By Elzio Barreto, Fiona Lau and Liana B. Baker HONG KONG/NEW YORK Tue Sep 16, 2014 11:06am IST People walk at the headquarters of Alibaba in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Chance Chan/Files HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd raised the price range on its initial public offering to $66 to $68 on Monday, reflecting strong demand from investors for the year’s […]
WASHINGTON — The United States, as promised by President Obama, has stepped up its airstrike campaign in Iraq, hitting targets near Baghdad in the effort to help the Iraqi government win back territory seized by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Pentagon officials said Monday. The offensive is the first expansion of the United States’ campaign against the Islamist militant group that Mr. Obama outlined last […]
Savola Group, a Saudi Arabian food producer, hired JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) to advise on a potential bid for the operator of KFC restaurants in the Middle East and North Africa, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. Non-binding bids for the $4.3 billion Kuwait Food business, known as Americana, are due next month, the people said, asking not to be identified as the […]
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA September 13, 2014 The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria released a video Saturday of the third beheading of a foreign hostage, a British aid worker. The execution was a clear message to Britain, a vital ally of the United States as it builds an international coalition to target the militant group, which has made stunning advances across Syria and northern Iraq in recent months. […]
Dubai Aluminium (Dubal) has held talks with banks about raising a loan to help fund its general operations, the first time the firm has commissioned such a facility in years, three banking sources told Reuters on Thursday. While it is a rarity for the company to raise money not tied to a specific project, a loan would be the latest example of a Dubai state-backed entity tapping […]
|By TAP Staff| A $32 billion project to make the Al Maktoum International airport at Dubai World Central as the world’s biggest airport has received approval. When completed, the airport targets to handle more than 200 million passengers per year. The first phase of the expansion alone aims to build enough runway and terminal space to handle 120 million passengers a year and 100 mammoth Airbus A380 […]
NEW DELHI/DUBAI: Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) aims to pick up a significant stake in Indian Oil Corp’s Paradip refinery and supply about 60 percent of the oil needs of the plant, set to start up later this year, three sources with knowledge of the matter said. Gulf oil producers want to lock in customers in Asia, which is experiencing a wave of refinery expansion, as the […]
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahri on Wednesday announced the formation of an Indian branch of his militant group he said would spread Islamic rule and “raise the flag of jihad” across the subcontinent. In a 55-minute video posted online, Zawahri also renewed a longstanding vow of loyalty to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, in an apparent snub to the Islamic State armed group challenging al Qaeda […]
Five years after Dubai teetered on the brink of financial disaster, there are signs emerging that the emirate’s initial public offering market is coming back to life as the owner of the world’s largest shopping mall prepares to sell shares to the public next month. Emaar Properties, Dubai’s highest profile real estate group, said on Sunday it plans to list at least 15% of its profitable and […]
KUWAIT. A recent report issued by KFH Research, a subsidery for KFH Group, sees continued positive outlook for the Kuwaiti construction industry, on the back of strong domestic demand in the Kuwaiti economy and a pick-up in government capital spending. Overview and Outlook “While we remain fundamentally cautious about the country’s medium-term investment outlook, we note that higher growth in bank lending over the last few months […]
Arabtec Holding Co. (ARTC) declined for the first time in nine days after former chief executive officer Hasan Ismaik turned down an offer from Aabar Investments PJSC to buy part of his stake in the company. Arabtec, the United Arab Emirates’ largest publicly traded builder, lost 1.7 percent to close at 4.71 dirhams, the biggest drop since Aug. 12. It jumped 13 percent in the previous five […]
Blackstone Group is close to its first investment in the Middle East as the private-equity firm nears a deal to acquire a minority stake in Dubai’s GEMS Education, three people with knowledge of the matter said. Blackstone, based in New York, has teamed up with Fajr Capital Ltd. to invest in the world’s biggest privately held schools operator GEMS through its Blackstone Tactical Opportunities unit, the people […]
Christie’s International Real Estate, the property unit of the London headquartered art auction house, is set to launch in Dubai at the company’s next auction in the emirate in October. The expansion could see Christie’s property wing open three to four offices in the region in total, revealed Joachim Wrang-Widén, SVP and regional director for Europe, Middle East, Russia, India and Africa at a press briefing in […]
