Private equity firm Gulf Capital plans to sell some of its investments towards the end of 2017 and early 2018 as market sentiment and the regional economy improve, its chief executive told Reuters. Karim El Solh declined to say which stakes the Abu Dhabi-based company, one of the biggest private equity firms in the region, was considering offloading but said that they would be appealing to global […]
At a conference on investing in non-performing loans in Milan last week, attendees were asked to vote on whether an Italian government scheme to help sell the debt was the “best way forward”. Just 3 per cent agreed. The response follows a year of wrangling over proposals to tackle the €360bn of problematic loans plaguing the balance sheets of Italian banks, which have lost half their stock […]
By Chiekh Sadibou Mane and Thierry Gouegnon | BANJUL BANJUL Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh, who once vowed to rule the tiny West African nation for “a billion years”, said he had accepted his shock election defeat on Friday, 22 years after seizing power in a coup. Voting on Thursday against Jammeh was a rare show of defiance against a leader who has ruled by decree and who […]
Donald Trump has named Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone, as chairman of a new council of strategic advisers, capping a week that has seen Wall Street veterans installed at the heart of the incoming US administration. The president’s strategic and policy forum, which will meet for the first time in February, also includes JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink, founder of BlackRock, among […]
Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke. During the past year, the Chinese yuan (CNY) has shed a bit more than 7 percent of its value against the greenback. That’s only one aspect of the CNY’s weakness. Another concerns the quality of the CNY. As Jerry Jordan pointed out recently at the Cato Institute’s 34th Annual Monetary Conference, a […]
An ice storm, an email suggesting regime change and the mechanics of thinly traded futures markets have emerged as central points of contention in the market manipulation trial of one of the world’s biggest traders in financial derivatives. Donald Wilson and DRW, the trading group he leads from Chicago, are fighting civil charges they distorted the price of an interest rate futures contract. They went on trial […]
By Lucia Mutikani | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. employers boosted hiring in November and the unemployment rate dropped to a more than nine-year low of 4.6 percent, making it almost certain that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this month. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 178,000 jobs last month after increasing by 142,000 in October, the Labor Department said on Friday. The solid employment gains likely reflect […]
India has emerged as one of the most prominent victims of November’s market turmoil. The twin shocks on Nov. 8 of Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s currency crackdown have unleashed a wave of selling in stock and foreign-exchange markets. It is the latest reversal for Western investors banking on an economic revival in the world’s second-most populous nation. Mr. Modi has […]
Investors poured money into US equity funds and pulled it from European ones in a week dominated by hopes for an acceleration in US economic growth and anxiety over Italy’s referendum on constitutional reform this weekend. European equity funds lost $2bn in the week to November 30, according to data from EPFR, while US funds attracted $4.4bn. That takes the total inflow for US equity funds since […]
By Gavin Jones | ROME ROME With his political career on the line, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi launched a final day of campaigning on Friday ahead of a Dec. 4 referendum, saying Italy would be the strongest nation in Europe if he wins. Financial markets and Europe’s politicians fear victory for the opposition ‘No’ camp could trigger political instability and renewed turmoil for Italy’s battered banks, pushing […]
A head of steam for Italian government bond yields. There are no signs of jitters in the eurozone’s third largest debt market this morning in the last day of trading before the country votes in a closely-watched referendum this weekend. Italy’s 10-year bond yields have fallen by as much as 10 basis points this morning (0.1 percentage points) to 1.95 per cent, outperforming a wider rally in […]
By Aradhana Aravindan and Marius Zaharia | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE A Singapore minister said on Friday the threat of an extremist attack was higher now than earlier this year as hardline Islamists are increasingly pushing their agenda in neighbouring Indonesia. Law and Home Affairs Minister Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam, speaking to the Foreign Correspondents Association in Singapore, did not specify whether the threat had increased just in the city state […]
