|By Matein Khalid| Hong Kong now trades at 9.6 times earnings and 0.86 book value. Hang Seng valuations were gutted by the protest movements in Central and the Shanghai financial meltdown. The Hang Seng index is down 25% since late May and now trades at six times forward earnings, its post Lehman, post 2014 bottom. Hong Kong trades at its lowest price/book value since the Asian flu […]
Middle East A Syrian man near the Temple of Baal in Palmyra, Syria, in 2014. By ANNE BARNARD, HWAIDA SAAD and KENNETH ROSEN August 31, 2015 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Conflicting reports emerged Monday about the extent of damage that Islamic State militants in Syria have inflicted on the Temple of Baal, one of the most important structures in the ancient city of Palmyra. In their second attack on the world-renowned ruins in […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese demonstrators gathered by the thousands on Saturday evening to protest towering garbage piles, corruption and political dysfunction, largely avoiding the clashes with security forces that had marred earlier protests. The crowd in downtown Beirut was the biggest turnout yet, and many people arrived leery of the possibility of violence. Last weekend, security forces used water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets as some […]
In a widely watched terrorism lawsuit that drew the attention of the Obama administration, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Monday that the Palestinian Authority would have to post $10 million and an additional $1 million monthly to appeal a huge damages award for its role in six terrorist attacks in Israel that had killed and injured Americans. The bond amount was much lower than lawyers […]
KIBBUTZ SUFA, Israel — Looking out across the perimeter fence of this small rural community in southern Israel, along the border with Gaza, Eyal Shalev, 23, sees a battlefield. Last summer, during Israel’s 50-day war with Hamas in Gaza, Mr. Shalev was on the other side, in a tank. His younger brother, Sgt. Shachar Shalev, who was fighting with the Paratroopers Brigade inside Gaza, was critically injured […]
|By Matein Khalid| Geopolitics is now another source of risk for the Turkish lira, government debt and Istanbul equities. The Turkish air force is bombing Daish in Syria and the secessionist Kurdish PKK party in northern Iraq. Suicide bombings have killed Turkish citizens in eastern Anatolian cities on the Syrian border. Ankara has given the US a green light to launch military airstrikes from the Incerlik air […]
WASHINGTON — Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said on Tuesday that he would vote against the nuclear accord with Iran. “At the end of the day, what we appear to have is a rollback of sanctions and Iran only limiting its capability, but not dismantling it or rolling it back,” Mr. Menendez said, according to prepared remarks of a speech he delivered at Seton Hall […]
INTERNATIONAL. In the last quarter of 2014, in the face of possible oversupply, Saudi Arabia abandoned its traditional role as the global oil market’s swing producer and therefore it role as unofficial guarantor of existing ($100+ per barrel) prices. In October, Saudi sources first prepared the market with statements that the country would be comfortable with oil prices as low as $80 per barrel for “a year […]
A Tunisian police officer stood guard at the scene of a shooting attack in June at the Imperial Marhaba hotel in the Mediterranean resort of Sousse. By CARLOTTA GALL August 9, 2015 MONASTIR, Tunisia — A dozen police officers, one with an assault rifle across his knees, guard the presidential mausoleum in this sleepy seaside resort, easily outnumbering the foreign visitors on a recent morning. It was here, the […]
Mark Karpeles, chief executive of Mt. Gox, attends a news conference at the Tokyo District Court in Tokyo February 28, 2014. Reuters/Yuya Shino/Files TOKYO Mark Karpeles, the former head of defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, was arrested on Saturday in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the virtual currency, Japanese media reports said. The French-born Karpeles, 30, is suspected of falsifying […]
|By Matein Khalid|So Pearson PLC has sold the FT Group (with its flagship Financial Times newspaper) to Japan’s Nikkei Inc for $1.32 billion. Pearson will use the cash proceeds to increase its investment in education publishing businesses in the US and Canada, now 75% of revenues. This deal is a milestone in the history of newspaper publishing and my own life as an investor/financial journalist. I discovered […]
