Dubai’s hotels had the lowest occupancy in at least 18 years in July, standing more than half empty, as more rooms were created and demand declined, according to research firm STR Global. Occupancy declined 11.8 percentage points to 45.4 percent from a year earlier, STR Global said in a report. That’s the lowest since the company began tracking the Dubai hospitality market. Dubai, which built some of […]
|By K Raveendran| The Chinese presence in the UAE, Gulf and the Middle East is well-entrenched, with China becoming almost a byword for manufacturing, engineering, construction and supply of any kind of goods. Over the years, China has also built up a global footprint for its consumer electronics industry, where the ingenuity of its people to come up with cheaper versions of the most sophisticated products not […]
Jebel Ali Free Zone FZE, a business park operator in Dubai, is cutting the price on a 2.2 billion-dirham ($599 million) Islamic loan by half as funding costs decline, according to three bankers familiar with the deal. The interest rate on the loan for the company known as Jafza will be reduced to 150 basis points, or 1.5 percentage points, over the Emirates interbank offered rate from […]
Royal Bank of Scotland confirmed it was considering selling the international arm of its private bank, a deal one source said could net it as much as $1 billion, as the British government leans on it to focus more on domestic lending. The move means that Coutts, founded in the 18th century and best known as banker to Queen Elizabeth, could be split into two businesses – […]
Investment conglomerate Dubai World may resort to a familiar, but in recent times rarely used, legal mechanism set up at the height of the emirate’s financial crisis to obtain the backing from its creditors to postpone a crucial debt repayment deadline. The state-owned firm and advisor Blackstone are currently discussing with an increasing number of lenders the terms of a deal that proposes to push back the […]
DUBAI // An Asian man was arrested with almost 1,000 prescription pills after being told to sell them by his brother, who is serving time in Dubai’s central jail for drug dealing. Colonel Eid Mohammed Thani Hareb, director of the General Department of Anti-Narcotics at Dubai Police, said that the suspect, GAFH, 29, admitted dealing psychotropic substances. “The unemployed suspect, who is married, decided to follow in […]
SHARJAH // The bodies of Santosh Kumar, his wife and daughter were cremated in a quiet ceremony in Sharjah on Saturday attended by friends and family, nearly a month after they died at their home. Police had registered a case of suicide on July 15 after they found the bodies of the Indian film producer, his wife Manju Menon and nine-year-old daughter Gauri in their Dubai apartment. […]
Is the debt fog over Dubai finally clearing or returning? Zuma Press Investment conglomerate Dubai World may resort to a familiar, but in recent times rarely used, legal mechanism set up at the height of the emirate’s financial crisis to obtain the backing from its creditors to postpone a crucial debt repayment deadline. The state-owned firm and advisor Blackstone are currently discussing with an increasing number of […]
|By TAP Staff| A Dubai-to-Boston flight with 367 passengers and crew members aboard has been grounded at Logan International Airport after an engine fire that officials say was quickly extinguished when the plane landed, AP reported. Massport says a flame was seen coming from an engine of the Emirates Boeing 777-300 after it landed at 2 p.m. Sunday on its flight from Dubai International Airport in the […]
|By TAP Staff|The re-introduced Indian Rupee Options contract is picking up on DGCX. The Indian Rupee Options contract which was re-introduced on July 18 traded 343 contracts, according to the exchange. Indian Rupee Futures grew 22 percent from last month, while Mini Indian Rupee Futures rose 3 percent. Among the other currency pairs, British Pound, Australian Dollars and Yen Futures, grew 45 percent, 47 percent and 7 […]
As players stepped on the pitch of King Fahad International Stadium in Riyadh to kick off the new Saudi football season, the sound of money came louder than the cheers of sports fans. A few minutes before the game started on Thursday, Middle East Broadcasting Center Group inked a deal with the Saudi Arabian Football Federation worth 3.6 billion riyals ($960 million) over 10 years to buy […]
Hotels and high-end retailers in Dubai are optimistic that they can ride out the Russian tour operator crisis and possibly even benefit from it. Rotana, which operates 15 hotels in the emirate and has a global sales office in Russia, is hopeful that the decline in Russian tourists because of the closure of some leading tour operators in the country would be offset by more tourists from […]
|TAP Special|Fighting in Iraq has had little impact on the overall market confidence in the Gulf as investors do not see any direct impact on the GCC, as a result of which currency forwards and credit default swaps have not risen. But several Gulf stocks with exposure to Iraqi Kurdistan could face fresh pressure in coming days. Abu Dhabi National Energy Co (TAQA) has announced suspension of […]
