Gold trade between Turkey and Iran will resume, albeit at lower levels than last year, once sanctions on Iran are eased, Iran’s ambassador to Turkey said on Friday. Turkey’s gold trade with Iran boomed in 2012 when Ankara was paying for its natural gas and oil imports with Turkish lira and Iranians were using those deposits held in Turkey’s Halkbank to buy gold. “Certainly the gold trade […]
A police helicopter crashed into the roof of a packed pub in Glasgow on Friday night, trapping revelers in choking dust and debris as they scrambled to flee a concert at the busy drinking hole. There are a number of casualties, police said. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said people should prepare for the likelihood of fatalities while emergency workers labored to free people trapped under rubble […]
Dubai’s success in bidding to host the 2020 World Expo will trigger billions of dollars of investment in the emirate, but it may risk a repeat of the boom-and-bust cycle which nearly caused financial collapse just a few years ago. After competing against three cities, Dubai was awarded the world’s fair by the Bureau International des Expositions on Wednesday, setting the seal on a dramatic economic recovery. […]
Asian shares were in a buoyant mood, with Japanese stocks hitting their highest close in nearly six years after the yen fell sharply on relatively positive U.S. economic data, while two major regional currencies slumped. Financial bookmakers expected major European indexes to open flat to modestly higher on Thursday . U.S. jobless claims unexpectedly fell last week and the November Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer confidence improved […]
Dubai’s government has to make sure its property market is driven by fundamental factors, not speculation, and be ready to act if it sees very rapid increases in asset prices, a senior International Monetary Fund official said on Tuesday. “When you begin to see very rapid increases in any asset prices then you just need to be prepared to act,” said Masood Ahmed, the IMF’s Director for […]
When the British government said last month it would issue its first Islamic bond, the implications went far beyond the debt market: it was a signal that London will not back down in an escalating tussle among cities for Islamic financial business. London has long been the default center for international firms to issue sharia-compliant bonds, part of a fast-growing Islamic finance sector that will be worth […]
Emerging Asian currencies took a battering and regional shares tumbled to six-week lows on Wednesday as mixed signals from Federal Reserve officials raised fresh concerns about an imminent rollback of the U.S. central bank’s asset-buying stimulus. The dour mood looked set to carry over into Europe, where financial spread betters predicted Britain’s FTSE 100 to fall as much as 0.7 percent, Germany’s DAX off 0.4 percent and […]
Emad Mansour, a veteran Gulf Arab banker, is planning to set up an investment bank in Dubai’s tax-free financial zone, he said on Sunday, joining a growing list of regional bankers taking advantage of a revival in deal making and a retreat by big investment banks. Mansour, who has about 20 years of investment banking experience in the region, was most recently the chief executive of Doha-based […]
U.S. lawmakers said they aimed to tighten sanctions on Iran to prevent Washington giving away too much in a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program that diplomats said was still possible despite the failure of high-level weekend talks. Their comments reflected widespread Congressional skepticism about a rapprochement between Iran and world powers and coincided with renewed lobbying from Israel against a proposal it sees as leaving open a […]
BlackBerry Ltd’s board does not believe a break-up of the Canadian smartphone maker is currently in its best interests, even though Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd, among others, have expressed interest in acquiring parts of the company, according to people familiar with the discussions. The board rejected proposals from several technology companies for various BlackBerry assets on grounds that a break-up did not serve […]
Dubai luxury housing developer DAMAC Properties said it plans to raise as much as $500 million from an initial public share offer in London, betting on a recovery in a property market that crashed four years ago. If successful, DAMAC would be the first Dubai real estate firm to go public since then. DAMAC, which is building golf courses in the emirate with American real-estate mogul Donald […]
With the D-day approaching fast for the award of the 2020 Expo, everyone in Dubai is excited about a most likely successful Dubai bid. Amidst all the fanfare, however, there is a lurking fear about the impact of a successful bid on the emirate’s real estate sector. Those who do worry have one overriding concern: that Expo fever will tip an already overheating property market into bubble […]