ABU DHABI // Newly-published statistics from Statistics Centre – Abu Dhabi (Scad) show that the population of the emirate is 133 times what it was in 1960. From that year until 2014, the population grew at an average rate of 9.5 per cent, which is one of the highest rates of growth in the world, state news agency Wam reported. During that time, the total population of […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a striking admission, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said on Sunday that the country’s army faced a manpower shortage and had ceded some areas to insurgents in order to hold onto other regions deemed more important. Mr. Assad also acknowledged in a speech televised from Damascus, the Syrian capital, that many Syrians could not watch the address because of the lack of electricity […]
The bargain hunters who thronged Kumar Jain’s jewelry store in Mumbai as gold prices tumbled in 2013 are staying away for now. They’re holding off because they think this week’s collapse to the lowest price in five years has further to run, according to Jain. That’s a view shared with Goldman Sachs. “It hasn’t been anything like what happened two years ago,” Jain said, referring to the […]
Video | Kerry Defends Nuclear Deal to Senate Secretary of State John Kerry defended the Iran nuclear deal on Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, meeting resistance from Republican members of the group. By JONATHAN WEISMAN and MICHAEL R. GORDON July 23, 2015 WASHINGTON — After four and a half hours of contentious questioning, three cabinet secretaries deployed Thursday by President Obama to the Senate to defend his nuclear deal with […]
|By Matein Khalid| As a student of investing and the son of a painter/art historian, I cherish art as a visceral, spiritual value but am also intrigued by its historical linkage to banking and the financial markets. The happiest moments of my life have been spent in the Prado, Tate, Hermitage, Rijksmuseum, Ufizi, MOMA, Met, the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay and so […]
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Security Council on Monday unanimously approved a resolution that creates the basis for international economic sanctions against Iran to be lifted, a move that incited a furious reaction in Israel and potentially sets up an angry showdown in Congress. The 15-0 vote for approval of the resolution — 104 pages long including annexes and lists — was written in Vienna by […]
The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, responded to the Iran deal as expected: It is bad, endangers Israel, he argued; we are against it and will be the only American ally not only to oppose it, but to go down gloriously, fighting a battle in Congress that we are destined to lose. Mr. Netanyahu often warns that Iran is like Nazi Germany in 1938, fooling naïve […]
JERUSALEM — Israeli commentators have described this week’s Iran nuclear deal as a “personal failure,” a “stinging failure,” and a “colossal failure” for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yair Lapid, a rival who heads an opposition faction in Israel’s Parliament, called it “the greatest failure in foreign policy of any Israeli prime minister since the state’s establishment” and demanded his ouster. Mr. Netanyahu has framed his career over […]
|By Matein Khalid| Last week was a roller coaster and the Nikkei Dow closed at 19,800. Abenomics has had a seismic impact on Japan’s economy, financial markets and banking system. The yen has fallen from 76 on the eve of the election in 2012 to 122 against the US dollar. Corporate profits have exploded. Land price rises, job growth, bonuses, capex and consumer spending have lifted Japan […]
A brief period of high profitability for the world’s oil refineries is likely to come to an end as quickly as it began, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday. Weak crude oil and relatively high prices for gasoline, diesel and petrochemical feedstock have pushed up refining profits sharply over the last six months, helping oil companies cope with much lower profits from upstream production. In […]
China’s biggest stock-market rout since 1992 has done nothing to erode the bullish outlook of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Kinger Lau, the bank’s China strategist in Hong Kong, predicts the large-cap CSI 300 Index will rally 27 percent over the next 12 months as government support measures boost investor confidence and monetary easing spurs economic growth. Leveraged positions aren’t big enough to trigger a market collapse, Lau […]
A funeral on Thursday in Ashmoun, in the Nile Delta, for First Lt. Mohamed Ashraf, one of the soldiers killed Wednesday in a militant attack in the Sinai Peninsula. By KAREEM FAHIM and MERNA THOMAS July 2, 2015 CAIRO — Egypt’s military killed 23 militants in the northern Sinai Peninsula early Thursday, a senior security official said, as the government sought to reassert control and eradicate what it called the area’s […]
