday as consumers flocked to try out its new Pokemon GO smartphone game, raising hopes that the company’s long-awaited shift into mobile gaming will pay off. Seeking to protect its console business, the Japanese […]
|By Matein Khalid| The merger of Abu Dhabi banks First Gulf Bank and NBAD creates the largest bank in the Middle East, a regional colossus with $170 billion in assets, competitive funding cost in the global interbank/capital markets and a market value greater than Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) and Deutsche Bank. This is the biggest game changer event in UAE banking and finance since the […]
|By Matein Khalid| David Cameron, Wall Street’s elite, Mutti Merkel, Obama, the Eurocrats of Brussels, the great and the good of the City and the IMF’s Lady Christine all got it so horribly wrong. I slept Thursday night with sterling at 1.50 on New York and awoke to see it trade at 1.34 on Friday, a 30 year low before the Plaza Accords. Britain has voted to […]
BERLIN/LAGOS When German e-commerce investor Rocket Internet launched Jumia in 2012 as a would-be African Amazon, it was optimistic that a rapidly expanding middle class would quickly shift from street markets to shopping online. Four years on, falling sales for sites like Jumia and slower growth from Nigeria to Russia and Brazil is casting doubt on Rocket Internet’s ambition to become the world’s biggest Internet company outside […]
Two days after reporting that 655,000 healthcare records were found for sale on the dark web, the site DeepDotWeb said today that another insurance database with at least 9.3 million patient records is being shopped around by an anonymous hacker. Over the weekend, a hacker using the name “thedarkoverlord” was offering for sale records taken from databases managed by three healthcare organizations in Missouri, Georgia and the […]
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has canceled a contentious directive known as the Hannibal procedure, which calls for the use of maximum force to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers, even at the risk of harming them. A military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with army rules, said on Tuesday that the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, had given instructions several […]
The decision of British voters in last Thursday’s referendum to leave the European Union will have vast consequences for Britain, for Europe and for the world. For a day, the British people were the government, and by 52 per cent to 48 per cent, they took the decision to go. I was a British prime minister who believed completely that Britain’s future lay in Europe. I was […]
A journalist’s account of the conflict in Afghanistan details the cascading failures of the West Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World By Christina Lamb, William Collins, 640 pages, $25 There is a certain subspecies of journalist who comes to feel more at home in a foreign war zone than in her native land, who gets so plugged in with power brokers and average people […]
INTERNATIONAL. The use of wearables in the workplace is being stalled by a lack of trust as people worry that their employer may use the data against them and not for their benefit, according to new PwC research. Despite an estimated 3 million people in the UK buying a wearable device in 2015 – a 118% increase from the previous year – PwC’s research shows that employees […]
By RANA F. SWEIS June 21, 2016 AMMAN, Jordan — Four Jordanian soldiers, a police officer and a civil defense officer were killed on Tuesday after a car bomb exploded on the Jordanian border with Syria, according to a statement by the Jordanian Armed Forces. The attack took place around 5:30 a.m. on the sand berm across from a camp for Syrian refugees in Rukban with more than 55,000 people […]
|By Matein Khalid| Sterling sell off in the world currency markets and the sheer populist appeal of Boris Johnson suggests the world should not rule out a geopolitical shock that will unnerve financial markets and lead to the mother of all rate cuts at the Bank of England. If Britain votes to leave the EU, the only currency I want to own is the Swiss franc and gold, […]
After relishing a cocktail of cheap crude mixed with profits from fuel sales, Asia’s oil processors are facing their reckoning over a lack of restraint. Profits from turning crude into fuel in Asia since the beginning of April have averaged almost a third lower than levels over the previous six months, and are down 40 percent from the same period a year earlier. That’s already prompted some […]
Iran has reached an agreement with the Boeing Company for the acquisition of new passenger planes to help modernize its outdated fleet, state-run Iranian news media reported on Tuesday. Such an agreement, if completed, would potentially be worth many billions of dollars to Boeing and amount to the most prominent commercial transaction between an American company and Iran since sanctions linked to Iran’s nuclear program were lifted […]
Last bastion of financial system pays salaries on both sides of civil war as governor maintains ‘economic traduce’ Yemeni locals and secruity guards are pictured outside the Central Bank of Yemen in the capital Sana’a. Dubai: As civil war engulfs Yemen, the central bank is so committed to staying neutral that it pays salaries of soldiers on both sides. The bank […]
