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 […]
Dubai is far from ready to relinquish its status as home to the world’s tallest tower. Emaar Properties Chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar has once again reiterated that a new tallest skyscraper in the world will be built in Dubai. “Emaar plans to build the tallest skyscraper in the world in Dubai,” Alabbar was quoted as saying in an interview to CNN, on the sidelines of launching of […]
Pakistani Taliban fighters secretly buried their leader on Saturday after he was killed by a U.S. drone aircraft and quickly moved to replace him while vowing a wave of revenge suicide bombings. The Pakistani government denounced the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud as a U.S. bid to derail planned peace talks and summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest. Some lawmakers demanded the blocking of U.S. supply lines into […]
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 […]
Tehran’s municipality has torn down billboards in the Iranian capital depicting the U.S. government as dishonest and an untrustworthy negotiator, saying the campaign was “unauthorized,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. A cultural institute installed the posters without seeking consent from the municipality’s cultural council, IRNA cited Hadi Ayazi, a municipal spokesman, as saying yesterday. Ayazi didn’t say who was responsible. Billboards in Farsi and English […]
The UAE financial adviser study, conducted by the Durable Portfolio Construction Research Centre of Natixis Global Asset Management (NGAM), one of the 15 largest asset managers in the world based on assets under management, concludes that the UAE is one of the strongest markets for advisers globally, with great potential for further growth if current challenges are successfully overcome. Forty per cent of UAE advisers say their […]
Hong Kong restaurant owner Hudson Chang says he can’t lower the bar much further for hiring staff. He warns his employees repeatedly about sending messages on their iPhones during work hours. He pleads with them to be more pleasant to customers. Still, he can’t afford to fire anyone: He can’t be sure of finding a replacement. “We don’t really have much choice,” said Chang, 39, owner of […]
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 […]
Investors are becoming more discerning about where they put their money, shying away from countries such as Brazil, India (SENSEX), Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa. Behind the discrimination is a new-found focus on current-account deficits and structural weaknesses exposed by the likelihood of less stimulus from the Federal Reserve and cooling demand in China, according to economists from HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and International […]
Mezzan Holding Co, a diversified Kuwaiti conglomerate, will acquire the distributor of Red Bull energy drink in the United Arab Emirates, highlighting appetite for consumer-related investments in the Gulf Arab region. Mezzan is buying Unitra Mets Group (UMG) from Abu Dhabi-based Invest AD and its other shareholders, Mezzan and Invest AD said in a joint statement on Monday. State-owned asset manager Invest AD had bought a majority […]
Hosting World Expo 2020, which requires $7 billion in capital spending, will put relatively little financial pressure on Dubai’s government, EFG-Hermes said. Wael Ziada, head of research at EFG-Hermes, said Dubai’s budgeted $7 billion in capital spending for the Expo bid includes $1.4 billion for a metro extension, most of which is likely to be spent towards the end of the decade. In a research report, Ziada argued […]
Asian stocks marked time on Wednesday with nervous investors praying that frantic talks in Washington to avert a U.S. debt default could lead to a deal before the Oct 17 deadline, after which the government would run out of ways to borrow. U.S. Senate aides said an agreement to lift the government’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit was near but details still needed to be worked out, leaving markets clinging […]
International Finance Corp., the World Bank’s investment arm, plans to sell a record $1 billion of rupee bonds offshore to fund its investments as India struggles to lure capital amid the slowest growth in a decade. The bond sale aims to “attract greater foreign investment in a time of renewed economic uncertainty across the world,” the Washington-based IFC said in a statement yesterday. The so-called synthetic debt […]
A stampede by competing apartment buyers in Dubai this week may have obscured signs that Dubai’s latest real estate boom is more restrained than the last one, which pushed the government close to default. Dubai’s property spree in the middle of the last decade was built precariously on bank loans, spelling disaster for indebted developers when prices eventually crashed. The crisis shook financial markets around the world. […]
Yields for real estate in Dubai have compressed and investors are now open of acquiring assets at yields closer to emerging Europe and higher than established markets such as Moscow, the 2013 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Real Estate Investor Sentiment Survey by Jones Lang LaSalle said. The survey indicated strong demand amongst regional investors for Dubai real estate, leading to the creation of a seller’s […]
Chemical warfare and car bombings are just a few of the hazards working in war-torn countries such as Iraq and Syria. For Supreme Group BV, it’s the cost of doing business. Dubai-based Supreme delivers fuel and food — 100,000 meals a day — to troops stationed in some of the most inhospitable parts of the world, including Liberia, Mali and Sudan. The perilous business, where contractors dodge […]
Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen. Failure by the world’s largest borrower to pay its debt — […]
Qatar’s Doha Bank said on Monday it would seek shareholder approval to issue a debt instrument worth 2 billion riyals ($549.3 million) to boost its Tier 1 capital, which would be sold by March 30 next year. No date for the shareholder meeting was given in the statement to the Qatar bourse. Tier 1 capital is considered the core indicator of a bank’s financial health. The notes […]
Asian shares, oil prices and the dollar came under pressure on Monday as politicians in Washington showed no signs of making progress to resolve the U.S. budget standoff, while safe-haven gold inched higher. Financial bookmakers expected European shares to follow Asia lower and open down between 0.4 and 0.5 percent. Democrats and Republicans remained far apart on ending the government shutdown, let alone reaching a deal on […]
Barclays completed its 5.8 billion pound ($9.4 billion) fundraising on Friday to meet a capital shortfall identified by its regulator, after almost 95 percent of the British bank’s investors stumped up more cash. Barclays launched its rights issue three weeks ago, prompted by the British regulator’s demand that it improve its leverage ratio – a measure of its capital to assets – to 3 percent by mid-2014. […]
J. Safra Sarasin Group, a Swiss private bank, is shutting its Indian joint venture after it was unable to build significant scale in a competitive market hit by slowing economic growth, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. India remains a difficult market for global wealth managers, who were drawn by its longer-term prospects only to find revenues being squeezed by cut-throat competition, high staff costs […]
A shareholder of BlackBerry Ltd sued the company and its executives on Friday, accusing them of inflating the stock price by painting a misleadingly rosy picture of the business prospects of its BlackBerry 10 smartphone line. Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry, formerly Research In Motion Ltd, misled investors last year by saying that the company was “progressing on its financial and operational commitments,” and that previews of its BlackBerry […]
