Wall Street is bathing in nostalgia. This week the cover of Barron’s, the bible of US retail investors, proclaimed “Dow 20,000”. Presenters on CNBC are wearing Dow 10,000 caps first donned in 1999. And each day the thinning crowds on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange have watched the boards to see if the Dow Jones Industrial Average, having passed 19,900, can top the 20,000 […]
A series of big events shaped financial markets in 2016. Here is a selection of FT analyses and commentary, alongside charts, highlighting a tumultuous year. The new year rout January proved brutal for investors. After just 10 trading days, global equity markets had lost more than $4tn of value, with sentiment hammered by fears about China’s economic slowdown and a depreciating currency. In turn, bond markets were […]
Venezuelans are bracing for Christmas without cash after the country’s highest denomination banknote was withdrawn from circulation with new larger bills not due until January, as many fear that the country is spiralling towards hyperinflation. Embattled President Nicolás Maduro this week announced plans to scrap the ubiquitous 100 bolívar bill, which makes up about half the country’s banknotes but is increasingly worthless as annual inflation is forecast […]
Our round-up of the week’s best comment and analysis from the Financial Times focuses on expectations of a Trump-presidency stimulus and the danger of complacency. The selection is taken from our Markets Insight and Smart Money columns, written by industry contributors and FT commentators. Wall Street might be too complacent about Donald Trump’s corporate tax stimulus and are not pricing in an upsurge in volatility, argues the […]
ADEN A suicide bomber killed at least 30 soldiers in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden on Sunday, officials there said, a week after an attack by the militant Islamic State group killed 50 troops nearby. The officials said the soldiers were queuing to collect salaries near a military base in the Khor Maksar district when the attacker blew himself up. Forty other troops were wounded, […]
18 December 2016 Dubai: The Ministry of Finance (MoF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre to exchange experiences and coordinate on matters related to the strategic plan for ‘Dubai the Capital of Islamic Economy 2017-2021’, in order to strengthen the UAE’s position and enhance the Emirate of Dubai as the capital of the Islamic economy. The Dubai Islamic Economy Development Center […]
Monte dei Paschi di Siena has gained stock market approval to extend a voluntary debt-for-equity swap to retail investors, a key part of the Italian bank’s attempt to raise €5bn in fresh capital before Christmas and stave off a state rescue. The last-gasp attempt by the world’s oldest surviving lender comes as regulators and the bank have revealed that long running crisis at MPS is taking a […]
The Volcani Center, the Ministry of Agriculture’s research organization, is building a national institute for medical marijuana research. The chief scientist’s office of the Ministry of Economy has infused millions of shekels into innovative marijuana companies, much as government investment helped fuel the Israeli tech boom in the 1990s. The government is also setting standards for the cultivation, storage and use of medical marijuana. Continue reading the […]
It was a clear and chilly afternoon in Moscow – March 18, 2014 – when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the documents to formally annex the Crimean Peninsula away from Ukraine. Frustrated Western governments soon began rolling out the only response they could agree on to Mr. Putin’s brazen redrawing of Europe’s borders: economic sanctions. Over the next two days, the United States would designate 27 individuals […]
The number of passenger cars in use in the GCC region is expected to grow at 5 percent annually from an estimated 10.3 million in 2015 to 13.2 million in 2020, according to Alpen Capital. Its report said new passenger car sales are projected at 1.4 million in 2020, compared to 1.2 million in 2015. Although new sales declined in 2016 and will be under pressure in […]
California has long been a breeding ground for innovation and has fostered pioneering tech companies ranging from Disney to Apple. But in terms of self-driving cars—and based on several recent developments—a much more conservative Michigan is taking the pole position in nurturing the technology. Michigan and particularly the Detroit area is an ideal incubator for autonomous technology since it’s the center of the automotive universe […]
By Pawel Florkiewicz and Lidia Kelly | WARSAW WARSAW Polish opposition leaders called on Saturday for days of anti-government protests and vowed to maintain a blockade of parliament’s main hall that the ruling party condemned as an illegal attempt to seize power. About two dozen members of the opposition Civic Platform (PO) took turns to sit in the legislature’s plenary hall through the night and the party’s […]
