TOKYO Toshiba Corp’s (6502.T) board on Friday approved plans to make its core chip business a separate company and seek outside investment in it, aiming to avoid being crippled by an upcoming multi-billion dollar writedown for its U.S. nuclear business. Toshiba estimates the value of its chip business – the world’s biggest NAND flash memory producer after Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) – at 1-1.5 trillion yen ($9-13 billion), […]
Vijay Mallya has denied that he fled India leaving behind $1.3bn of unpaid loans, after Indian authorities this week charged the billionaire industrialist with criminal conspiracy, dishonesty and corruption in an effort to secure his extradition from the UK. In a series of tweets late on Thursday night, Mr Mallya said that there was “no final judicial determination on what Kingfisher Airlines owes to banks and what […]
January 26, 2017 by: Adam Samson and Mamta Badkar in New York The Dow Jones industrial and transportation averages on Thursday both closed at new highs in a bullish signal for one of Wall Street’s oldest investment theories. The two US equity benchmarks, which date back to the 19th century, have not recorded highs one after another since December, after which the duo began to diverge as the Trump […]
If only a portion of Saudi Arabia’s National Transformation Programme is implemented, there will be dramatic change, one of the kingdom’s most influential lawyers assures. “If we can cover 50 percent of what is the aspiration in the Vision 2030, the kingdom will be doing much better,” the Saudi country director of international law firm White & Case, Doug Peel, says. “My view is that it’s a […]
MEXICO CITY Mexican mogul Carlos Slim, who was attacked by President Donald Trump during his election campaign but who later met with the U.S. leader in Florida, on Thursday called a press conference for Friday amid growing tensions between the two nations. The rare news conference, in which a spokesman said Slim would take reporters’ questions, comes as Mexico wrestles with Trump over the highly divisive proposition […]
The UK was the fastest growing economy in the G7 last year and is not yet showing any signs of the slowdown that many economists predicted would follow the vote to leave the EU in June. The economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to a first estimate from the Office for National Statistics. Growth for the year as a whole […]
Consolidated Activity Highlights as at end-December 2016: USD 20.8 billion in Assets USD 17.1 billion in Deposits USD 5.2 billion in Loans Advertisement USD 2.1 billion in Total Equity USD 165 million in Net Profit Byblos Bank Headquarters, 26 January 2017 Byblos Bank overall results for 2016 were satisfactory given the difficult economic and financial conditions in Lebanon and the region. Lower oil prices and revenues in several countries […]
Some of hedge fund billionaire George Soros’ short positions dating back to 2012 were published on the Dutch financial market regulator’s website this week due to “human error” according to the regulator AFM, according to Bloomberg. Dutch bank ING is among the positions exposed and its stock price is tumbling… As Bloomberg notes, the short positions, bets on a stock declining, were “between 0.2 percent and 0.5 […]
|By Matein Khalid| The election of a Manhattan property developer and (failed) casino owner as President of the United State has not been positive for most American real estate investment trusts (REIT’s). The sharp rise in US interest rates since the election and the Federal Reserve’s vigilance against inflation risk hits this classic “bond proxy” sector, with its reliance on leverage to boost investor returns. In addition, […]
If protectionism is about to be unleashed by Donald Trump on America’s closest trading partners, foreign exchange traders are acknowledging the threat in a funny old way. On Wednesday, when Mr Trump issued an executive order to build a wall on the Mexican border, the peso rallied more than 2 per cent. Since slumping to a record low of 22.03 pesos two weeks ago, the currency has […]
Mashreq, Dubai’s third-biggest bank by assets, reported a 20.7 percent fall in fourth-quarter net profit on Wednesday, its sixth quarter in a row of falling profits, as fees and commission slipped and impairment allowances jumped. The lender made a net profit of 441 million dirhams ($120 million) in the three months to Dec. 31, it said in a statement, down from 556 million dirhams recorded for the […]
Submitted by James Durso via RealClearDefense.com, Ukraine’s government has hired Washington lobbyists to fix its problems with the Trump Administration, but would do better to fix its internal problems, instead. Ukraine’s problems are in four categories: a structural problem caused by the multiple overlapping entities involved in military strategy and procurement; the absence of a unified strategic vision for ordering equipment and supplies; a “Fifth Column” of […]
