Bank of America Corp. (BAC)’s Merrill Lynch unit is hiring the head of VTB Capital’s Middle East cash-equity sales and sales trading in Dubai, Karim Nsouli, two people familiar with the matter said. Nsouli will take over from Veer Ramlugon, who handled Middle East equity and equity-derivatives for BofA Merrill Lynch in Dubai, the people said yesterday, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. […]
| By Clyde Russel | The price of Middle East crude oils being supplied to Asia appears too high given an increase in supply from Iran, Iraq and rival Russia and muted demand from refiners. While benchmark Oman futures have declined 5 percent since the start of the year to end at $102.93 a barrel on Wednesday, the price relative to global marker Brent has been rising. […]
Buyout firm GrowthGate Capital plans to take freight-forwarding company Able Logistics Group public in Dubai around the end of this year, a senior GrowthGate executive told Reuters, in a sign of growing strength in the region’s equity markets. “We aim to make it this year or early next year,” Haythem Macki, a partner at GrowthGate, said. “The market is ready for it – there’s a lot of […]
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 […]
Two Abu Dhabi lenders have emerged as frontrunners to buy most of Barclays’ retail banking operations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with a final decision expected next month after a competitive bidding process, banking sources said on Wednesday. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank are vying to take control of the assets, the sources said, after the British lender said in September it […]
Dubai’s government will consider establishing the world’s first fully sharia-compliant export-import bank to promote the emirate’s foreign trade, the Department of Economic Development said on Wednesday. The bank would provide financing to companies involved in trade while helping them to reduce their risks and gain market access, the department said in a statement without giving details of the proposed institution’s structure or financing. Noor Investment Group, which […]
Dubai plans to almost double the number of hotel rooms by 2020 as it expects a surge of visitors to the desert sheikhdom ahead of that year’s World Expo. The emirate that spent more than $110 billion to transform itself into the Middle East’s commercial and entertainment hub is seeking to attract 20 million tourists annually by the end of the decade, Helal Saeed Almarri, director general […]
Emaar Properties, developer of the world’s tallest tower, hired Morgan Stanley to advise on the sale of a 25 percent stake in its shopping malls and retail business after revenue at the unit surged. The company is also considering appointing a local bank as additional adviser on the secondary offering, Chairman Mohamed Alabbar said today in an interview in Dubai. Emaar is seeking to complete the deal […]
Competition is hotting up among low-cost carriers in the Persian Gulf. That’s according to analysts at NBK Capital, who say government-owned FlyDubai’s aggressive expansion is having a negative impact on publically-listed Air Arabia at its Sharjah hub. FlyDubai and Air Arabia already overlap on 40 destinations from their respective airports, which are just a short drive away from each other. In total, Air Arabia offers 70 destinations […]
|By TAP Staff| India topped Dubai’s major trade partners with a total trade volume of AED 137 billion in 2013, representing a 10% share of Dubai’s total trade, figures released by Dubai Customs showed. China came second with a value of AED 135 billion, followed by the USA with AED 86 billion, that is a 6% share. Saudi Arabia rose to the fourth position with a total […]
Gary Dugan, chief investment officer for Asia and the Middle East at private bank Coutts, has resigned to take the CIO job at National Bank of Abu Dhabi , sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. A Coutts spokeswoman confirmed that Dugan had resigned without elaborating. NBAD declined to comment. Before Coutts, Dugan was CIO of Dubai’s Emirates NBD.-Reuters
Standard & Poor’s plans no rating action relating to Dubai’s Emaar Properties after the emirate’s largest listed developer announced plans to spin off its retail unit, an analyst covering the company said on Monday. Emaar said on Saturday it planned to list 25 percent of its shopping malls and retailing unit in a public offer expected to raise around 8 to 9 billion dirhams. The move, which […]
Within 18 months of leaving his trading job to open a lunchtime eatery at the Dubai financial center in 2011, Nabil Al Rantisi was back: selling stocks and rebuilding one of the city’s largest brokerages. “I saw my window of opportunity,” Rantisi, managing director of Mena Corp Financial Services LLC, said in a March 9 telephone interview from Dubai. “Things started picking up in September 2012. By […]