Nearly 300 mid-to-large private jets were delivered to the Middle East between 2006 and 2015, with an estimated value of over $14.6 billion, according to new research. Global Jet Capital, a provider of financing solutions for large-cabin, long-range private jets, revealed that 293 jets were delivered, costing between $25 million and $75 million each. It said that the largest number of deliveries were to Turkey (77), followed […]
By Aaron Ross | KINSHASA KINSHASA Talks in Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday between the ruling coalition and the opposition failed to reach a compromise on the political future of President Joseph Kabila, who is set to stay in power when his mandate ends on Monday. Delegates said the talks will resume on Wednesday once the Catholic bishops mediating the negotiations have returned from a trip […]
By MacDonald Dzirutwe | MASVINGO, Zimbabwe MASVINGO, Zimbabwe Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was confirmed on Saturday as his party’s sole candidate for the next presidential election in 2018, when he will be 94. Supporters at a party conference sang a song titled “Mugabe should rule until eternity” as the veteran leader rose to give a speech in which he called for an end to infighting within the […]
Re: Investigation fallout felt around the world, Dec. 11 Investigation fallout felt around the world, Dec. 11 Kudos to the Star for their continuing coverage of “The Panama Papers “ investigation. With every new revelation, it never fails to amaze me, the extent of devious manipulations employed by obscenely wealthy individuals to avoid contributing their fair share of taxes. There is a growing resentment among the rest […]
15 December 2016 Baar (CH)/Ras al Khaimah (UAE)/Nairobi (Kenya), December 15th, 2016 – Today Swiss International signed a management agreement with Mlima Kenya Holiday Homes Ltd to co-develop and manage a “one-of-a-kind” resort, located at the scenic foothills of Mount Kenya at Naro Moru. The agreement was signed at the Swiss International Lenana-Nairobi that opened its doors earlier in December. Present at the signing were Mr. Ronald […]
By Jonathan Barrett and Harry Pearl | SYDNEY SYDNEY People living along Papua New Guinea’s coastline fled to higher ground on Saturday after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck east of the Pacific nation, triggering a tsunami warning for parts of its archipelago. A couple of hours after the quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) said the threat had largely passed, although it said government agencies should […]
BP will take a 10 percent stake in Abu Dhabi’s ADCO onshore oil concession for 40 years under a deal signed on Saturday with Abu Dhabi’s Supreme Petroleum Council and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the latter said. Under the deal signed in Abu Dhabi, BP agreed to issue new ordinary shares representing approximately 2 percent of its issued share capital (excluding treasury shares) which […]
The New York Times will vacate eight floors of its midtown headquarters in a bid to make some money and improve its efficiency. “The current way we have configured our office makes us slower and less collaborative,” New York Times CEO Mark Thompson and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a memo to staff Friday. “It is also, frankly, too expensive to occupy this many floors when […]
By Chuck Mikolajczak | NEW YORK NEW YORK Benchmark U.S. stock index rallies, in anticipation of fiscal stimulus measures by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, could also be laying the seeds for equity market troubles from a stronger dollar and rising bond yields. The S&P 500 stock index .SPX has surged over 8 percent since the Nov. 8 election, due in large part to sectors […]
Capitalism as we know it is irrevocably in its death throes, argues German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, which on its own is not a novel thesis. In our age of regular financial crashes and bursting bubbles, illiberal movements and borderless wars, even Nobel Prize winners and mainstream thinkers – I think of Joseph Stiglitz, among others – say that the post-war free market regime is broken, and that […]
Kuwaiti telecoms firm Zain Group has made a strategic investment in Colle Capital Partners, an early stage technology venture fund based in New York, with a presence in San Francisco. Colle Capital Partners has a diversified technology focus with an emphasis on data in energy, media, telecommunications, health IT, security, and software development. Zain said its investment in Colle Capital Partners is its fourth in technology-focused venture […]
‘You can’t put a price tag on anybody’s life’ Two years after the overdose that killed her 21-year-old son, Terri Bartlett traveled to Illinois’ state capital to champion an unlikely cause: revamped painkillers. Bartlett’s son Michael became hooked on Vicodin and later graduated to heroin. In emotional testimony last year, she urged lawmakers to support a bill that would prioritize the new harder-to-crush pills, saying she believed […]
