Hedge funds extended this year’s longest exit from bullish gold bets as slumping prices and investor outflows since June erased $6.7 billion from the value of exchange-traded funds backed by the metal. The net-long position in New York futures and options fell for a fifth straight week, with speculators boosting short bets to the highest since June, U.S. government data show. Investors sold 7.75 metric tons of […]
DIFC Investments LLC, which owns properties in the Dubai International Financial Center business park, said it plans to raise about $700 million from an Islamic bond sale to repay debt and fund development as borrowing costs decline. The state-controlled company, which is planning to issue the sukuk before the end of October, will use the proceeds to repay the $650 million outstanding on a syndicated loan, DIFC […]
|TAP Special| Dubai World will reach a deal on renegotiating its debt repayment schedule soon, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, chairman of Dubai’s Supreme Fiscal Committee, disclosed. “I can say for sure we will reach it. It is there and you will hear about it soon,” he told reporters at the sidelines of Ciyscape. Dubai World had offered creditors a series of incentives to lengthen a $25 […]
City skyscrapers stand on the waterfront seen from a construction site of residential apartments on Palm Jumeirah artificial island in Dubai. Bloomberg News A rebounding Dubai property market has caught everyone’s attention again. Following a colossal crash in property prices in the wake of the financial crisis, not many had expected a recovery so soon afterwards, or so swiftly. The total amount invested in the emirate’s property […]
The start of the United Arab Emirates’ first consumer credit-rating bureau last week will help banks better deal with bad loans six years after one of the world’s worst property crashes. “Banks will intensify their analysis of their existing portfolios,” Marwan Ahmad Lutfi, chief executive officer of the Al Etihad Credit Bureau said in an interview in Dubai today. The reports will allow banks to decide how […]
| By TAP Staff |With deadline fast approaching for Standard Chartered to exit part of its retail business, there is intense speculation over the likely suitor. Mashreqbank, one of the first names normally thrown up as a probable for such acquisitions, has ruled out any interest. The British bank is aiming to sell part of its business in the UAE after it agreed to close some accounts […]
Three years after its first foray into the Islamic capital markets ended without a sale, investors piled in to buy sukuk debt from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) yesterday as the bank joined the governments of Hong Kong and the U.K. in selling debut Shariah-compliant bonds this year. The New York-based lender attracted bids for three times the $500 million of sukuk it sold yesterday, according to […]
A rush by Dubai’s retail investors to take part in the initial public offer of Emaar Properties’ malls unit put pressure on the emirate’s stock market on Tuesday, while successful fund-raising for the Suez Canal expansion lifted stocks in Egypt. Emaar said late on Monday that institutional investors had committed to buying all the shares offered to them in the flotation of its shopping malls business, only […]
|By TAP Staff| The UAE Securities and Commodities Authority plans to introduce new rules that will make it easier for local companies to raise resources from the market through dirham-denominated bonds. The new rules will also seek to reduce the cost of issuing bonds while making it faster for companies to issue and list their bonds. “We would like to see more active bond and sukuk markets […]
A Palestinian family looks from a window at the rubble of a collapsed tower following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City in a Aug. 26 file photo. Associated Press The outlook for Gaza’s economic recovery is “bleak” after a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas unless there is “a fundamental change of the political status quo”, according to a sobering International Monetary Fund report released Tuesday on the […]
By Elzio Barreto, Fiona Lau and Liana B. Baker HONG KONG/NEW YORK Tue Sep 16, 2014 11:06am IST People walk at the headquarters of Alibaba in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Chance Chan/Files HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd raised the price range on its initial public offering to $66 to $68 on Monday, reflecting strong demand from investors for the year’s […]
|By TAP Staff| Emaar Properties said the IPO of its shopping malls business unit has been sold out to institutional investors on the first day itself. The leading developer aiming to raise as much as AED 5.8 billion ($1.58 billion) from the offer of shares in Emaar Malls Group (EMG), which is expected to be the Gulf’s biggest stock sale since 2008. On offer are 2 billion […]
