Jignesh Shah resigned from the board of Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd., the nation’s biggest commodity trading platform, amid an investigation into the failure of a related spot bourse. Shah, 46, quit as non-executive vice chairman, according to a filing yesterday from the company he founded in 2003. He said he’s leaving to help ensure investors aren’t harmed by “mud-slinging” over the probe. India’s commodities futures […]
A row has flared up between leading planemakers over the width of tourist-class seats on long-distance flights, setting the tone for a bitter confrontation at this month’s Dubai Airshow. The dispute focuses on the width of seats provided on long-haul flights for economy passengers – not always the ones most courted by airlines, but whose allocated space holds the key to efficiency claims for the latest jets […]
Dubai Investments saw third-quarter profits nearly double on the back of higher rental income and an improvement in the fair value of its investments. The company, in which sovereign fund Investment Corp of Dubai owns an 11.5 percent stake, posted a third-quarter profit attributable to equity owners of 161.1 million dirhams ($43.9 million) compared with 81.4 million dirhams for the year-ago period, it said in a bourse […]
Fund managers in the Middle East show little sign of taking money off the table as a year of strong gains for Gulf stock markets nears its end, a Reuters survey showed. Dubai’s market, rebounding from the bursting of a real estate bubble in 2008-2010, is up 80 percent so far this year, while Kuwait is up 33 percent and Saudi Arabia has gained 18 percent. While […]
Du, the United Arab Emirates’ second-biggest telecoms operator, remains at odds with rival Etisalat over the terms of a network sharing deal to open up fixed-line services in the country. Du’s CEO Osman Sultan voiced frustration at the impasse more than four years after talks between the companies began. Both are majority-owned by state-linked institutions. Du ended Etisalat’s domestic monopoly in 2007 and both offer fixed-line broadband […]
Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange is planning to launch a spot gold contract next year, the first of its kind in the Middle East, which it hopes will help take the emirate from being a regional to a more international trading center for the precious metal. Nimesh Shah, a gold dealer at Richcomm Global Services in Dubai, said the spot contracts need to account for relatively small […]
Passenger traffic through Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, rose 13.1 percent from a year earlier in September to 5.4 million people, airport authorities said on Tuesday. The September clip is well down from August, when passenger numbers jumped 23.8 percent to a record 6.0 million, partly because of travel related to the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In the first nine months of this […]
Emirates NBD is looking for acquisition targets in Turkey as Dubai’s largest lender scouts for opportunities beyond its home market, despite an improving economic environment within the emirate, its top executive said. ENBD, which completed in June the purchase of BNP Paribas’ Egyptian assets for $500 million, has been looking to diversify beyond Dubai after a real estate market crash in 2008-2010 severely impacted the bank. The […]
Doubts are growing over the viability of Dubai’s recently announced plan to build a new oil refinery in the emirate with China Sonangol. The region’s top financial hub last month signed a memorandum of understanding with China Sonangol International, a joint venture between Angola’s state-owned oil company, Sonangol and Hong Kong-based New Bright International Development, to build what will be its second oil refinery. The hope is […]
Asian oil refiners are facing slumping profits as China is expected to ramp up exports of diesel and gasoline this quarter. The margin from refining diesel in Asia has fallen almost 10 percent in the last 10 trading days, although it would have to drop another 13 percent to plumb the levels reached just after the first quarter, when the Chinese were last major exporters. While Chinese […]
Bahrain is still in the early stages of a series of bank mergers designed to strengthen the sector in the face of regional competition, the central bank governor said. The tiny kingdom’s banking industry, once the most vibrant in the Gulf, was hit hard by the global financial crisis and, since 2011, by political unrest which has deterred some foreign investment. But Rasheed al-Maraj said there were […]
Indians account for the largest number of Dubai property deals, followed by the British and Pakistanis, according to the Dubai Economic Outlook, Quarter 2 report for 2013, issued by the Secretariat General of the Dubai Economic Council (DEC). Many deals recorded as by British might also involve people of Indian origin holding British passports. The report indicates that the real estate sector in Dubai has witnessed a […]
