Dubai Investments PJSC, the company with interests in real estate and manufacturing, will buy a 60 percent stake in investment bank Al Mal Capital PSC as part of a plan to boost financial services assets. The company will pay about 150 million dirhams ($41 million) for the stake and expects to complete the purchase by March 15, Chief Executive Officer Khalid Jassim Kalban said in a phone […]
Video | Israel Remembers Jewish Paris Victims The Israeli president, the prime minister and the wife of one of the four Jewish victims in a Paris kosher market attack spoke at the burial ceremony for the slain men in Jerusalem. By JODI RUDOREN January 13, 2015 JERUSALEM — They were buried Tuesday not in the land where they had made their homes but in what was described as their […]
State-owned conglomerate Dubai World edged closer to a second major restructuring in four years on Monday after announcing it had reached agreement with a “substantial majority” of creditors to back its $14.6 billion debt deal. However, despite having enough backing to effectively prevent challenges to its new deal, a relatively untested court process to impose it will mean formal completion is still months away. Dubai’s economy has […]
|By Florence Tan and Henning Gloystein|Even as Saudi Arabia and its Gulf OPEC allies appear united in their refusal to cut output to boost global oil prices, they are becoming locked in an increasingly fierce battle to secure market share in Asia. Oil prices have slumped below $50 a barrel, the weakest since 2009, triggering a price war between producers to secure customers in Asia. And the […]
Kalban … expansion plans. Dubai Investments plans $108m acquisitions DUBAI, 1 days ago Dubai Investments (DI), a leading investment company listed on the Dubai Financial Market, has announced expansion plans across its diversified portfolio, which include two new acquisitions worth Dh400 million ($108 million). The new acquisitions in the financial and real estate sectors, to be finalised soon, are expected to reinforce Dubai Investments’ robust growth across […]
Bahrain offers direct subscription to govt sukuks MANAMA, 1 days ago Bahrain Bourse (BHB) has announced that from today (January 11) investors can directly subscribe to the Government Islamic Lease Securities (sukuk) in the primary market through registered brokers at the bourse. The subscription period through the registered brokers is until Wednesday, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication. The listing of the issue is expected […]
By Aditi Shah NEW DELHI Mon Jan 12, 2015 1:38pm IST Labourers work at a construction site of a high-rise residential building in central Mumbai August 25, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui/Files NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian businessman Navin Bhartia’s Internet habits make him a dream customer for billionaire foreign media moguls like Rupert Murdoch. The 45-year-old from Kolkata likes to buy homes online, sometimes without visiting them. […]
|By Andrew Torchia| It’s a weekend morning at the Dubai Mall, a glitzy complex with 1,200 stores, and the shoppers are pouring in. A traffic jam has formed in the basement parking area. With passenger arrivals at Dubai’s airport at record highs, retailers expect a good month. The 55 percent plunge of oil prices since last June might be expected to usher in an age of austerity […]
Limitless, a Dubai government-related real estate developer, has asked for a three-month extension to talks with creditors after failing to secure a new restructuring on its $1.2 billion debt pile, four banking sources told Reuters on Thursday. The company, which has already restructured the debt once before after falling victim to the emirate’s property crash at the end of the past decade, is aiming to secure another […]
Dubai Islamic Bank will reopen the Gulf bond market next week with a capital-boosting sukuk, the region’s first debt offering in two months as financial markets there wobbled under the impact of falling oil prices. A successful offering would not just bolster reserves at DIB, the largest Islamic bank in the United Arab Emirates, but also pave the way for others who may have been waiting to […]
Oil extended losses below $48 a barrel amid speculation that U.S. inventories will expand, deepening a global supply glut that’s driven prices to a five-year low. Futures declined for a fourth day. Stockpiles in the world’s biggest oil-consuming country probably rose by 700,000 barrels last week, a Bloomberg News survey showed before a government report tomorrow. Oil slumped almost 50 percent in 2014, the most since the […]
INTERNATIONA. Oil fell in 2014 by the most since the 2008 global financial crisis as U.S. producers and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ceded no ground in their battle for market share amid a supply glut. The U.S. benchmark ended at a five-year low yesterday, capping a 46 percent drop in 2014, as stockpiles of crude oil and gasoline reached seasonal record highs and as OPEC […]