Now that the foundation of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s statue – to be the world’s tallest – has been laid, a small rocky island in the middle of the Narmada riverbed and facing Gujarat’s Sardar Sarovar Dam is seeing a lot of activity. The first phase of the project, for which bids have already been invited, is estimated to cost around Rs 2,063 crore. This phase will involve […]
Emirates NBD is looking for acquisition targets in Turkey as Dubai’s largest lender scouts for opportunities beyond its home market, despite an improving economic environment within the emirate, its top executive said. ENBD, which completed in June the purchase of BNP Paribas’ Egyptian assets for $500 million, has been looking to diversify beyond Dubai after a real estate market crash in 2008-2010 severely impacted the bank. The […]
The Federal Reserve is expected to maintain its massive bond-buying campaign when it concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday and may point to softer readings on the U.S. economy to signal that the policy will be extended into 2014. The central bank, which will announce its policy decision at 2 p.m., has held interest rates near zero since late 2008 and has quadrupled the size of its […]
Bahrain is still in the early stages of a series of bank mergers designed to strengthen the sector in the face of regional competition, the central bank governor said. The tiny kingdom’s banking industry, once the most vibrant in the Gulf, was hit hard by the global financial crisis and, since 2011, by political unrest which has deterred some foreign investment. But Rasheed al-Maraj said there were […]
Emirates NBD, Dubai’s biggest bank, raised its estimates for economic growth in the United Arab Emirates this year to 4.4 percent, aided by an increase in oil output. The forecast was raised from 3.8 percent, putting the second-biggest Arab economy on track for a higher growth rate than Saudi Arabia for the first time in at least four years, according to the bank’s quarterly economic report released […]
A U.S. judge on Friday narrowed Mashreq PSC’s claims in a lawsuit that alleged ING Groep NV lost more than $40 million of the Dubai bank’s money by investing it in “toxic” securities. U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield denied ING’s bid to dismiss the complaint in its entirety, ruling that Mashreq’s breach of contract claim should stand. However, she dismissed the bank’s breach of fiduciary duty and […]
Mehmood Patel still wakes up early, just as he did when he was a popular heart specialist seeing patients who waited hours for minutes of his time. Instead of surgical scrubs, he climbs into the khaki drabs of the Federal Correctional Complex in Oakdale, Louisiana. He leads health-conscious inmates on a morning walk, then cracks open one of the medical journals on his prison-approved reading list. Counseling […]
Dubai’s largest lender Emirates NBD’s saw a sharp increase in its quarterly provisions on Thursday, overshadowing a 21 percent increase in its third-quarter net profit that fell short of analysts’ expectations. The lender, 55.6-percent owned by state fund Investment Corp of Dubai, made a net profit of 775 million dirhams ($211 million) in the three months to Sept. 30, a statement said, compared with 640 million dirhams […]
Dubai’s largest bank Emirates NBD has put its remaining 15 percent stake in Union Properties up for sale, the lender’s chief financial officer said on Thursday. The bank booked a gain of 191 million dirhams ($52.00 million) from the sale of a 32.6 percent stake in Union Properties during the first nine months of 2013. Its remaining stake is now held as “available for sale” on its […]
Fosun International Ltd., a Chinese conglomerate that invests in everything from steel to pharmaceuticals to Club Med, has agreed to buy the office tower at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza from JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a whopping $750 million. This isn’t an isolated incident. Zhang Xin, a billionaire property developer who grew rich building Beijing’s central business district, recently bought about 20 percent of the General Motors […]
Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) is hosting global investor calls as it revives plans to issue a US dollar-denominated hybrid bond it originally marketed in May. The company operates Carrefour stores across the Middle East. The potential bond, which could become the Gulf’s first international hybrid to be issued by a corporate borrower, will be callable after the first five years. The coupon on the bond will […]
An international meeting in Paris next month may trigger billions of dollars of fresh investment in Dubai – and, if plans are not handled carefully, contribute to the kind of boom-and-bust cycle which nearly bankrupted the emirate four years ago. Dubai is competing with Izmir in Turkey, Sao Paulo in Brazil and Yekaterinburg in Russia for the right to host the 2020 World Expo. A vote of […]
