By Catherine Cadell | SHENZHEN, China SHENZHEN, China Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) Singles’ Day festival posted a record 120.7 billion yuan ($17.73 billion) worth of sales on Friday, though the gala shopping day saw growth slow as Chinese shoppers searched for deeper discounts and lower pricetags. Amid fanfare and celebrity razzmatazz, sales on Alibaba’s platforms had raced to a billion dollars in less than five minutes […]
What the heck is a Haval? I can already hear you asking the question before I have even begun my spiel. I don’t blame you, because the marque was a mystery to me, too, before testing the H8 Luxury. I had barely laid eyes on a Haval, much less driven one. So let’s establish its credentials before going any further. Haval was created in 2006 as a […]
By Heather Somerville | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO The fledgling drone industry is in the throes of change as weak consumer demand and falling prices drive startups to shift their focus to specialized business applications. 3D Robotics – an early drone startup that raised more than$125 million from investors – has seen its consumer business all but crash. This week, it unveiled a new commercial strategy, announcing […]
By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON More than 40 international business and technology organizations representing hundreds of companies on Friday expressed “deep concerns” to the Chinese government about a new cyber security law they said would likely increase the separation between China and the rest of the world economy. Beijing on Monday adopted a cyber security law it called necessary to counter growing threats of hacking and […]
By Tim Baysinger Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) said it was able to deliver more viewers than promised to advertisers on a U.S. election night livestream, good news for the microblogging site as it tries to ward off growing competition for ad dollars from Snapchat and Instagram. Twitter partnered with BuzzFeed to host an election night broadcast on Tuesday and attracted major advertisers, including Paramount Pictures, Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) […]
By Dustin Volz Facebook Inc said on Friday it would no longer allow certain advertisers to exclude racial or ethnic groups when placing ads on its service, following criticism that the practice was discriminatory. The move comes amid growing scrutiny of how the world’s largest online social media network’s policies and algorithms shape what content appears in a user’s news feed. The unexpected victory of Donald Trump […]
ABU DHABI // Mass extinction of species, how to boost economic growth without harming the planet and the effects of mass agriculture are all issues to be addressed at the Cop 22 summit. The meeting in Morocco, which began this week, follows last year’s Paris Agreement, where 196 countries committed to reducing global warming to less than 2°C. One of the major discussion points is that the […]
By Catherine Cadell | SHENZHEN, China SHENZHEN, China Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said it racked up more than $5 billion in transactions in the first hour of its annual ‘Singles’ Day’ sales blitz on Friday – a third more than in the first hour of last year’s spree. The 24-hour event held annually on Nov. 11 offers a benchmark for Alibaba’s performance and an […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Bank of America-Merrill Lynch has made moderate downward adjustments to its near-term growth forecasts in the light of the election of Trump as the next US President. “Given the high level of uncertainty about the exact policy changes at this stage, we are assuming that trade tensions and fiscal stimulus have offsetting impacts on growth in the medium term,” it said. While a wide […]
|By Kalyani Shankar| The US election results have surprised many who were batting for the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. This is more so in India where many Indians felt Hillary would be good for India. She is known to many Indians because she was the First Lady for eight years, US Senator for another eight years, and Secretary of State for four and all the time she had […]
UAE. Low natural gas and electricity prices have created a tough competitive environment for renewable energy, but this has remarkably had little impact on the momentum of alternative energy growth, finds a new Deloitte report entitled, “Alternative Thinking 2016: Five game-changers that are powering the future of renewable energy.” The report identifies the important trends and opportunities in the renewable energy industry. It also presents “what if” […]
While Chinese truck manufacturers have invested in product quality and service in the Middle East, Western brands will need to expand their presence with high-tech trucks in the region, a report said. Now is an outstanding time to rebuild market presence in the Middle East, as structural shifts directly play to the advantage of high-quality truck manufacturers, said the new study entitled “The Truck Industry in the […]