Coutts, the taxpayer-owned bank, provided offshore services to controversial clients including a member of the Brunei royal family accused of stealing billions from his own country, and a banker charged with assisting the sons of Egypt’s deposed president, Hosni Mubarak, in financial crime. Known as the Queen’s bank after its most famous customer, Coutts is revealed to have managed secretive tax haven structures for the Sultan of […]
An Indian aerospace startup has said that it will launch its mission to the moon in a year’s time, as it takes part in a Google-funded competition to become the world’s first-ever privately held company to make a soft landing there. A group of more than 100 scientists and engineers, including around a dozen former ISRO scientists, make up Axiom Research Labs’ Team Indus. The team is […]
By Anshuman Daga and Marius Zaharia | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Singapore’s central bank imposed penalties on the local units of U.K.-based Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and private bank Coutts for money laundering breaches related to Malaysia’s scandal-tainted 1MDB fund and said it was nearing the end of its probes. The penalties – of S$5.2 million ($3.65 million) and S$2.4 million, respectively – were the latest punitive measures taken by […]
Tim Leissner, the former star dealmaker for Goldman Sachs in Southeast Asia, is to be banned from Singapore’s securities industry for 10 years over breaches relating to the multibillion-dollar scandal at Malaysia’s troubled state investment fund 1MDB, while Standard Chartered and Coutts have both been fined. Mr Leissner, who joined Goldman in Asia in 1998 and helped raise $6bn for 1MDB with three bond issuances, is being […]
App-based service now covers six cities Egypt – offering more local residents a convenient, reliable way to get around town Cairo, Egypt, December 1, 2016 Careem, the region’s leading app-based car booking service, launches today in three new cities in Egypt, extending access to its services to a total of six destinations across the country. The app is now live in Mansoura, Tanta and Hurghada, adding to […]
Islamic banks are gradually embracing socially responsible finance, from renewable energy to microfinance efforts, helping unlock new funding sources for environmentally-friendly projects, an industry survey shows. The two sectors have developed separately from each other, but green projects could benefit from tapping Islamic banks in countries like the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, where they now hold a quarter of total banking assets. Around two-thirds of financing […]
Three weeks after India invalidated its largest bank notes overnight, cash shortages are choking the world’s fastest-growing large economy. While it is too soon for much of the pain to be read from broad economic indicators—in India, even monthly ones, such as industrial output, are released with considerable lag—early signs are coming in. Some of them imply the disruption might not be as deep, or as long-lasting, […]
By Roslan Khasawneh | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Oil prices slipped on Friday as some investors opted to cash out after Brent touched 16-month a high on Thursday, with optimism over this week’s OPEC-Russia accord on cutting output giving way to questions on the “sticking point” of implementing the deal. International Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 were trading at $53.36 per barrel at 0446 GMT, down 58 cents, or […]
Communication is broken, according to Twilio’s VP of Product Management Patrick Malatack, who thinks the root of the problem is that businesses are overlooking the fact that their customers are human. Speaking at StartCon in Sydney, Malatack said there’s a belief among businesses that personalised communication experiences are not scalable, that you can’t humanise communications and serve a wide customer base at the same time. “That’s no […]
DUBAI December 1, 2016 Winston & Strawn LLP announced today that Shibeer Ahmed has joined the firm as partner and head of banking and Islamic finance in Dubai. Mr. Ahmed was previously with White & Case, where he served as head of the firm’s GCC Conventional and Islamic Bank Finance Practice. “With the addition of Shibeer to the team, we continue to focus on strategic growth of […]
Petrochemicals companies led Gulf stock markets higher on Thursday in response to OPEC’s first agreement on output cuts to prop up oil prices since 2008 – a deal that could allow governments to ease austerity policies slightly. Expectations for the deal had already boosted oil and Gulf bourses on Wednesday, but the agreement included bigger production cuts than many analysts had expected, lifting oil prices higher on […]
Hello Bill, I’ve followed GATA and LeMetropoleCafe since 1999. Following the work of you, Chris and GATA contributors has been most interesting. I follow a lot of media, including many sites not under the control of the Russian government, such as the Wall Street Journal. For an American who is not an insider GATA is the single best source news and analysis of the economy and financial […]
