LONDON — After years of international isolation under the rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya sought to emulate its Middle Eastern neighbors by creating a sovereign wealth fund in 2006 to invest the proceeds from its sale of oil. The North African nation soon turned to Goldman Sachs to help it invest some of the more than $35 billion in funds it had available in late 2007. […]
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 […]
|By Matein Khalid|Dr. Mervyn King broke with tradition by publishing his book “The End of Alchemy: money, banking and the future of the global economy”. After all, retired governors of the Bank of England do not, as a rule, do not write/publish books, let alone write books that lambast the City of London’s culture of greed and hubris. It is no coincidence that Dr. King quotes T.S. […]
FILE PHOTO — A woman looks at her phone as she passes by a Lending Club banner on the facade of the the New York Stock Exchange December 11, 2014. Reuters/Brendan McDermid/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters/IFR) – Many online lenders have failed to detect the “stacking” of multiple loans by borrowers who slip through their automated underwriting systems, lending company executives and investors told Reuters. […]
LEBANON. Byblos Bank issued today the results of the Byblos Bank Real Estate Demand Index for the first quarter of 2016. The results show that the Byblos Bank Real Estate Demand Index posted a monthly average of 42.5 points in the first quarter of 2016, representing a decrease of 12.5% from 48.5 points in the fourth quarter of 2015. The results constitute the ninth steepest quarter-on-quarter decline […]
INTERNATIONAL. A sense of disappointment permeated through the global markets during trading on Monday following last week’s shocking NFP result of 38k that discounted expectations over the Fed raising US rates in Q2. With the number of jobs created falling to its lowest level since 2007, the Dollar was left vulnerable as concerns elevated over a potential economic slowdown in the States. Although the headline unemployment rate […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency has written to banks instructing them not to under-report Saudi Interbank Offered Rate they’re actually lending at, Bloomberg reported. The decision came after some banks were seen conducting business at higher rates than were quoted, indicating some submissions were below the real market, according to two of the people. SAMA is exerting greater control over Saudi Arabia’s banking sector as […]
DUBAI // A Ramadan education campaign to distribute five million books to children in refugee camps and schools around the world was launched on Sunday by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai. The Reading Nation campaign, announced by Sheikh Mohammed on Twitter, is part of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives. He said that he asks God to accept his and the […]
INTERNATIONAL. As companies move to catch up with the digital future, they are taking a close look at what kind of executive they need to lead the way. In a new report, “The Right CDO for Your Company’s Future”, Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business, defines five Chief Digital Officer (CDO) “archetypes” – descriptions of typical roles CDOs might play within an organisation. The Five Archetypes of a […]
Iran’s top leader said Friday that trusting or cooperating with the United States would be a big mistake, an assertion that seemed to rule out any greater collaboration despite the nuclear deal reached nearly a year ago. The statement by the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made in a nationally televised speech, was the latest in a series of signals that Iran’s senior leadership was not likely to […]
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund made its highest-profile deal, investing $3.5 billion in U.S. ride-share company Uber Technologies Inc. as the country seeks to diversify its assets with more overseas acquisitions. Yasir Alrumayyan, managing director of the Public Investment Fund, will take a board seat at the San Francisco-based company after the deal, which values Uber at $62.5 billion, the company said in a statement. It’s the biggest […]
More than 18 months after Apple Pay took the United States by storm, the smartphone giant has made only a small dent in the global payments market, snagged by technical challenges, low consumer take-up and resistance from banks. The service is available in six countries and among a limited range of banks, though in recent weeks Apple has added four banks to its sole Singapore partner American Express; […]
Experts say they found more than 400 wooden tablets during excavations Image Credit: AFP Archaeologist Luisa Duarte poses for a picture holding a Roman waxed writing tablet containing the earliest written reference to London, dated AD 65/70-80, which translated reads ‘Londinio Mogontio’ (in London, to Mogontius…), at Bloomberg’s offices in central London. The tablets were found during excavation for financial news agency […]
One of Widad Majid’s brothers had to stay in Turkey for treatment of leukaemia, and her marrow could be the only hope for his survival Along with more than a dozen members of her extended family, Widad Majid spent last summer sleeping in sweltering refugee camps, open fields, train stations and a jail cell as she traversed Europe en route from Syria to Sweden, one small girl […]
A Bitcoin (virtual currency) paper wallet with QR codes and a coin are seen in an illustration picture taken at La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris, France, May 27, 2015. Reuters/Benoit Tessier/File Photo LONDON The price of the web-based digital currency bitcoin soared to its highest in almost two years on Tuesday, rising to more than $500 per unit, as worries about a further weakening of the […]
TEHRAN — In a sign of further tension between regional rivals, Iran will not allow its citizens to travel to Saudi Arabia for the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in September, Iran’s state television reported on Sunday. The decision, which means that tens of thousands of Iranians cannot make their spiritual journey to the main pilgrimage site of Islam, came after several failed rounds of talks between […]
JERUSALEM — In a politically fractious country troubled by monumental security challenges, Israel’s military has long served as an equalizer and unifier, a “people’s army” that, at least in the eyes of the Jewish majority, reflected the general interest. But the Israeli people, and with them the government, have shifted to the right amid an upsurge of Palestinian stabbings and other attacks. Now the military finds itself […]
|Arabian Post Staff| Banks in Saudi Arabia are coming under fresh pressure over products that allow speculators to bet against the kingdom’s currency peg, Bloomberg reports quoting people with knowledge of the matter. Bloomberg said the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency has asked lenders to explain why they are offering dollar-riyal forward structured products to customers less than four months after the regulator banned options contracts that let […]
MUMBAI India’s biggest conglomerate Tata Group launched an ecommerce venture on Friday, as it seeks to cash in on rising purchasing power in a market dominated by deep-pocketed international retailers and startups backed by global tech investors. The group said it developed its Tata Cliq website over a year and a half at a cost of “several hundred million dollars” to be a marketplace for inhouse and […]
The SWIFT logo is pictured in this photo illustration taken April 26, 2016. Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Illustration/File Photo DHAKA Bangladesh police are reviewing a nearly forgotten 2013 cyber heist at the nation’s largest commercial bank for connections to February’s $81 million heist at the country’s central bank, a senior law enforcement official said on Wednesday. The unsolved theft of $250,000 at Sonali Bank involved fraudulent transfer requests sent over […]
|By Matein Khalid| In retrospect, 2016 will go down in German political and economic history as a significant game changer, on the scale of 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall), 1990 (reunification) and 1999 (the Euro), even 1945 (launch of Deutschemark), 1945 (Third Reich surrenders), 1943 (Stalingrad) and 1933 (Hitler elected). Chancellor Merkel, renamed Mutti Multi kulti, allowed a million migrants to settle in Germany. The far right […]
The study found that 29 per cent of Emiratis are keen to use their Emirates ID cards to make payments, making them the highest demographic group in the GCC to want to do so. Dubai: Seventy seven per cent of residents across the GCC would opt for alternatives to cash and card payments, should they be available in their country, according to a study commissioned […]
DUBAI // Parents are struggling to pay for their children’s education, with employers cutting or doing away with allowances as school fees rise along with the wider cost of living. And there are fears that cutting those allowances will make it harder to attract the best and brightest from overseas to work here, at a cost to the economy. “This year in Abu Dhabi there will be […]