By Marcin Goettig | WARSAW WARSAW Poland’s digital economy minister accused Facebook FN.O of censorship on Monday after the company suspended some users’ profiles for using a little-known far-right symbol. The Falanga symbol, depicting a stylised hand holding a sword, was used by a banned radical nationalist group in the 1930s but is legal in Poland and other countries. It now serves as the logo of a […]
By Naomi Tajitsu and Chang-Ran Kim | TOKYO TOKYO Toyota Motor Corp is looking at mass-producing long-range electric vehicles (EVs) that would hit the market around 2020, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Monday, in what would be a dramatic reversal of strategy for the world’s top-selling automaker. Even as rivals such as Nissan Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Tesla Motors have touted pure electric cars as the […]
By Catherine Cadell | BEIJING BEIJING A top Baidu Inc executive, widely seen as a potential successor to chief executive Robin Li, has resigned after an internal company probe found conflicts of interest involving another firm acquired by the Chinese search engine giant. Li Mingyuan, 32, known as the “prince” of Baidu within China’s tech community, stepped down following the investigation, according to an internal email seen […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia’s $17.5 billion debut sovereign bond issue had a most successful start, with investor orders reaching $67 billion, according to reports. The huge response has meant that the oil kingdom is in a position to borrow more cheaply than was originally expected. According to Financial Times, the order book was also sufficiently large to enable the country to raise the amount it […]
|By Matein Khalid| The fall in oil prices since 2014 has triggered a liquidity crunch and higher funding costs in the UAE banking system. EIBOR is almost double the London interbank rate LIBOR. Non-performing loan (NPL) have begun to rise as property prices have fallen 20% from their peak and corporate/SME borrowers are hit by a sharp downturn in the business cycle. DIB shares reflect these macro […]
|By Matein Khalid| The Algiers pact was a game changer in the international oil markets. Crude oil prices have risen to three month highs above $50 Brent after OPEC agreed to cut output to the 32.5 – 33 MBD range, with the symbolic Saudi-Iranian deal reinforced by a sharp drop in US inventories and Hurricane Matthew’s havoc in the Caribbean. Unfortunately for OPEC, the US land rig […]
By Mai Nguyen and My Pham | HANOI HANOI Samsung Vietnam will maintain its current staff numbers and its exports target this year, the firm said on Wednesday, despite the parent company scrapping its flagship Galaxy Note 7 phone following a series of battery fires. Samsung Electronics, which employs around 110,000 people in Vietnam, finally pulled the plug on the new Note 7 phone on Tuesday, less […]
By Julia Love and Deborah M. Todd Samsung Electronics’s abandonment of the Galaxy Note 7 due to safety concerns will likely touch off a turf war among Android smartphone makers, analysts said, presenting them a rare opportunity to gain share but with less room for archrival Apple Inc. Consumers tend to commit to their choice between Apple’s iOS operating system for smartphones and Google’s Android, leaving Samsung’s […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia said it was holding investor meetings in London, Los Angeles, Boston and New York from Wednesday to sell benchmark bonds maturing in five, 10 and 30 years. The issue is expected to be at least $10 billion. “It’s very good timing,” Bloomberg quoted Angelo Rossetto, a trader at GMSA Investments Ltd. in London, as saying. “I wouldn’t say now or never as […]
Standard Chartered Bank (China) (SCB China) has launched a direct trading business for RMB/AED and RMB/SR and the bank becomes the first batch of direct trading market-makers for RMB against AED and SR in China’s inter-bank FX market. Sami Mahfouz, head of Financial Markets UAE, said: “Standard Chartered has a broad network and historical presence in the Middle East and we offer one-stop products and solutions covering […]
Four States Sue To Stop U.S. from Ceding Internet Control Four states — Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada, and Texas — are suing to stop the U.S. government from transferring control of the Internet to an international body on Saturday. A U.S. Department of Commerce contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is set to expire Friday. ICANN, formed in 1998, manages domain names […]
Apple Inc. is reportedly planning to open its first research and development center in China, allowing the tech giant to extend its reach in a vital market and maintain goodwill with the Chinese government. The Cupertino tech giant will eventually invest 300 million yuan, or $45 million, in the facility, which will have 500 employees, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. Zhongguancun Science Park, a Beijing […]
