With Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. filing to go public, the biggest winner won’t be founder Jack Ma or his fellow executives or even venture capital backers like Silver Lake Management LLC. It’ll be Japan’s Masayoshi Son. Fourteen years ago, Son’s SoftBank Corp. started with a $20 million bet on a then-unknown Web portal connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. That site evolved into China’s biggest Internet shopping […]
SolarReserve, a closely held U.S. power plant developer, is studying whether to bid for a 100 megawatt facility in Dubai and looking at projects in Jordan, Chief Executive Officer Kevin Smith said in an interview in Dubai. The company expects to hear by the end of the year whether it, GDF Suez (GSZ) unit International Power Ltd. and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar have won the right to build […]
One year into the delivery of Dubai’s ‘Tourism Vision for 2020,’ significant first steps have been taken to achieve the target of attracting 20 million annual visitors by 2020, leading the emirate’s tourism authority to state a new ambition: for Dubai to become the world’s most visited city. If a growth rate similar to that achieved in 2013 is maintained – a 10.6 percent year-on-year increase equating […]
Dubai’s bourse has outpaced other Gulf markets by a wide margin in terms of companies’ first-quarter profit growth, data show, supporting its position as the top performer in the region. The emirate’s benchmark soared 108 percent last year and is up 57 percent this year, making it one of the world’s top-performing stock markets over the past 17 months. Although some analysts believe the market is overbought, […]
An aerial view shows Dubai international airport, home to the national carrier Emirates Airways. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Dubai International Airport last week became the world’s busiest for international traffic. But the stellar performance in the first quarter is not likely to be repeated in the second as the airport is currently undertaking a major upgrade of its runways. Here, Chris Garton, senior vice president of airport operations […]
|By TAP Staff|The Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), owner of many of Dubai’s corporate jewels, such as the Emirates airline and the airport duty-free business, said its revenues grew 18 percent to $24.8 billion in the second half of 2013. The numbers were revealed in the prospectus released in connection with the plan to raise about $750m in its first Islamic bond issue. The latest full-year revenue […]
According to international real estate consultancy firm Cluttons, an upsurge in economic confidence following Dubai’s World Expo 2020 win, has led to heightened demand for commercial office space in the emirate. Rents for prime Grade A space in particular have continued to climb with a 10% increase recorded in Q1, pushing average rates in this category to AED 220 per square foot. Cluttons Dubai Spring 2014 Commercial […]
Dubai may need stronger measures to counter property speculation in the emirate, a senior International Monetary Fund official said on Tuesday as it warned again about a potential real estate bubble. Growth in the Gulf emirate, the region’s trade and business hub, picked up strongly last year as the government committed to real estate projects worth tens of billions of dollars following a property market crash in […]
As Dubai freight-forwarding firm Able Logistics Group began preparing early this year to go public, it conducted a leveraged recapitalisation, taking on fresh bank debt so it could pay a cash dividend to shareholders. By the standards of developed Western markets, the transaction was routine. But for the Middle East it was an unusually creative deal, a sign that the region’s private equity industry is finally building […]
Emirates, the No. 1 international airline, won’t be asked to move to Dubai’s new super-hub until 2024, avoiding disruption to its growth as it takes delivery of the world’s biggest fleet of wide-body jets. The sheikdom’s Al Maktoum airport, which opened in October and is targeting a capacity of 228 million passengers at a cost of 156.8 billion dirhams ($43 billion), should instead become an interim base […]
It looks sleek, thin and premium, but its price is anything but the latter. OnePlus One smartphone is creating a buzz online as a budget smartphone killer since it was rolled out on April 23, and people are definitely hungry for it. During its first launch, One smartphone was initially available in countries such as Austria, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Spain, […]
Dubai shares jumped the most since January after first-quarter earnings boosted investor sentiment. Qatar’s gauge also advanced. The DFM General Index (DFMGI) surged 3.3 percent, the biggest jump since Jan. 23, to 5,247.29 at the close. The measure has soared 56 percent this year, making it the best performer among more than 90 benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg. Dubai Islamic Bank advanced 5.5 percent after first-quarter profit more […]
Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways on Sunday said its strategy of buying stakes in European airlines was bringing fresh competition to the region, despite close scrutiny by regulators over whether its investments comply with European ownership rules. State-owned Etihad is building up a network of minority stakes in airlines around the world as it seeks to drive traffic to its Abu Dhabi hub. “We are bringing competition in […]
|Andy Greenberg| Just as antivirus researchers congratulated Apple for keeping the iPhone free of nasty apps five full years after its release, spammers seem to have finally tarnished that spotless record. Antivirus researchers at Kaspersky say they’ve spotted an app known as “Find and Call” in both the iPhone App Store and Google’s Play market that secretly uploads all of a user’s contacts to a remote server and then sends […]
The United Arab Emirates will have its own stand-alone exchange-traded funds with this week’s launch of the iShares MSCI UAE Capped ETF (UAE). On May 30th, both Qatar and the UAE will get promoted by the MSCI index folks being frontier markets to becoming full-fledged emerging markets. As of this year’s first quarter, the UAE and Qatar occupied the second- and third-largest country weights in the MSCI […]
Gold was steady on Friday after two consecutive sessions of losses, but the metal was headed for its second weekly drop in three on growing optimism about the U.S. economy and selling in the top bullion-backed exchange-traded fund. Spot gold was flat at $1,283.66 an ounce by 0034 GMT, after falling 0.6 percent in the previous session. The metalis down 1.6 percent for the week. Silver, with […]
The first U.S. case of Middle East Respiratory Virus (MERS), a viral respiratory illness, has been confirmed within U.S. borders, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday A SARS-like virus, MERS was first detected in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Dr Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on a conference call the first U.S. case of […]
Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) is in talks with an Islamic bank in Indonesia to take a 40 percent stake, DIB’s chief executive said on Thursday. Adnan Chilwan told reporters that DIB hoped to conclude a deal before the end of the year and that it would pay for the purchase using its own cash reserves. He declined to name the acquisition target but said its parent was […]
All markets in the Gulf edged up on Thursday, led by Saudi Arabia which rose to a six-year high on the back of petrochemicals and cement makers. The kingdom’s main index gained 0.8 percent to 9,660 points, its highest close since June 2008. Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC), up 2.6 percent, was the main support, also topping daily turnover. Overall, Saudi petrochemicals gained 1.5 percent while cement […]
Dana Gas Islamic bond was the best-performing dollar sukuk in the world last month as the energy company’s rising stock price prompted investors to exchange their debt into shares at a profit. The fuel producer’s $425 million convertible bond due October 2017 made 3.46 percent last month, compared with an average 0.41 percent return for all dollar-denominated sukuk, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The share conversion […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Trying to become even bigger — and make more money — Facebook will allow users to reveal a little less. The social network announced on Wednesday that when its 1.3 billion users log in to other websites or mobile apps through their Facebook identities, they will be able to limit what they reveal to the site or app to just their email addresses and public […]
When French wine and cognac bottle maker Saverglass decided to expand three years ago, it chose a relatively remote, less affluent location in the United Arab Emirates for its plant rather than the business hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The company sited its 75 million euro ($105 million) factory, which produces some 400,000 bottles a day, in the desert emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, an hour’s […]
Middle East fund managers have become more cautious about stock markets in the United Arab Emirates because of concern that Dubai may be overheating, a monthly Reuters survey shows. The survey of 15 leading investment managers, conducted over the past 10 days, found they are still bullish about the region’s stock markets in general: 33 percent expect to increase their Middle East equity allocations in the next […]
|By TAP Staff| Gulf-based borrowers, who have been returning to the international debt market in recent days after several months of relatively light issuance, are reporting strong investor interest. Amid geopolitical tensions in Ukraine and economic instability in some emerging markets, Gulf economies have stood out because of their stability, thanks to their trade and state budget surpluses. The contrast appears to created attractive conditions for them […]