Etihad Airways PJSC signed a 1.76 billion-euro ($2.4 billion) deal to purchase 49 percent of Alitalia SpA, giving the Gulf company access to one of Europe’s biggest travel markets and providing a lifeline to Italy’s unprofitable former flag-carrier. Etihad will invest 560 million euros in Alitalia, while existing core investors have approved a 300 million-euro capital increase and Italian financial institutions will supply the same amount in […]
The European Union, a net sugar importer, could emerge as a major exporter of white sugar to the Middle East and Africa after production quotas are lifted in 2017, eroding the market share of northern hemisphere refineries. The EU is expected to end sugar production quotas – currently at some 14 million tonnes per year – as part of reforms to create a freer sugar market. Analysts […]
Hong Kong, Indonesia and Pakistan are banking on pent-up investor demand as they look to raise up to a combined US$3.5bn in the fast-growing Islamic bond market. The three sovereign sukuk issues, including a planned US$1bn debut from Triple A rated Hong Kong, are set to launch before the end of September. Few Asian issuers have targeted the global sukuk market in the past, and the glut […]
The U.S. is considering airdrops of aid for thousands of refugees driven from their homes by Islamist militants in Iraq, and possible airstrikes against the insurgents, according to a defense official. Aircraft dropping food and other humanitarian supplies to the refugees would be accompanied by military planes, the official said, asking not to be identified because discussions are private. If the insurgents target the planes, the U.S. […]
Dubai mortgage lender Amlak Finance said on Thursday that all its creditors had approved a plan to restructure its debt, bringing to a close protracted talks over the last major hangover from the emirate’s property market crash of 2008. Twenty-eight creditors had been seeking a deal with the Islamic lender, which had its shares suspended from trade on the Dubai Financial Market in November 2008 as the […]
Dubai government-owned property developer Meraas Holding is considering selling shares to the public as the regional real-estate market continues its rapid recovery from the financial crisis, according to three people familiar with the matter. The real-estate company, which has close links to Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, recently sent a request for proposals to banks who have until September to reply, said one of […]
Saudi Arabia has advised the kingdom’s citizens and residents to avoid all travel to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea until further notice due to the Ebola outbreak. The warning issued late Wednesday by the Ministry of Health comes after a Saudi man, who recently visited Sierra Leone and was suspected of having the virus, died earlier in the day when his heart stopped and attempts to resuscitate him […]
MUMBAI: The Adani Group and Indian Oil Corporation are in talks to build a Rs 30,000-crore joint venture refinery at Mundra, which would give Gautam Adani an entry into the oil sector while the state-run company would get land port facilities for the proposed export-focused unit.
The proposed 30-million-tonne refinery at Mundra will make Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s native state, Gujarat, a bigger energy hub. It already has refineries of Reliance Industries, Essar Oil and Indian Oil, apart from two LNG terminals and the country’s biggest city-gas distribution network.
Industry sources said Gautam Adani has held initial talks with top executives at IOC and offered around 3,500-4,000 acres of land for th
|TAP Special| Dubai is going ahead with plans to submit candidature to host the 2024 Olympics and is expanding sports facilities across the emirate as part of the move. “Hosting the Olympics is a dream. We hope to submit such a bid within the next eight years, God willing,” Ali Omar, the director of Dubai Sports Council (DSC) sports development department, said The bidding process for the […]
A return to an era of higher interest rates could derail attempts by Islamic finance to create alternatives to a short-term funding instrument that has dominated the industry, but which some scholars and regulators want to see replaced. Islamic finance has been trying to diversify away from so-called commodity murabaha, a common cost-plus profit arrangement, in an attempt to reduce reliance on a single tool, stop money […]
|By TAP Staff| A Dubai-based company has launched the UAE’s first offline business directory for Smart phones, named Call UAE, which can work without an internet connection or a mobile network. With over 400,000 listings and more than 5,000 search categories, Call UAE is claimed to be the only “patented” offline Search Engine for Business Data in the UAE. can work without an internet connection or a mobile […]