By WestEnd511: Gap’s (NYSE:GPS) headline Q2 EPS of $0.74 beat consensus $0.69 mainly due to disciplined cost control. Revenue of $3.98b (+3% y/y) was in line with consensus and driven by strength in Old Navy where comps was +4%. Inventory management was encouraging as total inventory was up 6% y/y vs. 3% sales growth, the smallest gap since end of 2012. Inventory growth should be on par […]
If you wanted to make a quick buck in property, Dubai would have been the place to do it in the last couple of years. And the desert of superlatives is still going strong despite a partial slowdown. According to CBRE Group , apartment prices increased by a more modest 3.2 percent in the second quarter of 2014, bringing gains over the last year to 21 percent. […]
NEW DELHI: State-owned refiner BPCL has sought a Rs 8,800-crore capital subsidy grant from the central government to expand its Numaligarh refinery in Assam, from the current capacity of 3 million tonne per annum (mtpa) to 9 mtpa. This is in the wake of Modi presenting a comprehensive vision for the overall development of the Northeast. The expansion of the refinery, owned 61.65% by BPCL, would […]
Airport retailer Dubai Duty Free (DDF) is repricing a $1.75 billion syndicated loan for the second time in just over a year to obtain more favourable terms, a fresh sign of banks’ willingness to lend cheaply to the emirate. The six-year loan, originally signed in July 2012, was split between dirham- and U.S. dollar-denominated tranches, both priced at 325 basis points over the London interbank offered rate […]
Shares of Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. (TAQA), which took an impairment of $858 million in North America last year, climbed the most in three weeks after it returned to profit in the second-quarter and said it plans to sell assets. The state-controlled utility, also known as Taqa, reported a second-quarter attributable profit of 239 million dirhams ($65 million), rebounding from a loss of 172 million a […]
Sanctions on Russia over the crisis with Ukraine are leading banks to call for the development of Islamic finance as they seek alternatives to European and U.S. pools of funding. The expansion of the Shariah-compliant industry would let the country attract fresh capital from the Middle East and Asia, the Association of Russian Banks said this week in response to an inquiry from the state bank. The […]
Dubai’s two biggest builders are turning to bank borrowing to help fund projects as a rise in late payments from their customers takes the shine off a booming construction market. Arabtec Holding PJSC, the contractor that helped push Dubai stocks into a bear market in June, said money owed by clients rose to 8.8 billion dirhams ($2.4 billion) through the second quarter from 7.2 billion dirhams at […]
|By Rashidul Bari| Palestine and Israel, once known as cradle of civilization, have become the hub of cemeteries in modern times. Their conflict has shed untold blood and produced graves as far as the eye can see. The countless tombstones are silent, but the sound of their outcry has carried from Middle-East to here at New York University’s Bobst Library—where I’m writing this article—and from which I’m […]
A container ship in the Suez Canal near Ismailia port city, northeast of Cairo. Reuters The Suez Canal–one of the world’s vital trading routes–is set for the first major expansion in its 145-year history. Egypt’s ambitious multi-billion-dollar plan, which could nearly double the waterway’s capacity to 97 passing ships a day by 2023, has been largely welcomed by shipping industry executives and economists, albeit with some skepticism. […]
NEW DELHI: Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL) has initiated the process of signing supply agreements with non-priority sector consumers such as paper and textiles units, even as power plants that had been given LoAs (letters of assurance) by the state-run company are facing shutdown in the absence of fuel.
Industry sources said WCL executives recently inspected sites of several prospective consumers from non-core sectors, including West Coast Paper Mills and Surya Laxmi Cotton Mills as a precursor to signing of fuel supply agreements.
The move by WCL, sources said, is in contradiction to the government’s recent emphasis on increasing coal supplies to power projects commissioned by March 2015.
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NEW DELHI: State-run oil refiner-marketer Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd has drawn up plans to ramp up the capacity of its refinery at Numaligarh in Assam’s Golaghat district from three million tonnes per annum to nine million tonnes at an investment of Rs 16,600 crore.
The project includes laying a 1,350-km pipeline to bring in crude from a port on the east coast. While the refinery expansion would cost about Rs 8,800 crore, the remaining investment is expected to go into laying the pipeline and other assorted facilities.
Company sources said the project would mark the single-largest investment in Assam and boost economic activities in the north-east as well as unlock potential for exporting fuels to India&