Op-Ed Contributor By DENNIS B. ROSS January 4, 2015 WASHINGTON — THE president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, insists on using international institutions to pressure Israel, even after he was rebuffed in the United Nations Security Council, where he sought a resolution mandating Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Mr. Abbas has now announced that he will turn to the International Criminal Court — a move […]
Reporting about widespread government surveillance of ordinary citizens helped win the Guardian and the Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize in 2014. But many ordinary citizens themselves have offered a “Ho-hum everybody does it” response to the spying revelations made by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The lackadaisical public reaction does not bode well for the future of privacy. And that’s the same conclusion that the […]
MUMBAI Sat Jan 3, 2015 7:26pm IST A worker displays a Micromax mobile phone inside a store in Kolkata December 4, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri/Files Related Topics Stocks Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone turns 29. Pics MUMBAI (Reuters) – Micromax Informatics, India’s second-largest smartphone maker, plans to raise as much as $500 million through a stock market listing in its financial year beginning in April, […]
FBI Probes Revenge Hacks by U.S. Banks U.S. banks that were attacked by Iran-based hackers in late 2012 reportedly considered hacking the Iranians in response, according to Bloomberg News. That would-be retaliation has apparently gotten the attention of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), which is now looking into the banks’ actions, Bloomberg reported. The FBI is “looking into whether hackers working on behalf of any […]
Gulf stock markets rose on Sunday despite oil’s weakness as Saudi Arabia’s plan to maintain government spending at a high level boosted investor confidence. The Saudi government released a 2015 state budget last Thursday that provides for a 0.6 percent increase in spending from this year’s plan. That cheered the retail investors who dominate Gulf stock markets; they had feared falling oil revenues would trigger spending cuts […]
Marka, a retailing and restaurants start-up, has agreed to buy a sporting goods retail firm from state-owned conglomerate Dubai World for 220 million dirhams ($60 million), in a move that will make Marka operationally profitable in 2015, it said on Sunday. The acquisition of Retailcorp, a subsidiary of Dubai World’s investment unit Istithmar World, will be funded by the Marka’s own funds and bank facilities, said the […]
Gulf stock markets rose on Thursday as Saudi Arabia released a 2015 state budget that will keep spending high, reassuring the region that economic growth is unlikely to be hurt much by the plunge of oil prices. The Saudi budget envisions state spending at a record 860 billion riyals ($230 billion) next year, up 0.6 percent from the 2014 budget plan. That would be the smallest rise […]
Saudi authorities pledged to curb wages and push ahead with investments next year as the world’s largest oil exporter seeks to counter the effect of tumbling crude prices on the economy. The government said it expects the budget deficit in 2015 to widen to 145 billion riyals ($39 billion), from 54 billion riyals this year, the Finance Ministry said today. That amounts to about 5 percent of […]
Deutsche Bank is open to offers for its London-based gold vault following the closure of its physical precious metals business, three sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. “If the right offer came along, then the bank would sell the London vault,” one source close to the situation said. The German bank shut its physical precious metals trading arm last month as it further reduced its […]
The United Arab Emirates central bank discussed margin lending at a board meeting this week and ordered that all aspects of the issue be studied, the central bank said on Wednesday. In a brief statement describing discussions at the board meeting, the central bank did not elaborate on how the study would be conducted or what action might be taken in response. The Dubai stock index has […]
In Saudi Arabia, where the currency has been fixed at about the same rate for 28 years, even the tiniest swings in the futures market reflect concern the peg will be broken. So the 0.2 percent drop that traders see by next year shows this is the most worried they’ve been about it since 2009. For Standard Chartered Plc and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank PJSC, that speculation […]
Watan inks strategic tie-up with Natixis RIYADH, 2 days ago Natixis, the corporate arm of France’s banking group Groupe BPCE, and Saudi Arabia’s Watan Investment & Securities Company have signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The signing, which took place at the Council of Saudi Chambers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, marks the start of expectantly a long-term cooperation between the two institutions on a wide range of Natixis […]
