Investment Corporation of Dubai, the emirate state-owned holding company, is seeking to refinance an $880 million loan taken out by resort hotel Atlantis, The Palm, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. The company hired HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Standard Chartered Plc (STAN), and Emirates NBD PJSC on the deal, three of the people said, asking not to be identified as the talks aren’t public. […]
London home sellers cut asking prices by the most in more than six years this month, adding to signs that the property market in the U.K. capital is coming off the boil. London values fell 5.9 percent from the previous month to an average 552,783 pounds ($922,300), the biggest drop since December 2007, property website Rightmove Plc said today. Nationally, prices declined 2.9 percent, a record for […]
|By TAP Staff| Oil prices have never been so stable as they are now since the breakup of Bretton Woods system in 1971. Despite major geopolitical tensions in Libya, Syria, Iraq, or the Ukraine, global crude oil prices have been remarkably steady in the past three and a half years. Global oil prices have not been this stable since the break-up of the Bretton Woods system in […]
Seventy-year-old Saudi Arabian stock speculator Mohamed al-Otaibi says he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the crash of 2006, but he’s back trading again as the Arab world’s biggest bourse prepares to open to direct foreign investment. The activities of Otaibi and many thousands like him mean there will be a clash of investment cultures when international institutions enter the $580 billion Saudi market early next […]
(Reuters) – Shake Shack, the fast-food restaurant chain famous for its hamburgers and milkshakes, is preparing to go public, seeking to tap stock market demand for popular casual dining companies, according to people familiar with the matter. After developing a cult following for its ‘Shackburgers’, ‘flat-top’ hot dogs and eponymous shakes, the company is now preparing to serve up its own shares to the public through an […]
LONDON, August 15 (Fitch) Fitch Ratings has affirmed Abu Dhabi’s Long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) at ‘AA’. The Outlooks are Stable. The issue ratings on Abu Dhabi’s senior unsecured foreign and local currency bonds have also been affirmed at ‘AA’. The Short-term foreign currency IDR has been affirmed at ‘F1+’. The UAE Country Ceiling has been affirmed at ‘AA+’; this Ceiling also applies […]
Suffering in silence: Robin Williams with wife Susan Schneider Photo: Getty Images I have learnt over the past few years that Parkinson’s disease knows no boundaries. It is a condition that can affect anybody, at any time. But even still, I was as shocked as everybody else to hear that Robin Williams was suffering from its early onset before he took his own life. It was the […]
A computer generated image shows the stadium to be built in Al-Khor for Qatar’s 2022 World Cup. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for Qatar since it started preparations to host the World Cup football in 2022. Ever since the wealthy Gulf state won the rights to host the tournament in 2010, it has been the subject of bribery allegations while at the same […]
Two weeks, three continents, and 100 meetings. That — and founder Jack Ma celebrating his 50th birthday on the road — is what it will take for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to pull off the largest initial public offering in U.S. history. The Chinese e-commerce company is weighing a plan to start marketing the share sale to investors on Sept. 3, with management traveling across Asia, Europe […]
Sanctions on Russia over the crisis with Ukraine are leading banks to call for the development of Islamic finance as they seek alternatives to European and U.S. pools of funding. The expansion of the Shariah-compliant industry would let the country attract fresh capital from the Middle East and Asia, the Association of Russian Banks said this week in response to an inquiry from the state bank. The […]
Major Saudi food producer Savola Group said on Wednesday it had begun preliminary talks on a potential acquisition of Kuwait Food Co (Americana) , one of the Middle East’s largest food companies. Savola has attended an investor roadshow held by Americana’s management, but talks have not yet reached a stage that would require disclosure, the company said in a bourse filing. Reuters reported in April that the […]
Dubai’s two biggest builders are turning to bank borrowing to help fund projects as a rise in late payments from their customers takes the shine off a booming construction market. Arabtec Holding PJSC, the contractor that helped push Dubai stocks into a bear market in June, said money owed by clients rose to 8.8 billion dirhams ($2.4 billion) through the second quarter from 7.2 billion dirhams at […]
