Qatar is paying the price for its six-week spat with neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council as the nation’s borrowing costs and credit risk increase. The yield on the country’s dollar bond due January 2020 climbed nine basis points since March 4, the day before the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain pulled their ambassadors after Qatar denounced the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is gaining ground in the debt markets of Gulf Cooperation Council states after the biggest U.S. bank helped manage this month’s Islamic bond sale by Saudi Arabia’s utility. JPMorgan is the biggest bond underwriter after HSBC Holdings in the six-nation GCC in 2014, its best start to a year since 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The New York-based lender advised on […]
Zain Saudi, Saudi Arabia’s third biggest telecoms operator, will buy fixed line capacity from its competitors to expand its service offering in the kingdom and aims to break even in less than five years, it said on Wednesday. The firm, which began operations in 2008, claimed 15 percent of Saudi’s mobile subscribers at 2013-end and has struggled to break the dominance of better-resourced rivals Saudi Telecom Co […]
Real estate transactions in Dubai continued to grow apace in the first quarter of the year, according to data from the emirate’s land department. It recorded residential, commercial and land deals worth 61 billion dirhams ($16.6 billion) in the first three months of the year, 38% higher than the AED44 billion sold in the same period last year. Overall, property transactions in the emirate climbed 53% last […]
|TAP Special| The Mayor of Oakland, California, caused a stir last week claiming that Dubai crown prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum has partnered with the developers of a sports and entertainment centre at Oakland Coliseum complex. According to a report in Oakland Tribune, Mayor Jean Quan, however, retracted her claim a day later. The Mayor’s spokesman said one of the developers did have connections with […]
For decades the Cleveland Clinic has provided healthcare to the upper echelons of Middle Eastern society who fly halfway across the world for treatment at the Ohio-based private medical center. Soon, they can skip the trip. Early next year the Cleveland Clinic plans to open an ultra-modern, 364-bed specialty hospital on Al Maryah Island in Abu Dhabi, one of the most ambitious forays into the oil-rich country […]
When Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi gave a speech on the virtues of smaller government and privatization on April 8 last year, supporters called him an ideological heir to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died that day. Modi, favorite to form India’s next government after elections starting on Monday, has yet to unveil any detailed economic plans but it is clear that some of his […]
Italian businessman Massimo Cellino has been given approval to complete the purchase of second tier club Leeds United after an independent QC overturned the Football League’s initial decision to block him. Cellino, president of Italian Serie A club Cagliari, agreed in February to buy a 75 percent stake in former English champions Leeds for a reported 25 million pounds ($41.48 million) from Dubai-based GFH Capital. However, the […]
STORY HIGHLIGHTS Property in Beirut has grown impressively despite war in neighboring Syria Real estate purchases totaled $8.7 billion in 2014 alone Roughly 400 building projects are currently underway in the Lebanese capital, local experts say One Square Meter explores the leading architectural designs, city plans and demand for property investment in emerging markets. Join CNN’s John Defterios as he visits some of the world’s most dynamic […]
Abu Dhabi’s largest oil refinery is preparing to boost production of the industry’s lowest-sulfur diesel within three months as standards for the fuel rise, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The emirate’s 400,000 barrel-a-day plant at Ruwais will only produce diesel with 10 parts per million of sulfur by July, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak […]
With a youthful, well-educated population, strong relationships with both neighbours and world powers, and a strategic location on the Gulf, major oil producer Kuwait should be as dynamic a hub for the region as Dubai or Doha. But while others in the Gulf have powered ahead, attracting foreign investment and developing infrastructure, Kuwait has stagnated, frustrating the people of a country once seen as a Middle East […]
Northern Chile was shaken by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake, triggering a tsunami warning along most of the Pacific Coast of South America. There were no immediate reports of major damage or deaths. The quake struck at 9 p.m. local time 95 kilometers from the city of Iquique at a depth of 20 km, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The first tsunami waves reached as high as […]