|By TAP Staff| Qatar National Bank announced the acquisition of an additional holding of 11 percent shares in pan-African bank Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (Ecobank). The cost of the additional holding is equivalent to $283 million. QNB Group’s total stake in Ecobank is now 23.5 percent. This enables QNB Group to become the largest shareholder whilst strengthening the partnership with Ecobank, a leading pan-African bank and is a […]
|By TAP Staff| Dubai added to its financial market profile when Bank of America-Merrill Lynch announced on Monday it was moving its head of frontier markets research to the city. The move reflects the bank’s plan to take advantage of growing investor interest in the Gulf and surrounding region. Global firms have been strengthening their presence in the wake of surging stock markets, index upgrades and most […]
Savola Group, a Saudi Arabian food producer, hired JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) to advise on a potential bid for the operator of KFC restaurants in the Middle East and North Africa, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. Non-binding bids for the $4.3 billion Kuwait Food business, known as Americana, are due next month, the people said, asking not to be identified as the […]
|By TAP Staff| Emaar Properties said it’s seeking to raise as much as $1.58 billion from the initial public offering of its malls unit in the UAE’s biggest IPO since 2007. Emaar Malls Group PJSC plans to sell 2 billion of its founders’ shares, or about 15 percent of its equity, in a price range of 2.5 dirhams to 2.9 dirhams apiece, according to a company statement […]
|TAP Special| A lower oil price has now become both an economic and political necessity. This is in view of the complications introduced by the disruption of Middle East politics brought about by recent advances by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Bank of America Merrill Lynch notes in a review of the regional political and economic situation that the threat of a radical Islamic Sunni […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Banks with experience arranging Islamic bond sales may stand to benefit from the potential opening of Saudi Arabia’s debt market to foreign investors, according to the investment banking unit of Mashreqbank PSC. (MASQ) “There’ll be a lot of potential for non-Saudi banks to get involved on the advising and arranging side,” Abdul Kadir Hussain, who oversees about $700 million as chief executive officer of Mashreq […]
On the face of it, Jordan must be a tough sell to international investors: there is the ubiquitous threat of instability and violence lurking from neighboring Syria and Iraq while the kingdom’s small economy, which is reliant on foreign aid, is strained by high unemployment and budget deficits. Nonetheless, some foreign private equity groups are willing to take the risk. Buyout giant Carlyle Group last year bought […]
Jeremy Paxman, who is a quarter Scot, would have like a say in the future of the Union Photo: PA/BBC On Thursday, the English will discover what the Scots really think of them. Like the final row in a troubled marriage, it could be the event that serves to separate those we were once told God had joined together. The decision is not for those of us who […]
|By TAP Staff|The rising popularity of Islamic finance in the West is prompting analysts to conclude that the world is finally recognizing the fact Islamic finance is not just for Muslims and it ready to go mainstream. Islamic finance received a shot in the arm recently with the move by US investment bank Goldman Sachs to revive plans to issue its first sukuk. In June when the […]
|By TAP Staff| Asia is giving expression to its growing disenchantment with the prevailing West-centred gold pricing mechanism by setting in place its own benchmarks that reflect the region’s market dynamics. China and Singapore are preparing to launch physical bullion contracts with an eye on gaining pricing power of the metal at a time when the global benchmark is under scrutiny. CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives […]
Dubai Aluminium (Dubal) has held talks with banks about raising a loan to help fund its general operations, the first time the firm has commissioned such a facility in years, three banking sources told Reuters on Thursday. While it is a rarity for the company to raise money not tied to a specific project, a loan would be the latest example of a Dubai state-backed entity tapping […]
Standard Chartered Plc is in talks with potential corporate sukuk issuers from China and Hong Kong, as the city government debuts its Islamic bonds. The lender, the fourth-largest Shariah-compliant debt arranger this year, sees Hong Kong as a “very unique opportunity as a gateway to China,” Afaq Khan, the Dubai-based chief executive officer at Standard Chartered Saadiq, said in an interview. The city’s entry to the Islamic […]