Emirates NBD, Dubai’s biggest bank, raised its estimates for economic growth in the United Arab Emirates this year to 4.4 percent, aided by an increase in oil output. The forecast was raised from 3.8 percent, putting the second-biggest Arab economy on track for a higher growth rate than Saudi Arabia for the first time in at least four years, according to the bank’s quarterly economic report released […]
A U.S. judge on Friday narrowed Mashreq PSC’s claims in a lawsuit that alleged ING Groep NV lost more than $40 million of the Dubai bank’s money by investing it in “toxic” securities. U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield denied ING’s bid to dismiss the complaint in its entirety, ruling that Mashreq’s breach of contract claim should stand. However, she dismissed the bank’s breach of fiduciary duty and […]
Dubai’s largest lender Emirates NBD’s saw a sharp increase in its quarterly provisions on Thursday, overshadowing a 21 percent increase in its third-quarter net profit that fell short of analysts’ expectations. The lender, 55.6-percent owned by state fund Investment Corp of Dubai, made a net profit of 775 million dirhams ($211 million) in the three months to Sept. 30, a statement said, compared with 640 million dirhams […]
Dubai’s largest bank Emirates NBD has put its remaining 15 percent stake in Union Properties up for sale, the lender’s chief financial officer said on Thursday. The bank booked a gain of 191 million dirhams ($52.00 million) from the sale of a 32.6 percent stake in Union Properties during the first nine months of 2013. Its remaining stake is now held as “available for sale” on its […]
Dubai Holding’s telecom unit could conclude the sale of stakes in two other telecom firms in the next few months, its chief executive said, part of a strategy by state-linked companies to sell assets to repay the emirate’s debt pile. Dubai Holding, owned by the ruler of the emirate, is among a group of state-linked companies trying to recover from a 2009 property crash. The firms face […]
Fosun International Ltd., a Chinese conglomerate that invests in everything from steel to pharmaceuticals to Club Med, has agreed to buy the office tower at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza from JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a whopping $750 million. This isn’t an isolated incident. Zhang Xin, a billionaire property developer who grew rich building Beijing’s central business district, recently bought about 20 percent of the General Motors […]
Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) is hosting global investor calls as it revives plans to issue a US dollar-denominated hybrid bond it originally marketed in May. The company operates Carrefour stores across the Middle East. The potential bond, which could become the Gulf’s first international hybrid to be issued by a corporate borrower, will be callable after the first five years. The coupon on the bond will […]
An international meeting in Paris next month may trigger billions of dollars of fresh investment in Dubai – and, if plans are not handled carefully, contribute to the kind of boom-and-bust cycle which nearly bankrupted the emirate four years ago. Dubai is competing with Izmir in Turkey, Sao Paulo in Brazil and Yekaterinburg in Russia for the right to host the 2020 World Expo. A vote of […]
Mezzan Holding Co, a diversified Kuwaiti conglomerate, will acquire the distributor of Red Bull energy drink in the United Arab Emirates, highlighting appetite for consumer-related investments in the Gulf Arab region. Mezzan is buying Unitra Mets Group (UMG) from Abu Dhabi-based Invest AD and its other shareholders, Mezzan and Invest AD said in a joint statement on Monday. State-owned asset manager Invest AD had bought a majority […]
Hosting World Expo 2020, which requires $7 billion in capital spending, will put relatively little financial pressure on Dubai’s government, EFG-Hermes said. Wael Ziada, head of research at EFG-Hermes, said Dubai’s budgeted $7 billion in capital spending for the Expo bid includes $1.4 billion for a metro extension, most of which is likely to be spent towards the end of the decade. In a research report, Ziada argued […]
Dahabshiil Holdings Ltd., a Somali company that provides access for overseas citizens to send money there, asked a U.K. court to stop Barclays Plc (BARC) from closing its bank account. The bank gave a “dearth of detail” on its decision, Alan Maclean, a lawyer for Dahabshiil, said at a hearing in London today. The bank’s dominant position in the market for remittances means it will breach competition law if it closes […]
Dubai held first place worldwide as the most attractive destination, getting 13 out of 15 points, according to a recent survey on global tourist destinations. London also got the same ranking. The survey, which was conducted by Britain’s Dealchecker Blog and saw the participation of 1.2 million respondents, was based on a range of basic standards for determining the points and rank of each city. These include […]