After pouring billions of dollars into cities including London, New York and Sydney, individual investors and developers in China are expanding into Dubai. About a thousand individual Chinese investors spent 1.3 billion U.A.E dirhams ($353 million) on land, residential units and office real estate in Dubai last year, according to data from the Dubai Land Department. That is a nearly threefold increase from the 486 million dirhams […]
Dubai World, the conglomerate at the centre of the emirate’s debt crisis, has the means to make its first big repayment on time next year and expects to pay off more of its debt ahead of schedule, a top executive said. Mohammed al-Shaibani, chief executive of sovereign wealth fund Investment Corp of Dubai and a key figure in negotiating the emirate’s debt restructurings in recent years, said […]
Saudi Arabia’s leaders hope U.S. President Barack Obama and their King Abdullah understand each other better after talks and can stabilise a close regional security alliance after months of rockiness over Middle East policy, diplomats said. Friday’s two-hour exchange at Abdullah’s desert camp did not yield a shared statement or any evidence of policy changes, leading some Saudis to question whether differences over Syria’s war or Iran’s […]
A UN panel on Monday morning released its much awaited report which assessed impacts of climate change on human lives, natural resources and marine ecosystem across the globe. It predicted a gloomy picture for Asia where most of the countries, including India and China, will not only have to face more extreme weather events but also have to experience severe stress on drinking water and food-grains by […]
SpiceJet Ltd., the Indian budget carrier headed for its third straight annual loss, said it sees little chance of luring investment soon amid elevated debt and intensifying competition. Although the airline’s owners have injected more than 5 billion rupees ($83 million) in equity in recent quarters, that “has not been adequate” to reduce the carrier’s dependence on debt, S.L. Narayanan, the chief financial officer of SpiceJet’s parent […]
|By TAP Staff| Fitch Rating sees RAKBANK’s viability rate (VR) constrained by its fairly small franchise rising credit risk exposure due to its expansion in unsecured SME lending and pressure on liquidity from a wide asset-liability maturity mismatch. The bank accounts for only 2 percent of the UAE banking assets, it notes. According to Fitch, RAKBANK’s viability rating could be negatively affected if the bank’s expansion in […]
Qatar Airways Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker said he’s pursuing acquisitions after reviving an investment strategy that saw the company offered stakes in carriers including Italy’s Alitalia SpA. The second-biggest Gulf airline is “actively discussing opportunities” with other passenger carriers, Al Baker said in an interview, without specifying where talks are focused. “I would not like to pre-empt our decision,” he said. “We would rather […]
Citigroup Inc.’s capital plan was among five that failed Federal Reserve stress tests, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. passed only after reducing their requests for buybacks and dividends. Citigroup, as well as U.S. units of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc and Banco Santander SA, failed because of qualitative concerns about their processes, the Fed said today in a […]
Nakheel plans to release 94 hotel and resort plots for sale on Deira Islands in Dubai as part of a drive into hospitality and retail, The National reported. The developer plans to sell plots on two of the four islands that make up the project that could eventually accommodate 23,000 new hotel rooms. As many as 500 sites would eventually be sold by the developer. Nakheel sees […]
Dubai Investments, a diversified manufacturer and investor in property, plans to increase the limit on foreign ownership of its shares to 35 percent of its total capital, the company said on Sunday. Foreign investors now hold 13.7 percent of Dubai Investments’ shares out of the total 20 percent allowed, bourse data shows. The firm’s shareholders, including sovereign fund Investment Corp of Dubai which has an 11.5 percent […]
The U.S. National Security Agency has infiltrated servers in the headquarters of Chinese telecommunications and internet giant Huawei Technologies Co, obtaining sensitive information and monitoring the communications of top executives, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The newspaper said its report on the operation, code-named “Shotgiant,” was based on NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden, the former agency contractor who since last year has leaked data […]
Junior bankers in the United Arab Emirates are reaping almost 36 percent more salary than their counterparts in London, with bonuses almost double those paid in the U.K. capital, compensation data provider Emolument said. Fixed salaries at the analyst level in the U.A.E. average $91,000, compared with $73,000 in London, the group said in an e-mailed statement. Bonuses in the U.A.E., which consists of sheikhdoms including Dubai […]