|By K Raveendran| The agreement for the roll-over of $20 billion debt between Abu Dhabi and Dubai is expected to help Dubai refinance some of the other upcoming debt maturities with confidence, which depended a lot on the successful resolution of repayments owed to Abu Dhabi government and the UAE central bank, and continue to spend heavily on the ongoing infrastructure development. Dubai has already approached creditors […]
Dubai refinanced $20 billion at a quarter of the original cost, freeing cash to service liabilities and fund expansion plans. The emirate rolled over $10 billion of bonds owed to the central bank and a loan of the same amount due to Abu Dhabi’s government, and will pay a fixed interest of 1 percent on both, according to a statement on state-run WAM news agency yesterday. The […]
Dubai is considering regulatory reforms to persuade more funds to base themselves in its financial centre, though industry experts believe that other parts of its investment environment may also need to change for the emirate to compete globally. The proposed rules would create a new class of funds in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) in an effort to attract asset managers, such as hedge funds and […]
Dubai property prices rose by almost 35 per cent last year, according to the latest Global House Price Index by a UK-based consultancy. Prices were just 25 per cent below their 2008 peak, it said. “Dubai recorded the largest annual rise in mainstream property prices with prices rising 15.3 per cent in the six-month period (Q2 to Q4 2013),” the report said. In February, JLL, a real […]
|By TAP Staff| A Global Financial Centres Index compiled by London-based consultancy Z/Yen using assessments of financial services professionals has come up with a most astonishing finding: Dubai comes three points behind Qatar. According to the index, Qatar, Dubai and Riyadh took places 26, 29 and 31 respectively, but continued to rise in the index, while 23 of the 27 European centres declined in rank. New York […]
Emirates, the world’s biggest airline by international passenger traffic, is seeking to raise about $2 billion from four loans to fund the purchase of planes, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Dubai government-owned carrier will pay interest of less than 200 basis points, or two percentage points, above the London interbank offered rate on the 12-year amortising loans, said one of the people, who […]
Pakistan’s rupee surged 5.2 percent this week, the best performance among world currencies, as the nation’s rising foreign reserves and improving economy buoyed investor confidence. The country’s currency stockpile climbed to $9.52 billion this week, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said yesterday, from $8.3 billion at the end of 2013. The economy is on course to achieve the official target of 4.4 percent expansion in the year ending […]
Saudi Arabia’s drive to make Qatar abandon its embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood may founder because of the limited leverage the Saudis and their allies can exercise over the world’s richest country. Qatar traded more with Singapore in 2012 than it did with the three Gulf neighbors — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — that withdrew their ambassadors from Doha last week to protest […]
|By Rory Jones, Doug Cameron | The head of Emirates Airline said Tuesday that establishing a U.S. Customs post at its Dubai hub could create a logistical nightmare, just as the world’s largest carrier of international passengers ramps up for fresh expansion to North America. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency in January opened a post in Dubai’s neighbor, Abu Dhabi, to allow passengers there to […]
|By K Raveendran| Limitless, a major government related entity in the Dubai Inc, is understood to have approached lenders with a waiver request for the first amortization payment of $0.4 billion due in December 2014 under its 2012 debt restructuring agreement of a $1.2 billion loan. It was a similar waiver request in the past that had precipitated Dubai’s financial crisis beginning 2008. The $0.4 billion amortization […]
|By Illeana Hoffman and Steven Lapidus| Being admittedly a bit too New York-centric, we started off to Dubai with preconceived notions… expecting a sort of Las Vegas-like cityscape, only with restrictive dress and limited food choice. To the extreme, we were even warned by some that we should take care to avoid inappropriate dress. In retrospect, how astoundingly misinformed we were! After 20 hours of traveling, space […]