By John Miller and John Revill | ZURICH ZURICH U.S. healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) will acquire Swiss biotech company Actelion (ATLN.S) in a $30 billion all-cash deal that includes spinning off Actelion’s research and development pipeline, the companies said on Thursday. The acquisition gives J&J access to the Swiss group’s line-up of high-price, high-margin medicines for rare diseases, helping it diversify its drug portfolio as […]
Johnson & Johnson is to acquire Swiss biotechnology company Actelion for $30bn in a complex deal that will see Actelion’s founder heading a standalone spin-off research company based and listed in Switzerland. The world’s largest healthcare company is offering Actelion shareholders $280 per share in an all-cash offer — as well as shares in the new research and development company headed by Jean-Paul Clozel, the Swiss group’s […]
Manuel Valls sought to make up lost ground in the race for France’s Socialist presidential nomination by attacking frontrunner Benoît Hamon’s “illusory” economic proposals and “ambiguous” stance towards radical Islam. In a primetime television debate four days before the party’s primary run-off, the former French prime minister challenged his rival’s claim that automation would destroy jobs, leaving individuals with fewer work opportunities. Mr Valls criticised Mr Hamon’s […]
It is difficult to understand why Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “make America great again” resounded so deeply with so many. True, the threat of terrorism, rising inequality and job-killing digitalisation have been breeding anxiety for some time. However, on most metrics the US economy has been doing just fine and certainly better than Europe. While the median US household’s real income still stands below peak of […]
Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), the United Arab Emirates’ largest sharia-compliant lender, is targeting loan growth of between 10 and 15 percent in 2017 after reporting an estimate-beating 58.4 percent rise in fourth-quarter 2016 net profit. Aiming to pave the way for the bank’s next stage of growth, it also said it would seek shareholder approval next month to raise Tier 1 issued capital by $1 billion, as […]
PARIS Hardline French Socialist Benoit Hamon was seen as more convincing in a television debate on Wednesday with ex-Prime Minister Manuel Valls ahead of a runoff vote at the weekend to pick the party’s presidential candidate, an Elabe poll showed. The survey, conducted for BFM TV shortly after the debate was over, found 60 percent of those polled found Hamon more convincing compared with 37 percent for […]
AT&T Inc (T.N), the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier, reported quarterly results that matched analysts’ estimates, as it added more smartphone customers in a saturated wireless market, and said it was confident its deal to buy Time Warner Inc (TWX.N) would be approved. Thirteen Democratic senators on Wednesday asked AT&T to explain how its planned $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner is in the public interest. In […]
JERUSALEM Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian motorist who drove his car into a bus stop near a settlement in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the Israeli army said. The Palestinian health ministry did not immediately release details of the dead man but Palestinian social media posts said he was a resident of the Qalandia refugee camp near Ramallah. No one was hurt as a result […]
The Dow Jones Industrial Average marched higher after hitting 20,000 for the first time on Wednesday as strong earnings and President Donald Trump’s pro-growth initiatives reignited a post-election rally. Trump has made several business-friendly decisions since taking office on Friday, including signing executive orders to reduce regulatory burden on domestic manufacturers and clearing the way for the construction of two oil pipelines. The S&P 500 and the […]
BERLIN Germany, in unusually strong criticism of Israel, said on Wednesday plans to build 2,500 more settlement homes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank put in doubt Israel’s stated commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians. Israel announced the plans on Tuesday in the second such declaration since U.S. President Donald Trump took office signalling he could be more accommodating toward such projects than his predecessor Barack […]
Photo: Pbech via Wikimedia Commons The Dutch central bank has made formal complaints about a number of trust offices in the Netherlands following the publication of the Panama Papers – millions of leaked documents about offshore entities. The head of the bank’s integrity division Willemieke van Gorkum told the Financieele Dagblad on Wednesday that ‘action has been taken against individual institutions’ but declined to say which trusts […]
Wednesday 14:35 GMT Overview Major global stock markets are rallying as the Dow Jones Industrial Average breaches 20,000 amid revived hopes for faster US growth. Benchmark sovereign bonds yields are rising, but oil and gold prices are moving lower despite a weaker dollar. Hot topic The “Trump trade” is back on and it has the Dow through 20,000 for the first time? The average, though a price-weighted […]