Alex Salmond is taking refuge in scare stories about the NHS Down in the Salmond-bunker things are getting desperate. Assailed on all sides by, in no particular order, falling opinion poll ratings, senior colleagues who’ve lost confidence in him, a hammering at Alistair Darling’s hands in last week’s TV debate, the man in charge of the campaign to break up Britain is struggling to keep his head […]
Emirates, the largest operator of Airbus Group A380 planes, finalized a $425 million syndicated loan with local banks for the acquisition of two of the double-decker aircraft. Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, Commercial Bank of Dubai and Dubai Islamic Bank jointly financed the Shariah-compliant loan, the banks said in a joint statement. The three banks were joint bookrunners and initial mandated lead arrangers for the deal. The transaction […]
London-based Gatehouse Bank is developing new business lines and widening its investor base as the Islamic wholesale lender looks to build a more stable revenue stream, its chief executive said. Gatehouse, one of Britain’s six full-fledged Islamic banks, is joining several of its peers in broadening its scope, after the country’s Islamic finance sector got a boost from the government’s first issue of an Islamic bond in […]
Goldman Sachs and Qatar National Bank (QNB) are arranging a $800 million loan to help B.R. Shetty acquire a majority stake in foreign exchange operator Travelex, the Abu Dhabi-based entrepreneur said on Tuesday. “The jumbo transaction has been finalised, we are happy with the terms,” Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty told Reuters, adding that the financing was expected to be completed by September or October. QNB declined to comment, […]
Dubai’s hotels had the lowest occupancy in at least 18 years in July, standing more than half empty, as more rooms were created and demand declined, according to research firm STR Global. Occupancy declined 11.8 percentage points to 45.4 percent from a year earlier, STR Global said in a report. That’s the lowest since the company began tracking the Dubai hospitality market. Dubai, which built some of […]
Jebel Ali Free Zone FZE, a business park operator in Dubai, is cutting the price on a 2.2 billion-dirham ($599 million) Islamic loan by half as funding costs decline, according to three bankers familiar with the deal. The interest rate on the loan for the company known as Jafza will be reduced to 150 basis points, or 1.5 percentage points, over the Emirates interbank offered rate from […]
Royal Bank of Scotland confirmed it was considering selling the international arm of its private bank, a deal one source said could net it as much as $1 billion, as the British government leans on it to focus more on domestic lending. The move means that Coutts, founded in the 18th century and best known as banker to Queen Elizabeth, could be split into two businesses – […]
Investment conglomerate Dubai World may resort to a familiar, but in recent times rarely used, legal mechanism set up at the height of the emirate’s financial crisis to obtain the backing from its creditors to postpone a crucial debt repayment deadline. The state-owned firm and advisor Blackstone are currently discussing with an increasing number of lenders the terms of a deal that proposes to push back the […]
Is the debt fog over Dubai finally clearing or returning? Zuma Press Investment conglomerate Dubai World may resort to a familiar, but in recent times rarely used, legal mechanism set up at the height of the emirate’s financial crisis to obtain the backing from its creditors to postpone a crucial debt repayment deadline. The state-owned firm and advisor Blackstone are currently discussing with an increasing number of […]
|TAP Special| In its effort to unearth black money stashed away abroad, India has received data on over 24,000 instances of alleged tax evasion and dubious funds which has been detected in foreign shores in the last financial year, the Economic Times reported. These cases are now under investigation by the taxman even as the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money has set its eye on […]
A container ship in the Suez Canal near Ismailia port city, northeast of Cairo. Reuters The Suez Canal–one of the world’s vital trading routes–is set for the first major expansion in its 145-year history. Egypt’s ambitious multi-billion-dollar plan, which could nearly double the waterway’s capacity to 97 passing ships a day by 2023, has been largely welcomed by shipping industry executives and economists, albeit with some skepticism. […]
President Barack Obama said on Saturday U.S. air strikes had destroyed arms that Islamic State militants could have used against Iraqi Kurds, but he warned there was no quick fix to a crisis that threatens to tear Iraq apart. Speaking before U.S. warplanes struck militant targets for the second straight day, Obama said it would take more than bombs to restore stability, and criticized Prime Minister Nuri […]
