Slide Show | Preparing for New Risks in Golan Heights The fighting in Syria has prompted residents of the Golan Heights, Israel’s quietest frontier, to reassess the potential danger. By JODI RUDOREN October 4, 2014 EIN ZIVAN, Golan Heights — The updates poured in by two-way radio and cellphone as Tomer Lahav’s pickup sped around this kibbutz near Israel’s cease-fire line with Syria one recent evening. Mortars were falling […]
By ANNE BARNARD October 4, 2014 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fighting continued Saturday across Syria, with the militant group Islamic State assaulting a Kurdish enclave on the Turkish border, American-led airstrikes hitting Islamic State positions in northeastern Syria and Syrian government airstrikes pounding other insurgents near Damascus, Syria’s capital. Video surfaced of Peter Kassig, an American medical worker held by the Islamic State, in which the militants threatened that he […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Jadwa Investment, the Saudi asset manager focused on Sharia’ah compliant mutual and private equity funds, has just issued its Quarterly Global Oil Market Update (Q3 2014). Summary of the report · The combination of accelerating US supply, weaker than expected global demand, stabilization in geopolitics, and an appreciation of the dollar, led to oil prices dropping by 7.3 percent in Q3 2014, to an average of […]
By JEFFREY MARCUS October 3, 2014 After fighters from the Islamic State militant group attacked her village in northern Iraq in August, an adolescent Yazidi girl was abducted, raped several times by different men and then sold in a public market as a sex slave. The episode is one chilling example from a United Nations report released Thursday that details a litany of atrocities committed by Islamic State militants […]
By JEFFREY MARCUS October 3, 2014 After fighters from the Islamic State militant group attacked her village in northern Iraq in August, an adolescent Yazidi girl was abducted, raped several times by different men and then sold in a public market as a sex slave. The episode is one chilling example from a United Nations report released Thursday that details a litany of atrocities committed by Islamic State militants […]
ABU DHABI // Concerns about the UAE’s food security should not be believed, according to the chief executive of a food retail company. Wisal Ahmed, who heads the Alam Group, which owns the eponymous supermarkets, said the country had sufficient resources to take care of any unforeseen circumstances, whether man-made or natural. A UK-based research centre, Chatham House, published a report in November last year in which […]
Dubai bourse… marked recovery in economy boosts IPOs Dubai bourse ‘may see further listings by year-end’ DUBAI, 1 days ago The Dubai Financial Market could see one more company list on the stock exchange before the end of the year in addition to the already-announced share sale by a healthcare and education start-up, its chairman said on Thursday. Initial public offerings in the emirate dried up in […]
A trading screen on the floor of Dubai Financial Market shows the bid and offer levels for Emaar Malls Group shares. Asa Fitch for The Wall Street Journal Shares of Emaar Malls Group started trading on the Dubai Financial Market on Thursday, marking the first significant new share sale in Dubai since the global financial crisis. Emaar Malls isn’t a big deal globally. But traders here say […]
Nicolas Parasie for The Wall Street Journal In the past six months, the United Arab Emirates’ official credit bureau has ramped up its efforts to procure information: it collected two years of financial records for every single retail customer of each financial institution in the country. That process involved digesting some 100 million transactions, half of which are now fully uploaded into the bureau’s data vault. Marwan […]
Gulf banks are feeling the pinch of rapidly shrinking corporate loan margins, with some predicting a bounce in lending rates as soon as the first half of 2015 as the escalating price war bites into profitability. Lenders are being forced to cut rates and loosen lending terms to secure business as local banks, flush with cash as their balance sheets recover from the global financial crisis, seek […]
By Nantoo Banerjee Barely hours after Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaj Sharif harped before the world audience on its over-six-decade-old position, long discarded by India as ‘unacceptable’ and held ‘impractical’ by most nations deeply interested in peace in the region, that Kashmiris be allowed the right to ‘self-determination’ to decide whether or not to remain part of India, visiting Indian private channels were rushing to Pakistan’s National Security […]
A landmark ruling by the court system in Dubai’s financial free zone suggests the emirate is starting to influence the way international business disputes are resolved in the Middle East, partly taking over that role from London and New York. Last month a court in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) found Switzerland’s Bank Sarasin had mis-sold $200 million of investment products to Kuwait’s prominent Khorafi family, […]
By L.S. Herdenia BHOPAL: Brisk preparations are on for the mega investors’ summit to be held in Indore in the first week of October. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh is hopeful that the summit will open the doors for massive investments in Madhya Pradesh. Almost all the important and leading industrial houses of the country are likely to be present in the summit. According to a government spokesman, […]
By DAVID E. SANGER and ANNE BARNARD September 27, 2014 WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said on Saturday that it had conducted its first strikes against Islamic State targets in a besieged Kurdish area of Syria along the Turkish border, destroying two armored vehicles in an area that has been the subject of a weeklong onslaught by the Islamic State. The action around Kobani, where at least 150,000 refugees have crossed into Turkey, appeared to signify the opening of […]
Turkish Kurds watched Kurdish forces battle with Islamic State militants across the border in Syria on Saturday. Turkey fears the fight against the Islamic State may embolden Kurdish separatists. By ANNE BARNARD and MARK LANDLER September 27, 2014 KARACA, Turkey — No American ally is closer to the threat of the Islamic State than Turkey, and no country could play a more important role in a coalition that President Obama is […]
Kurds in Turkey watched Saturday as Kurdish forces fought Islamic State militants just across the border in Syria. Although Turkey has accepted nearly 150,000 refugees, mostly Kurdish, from Kobani, Syria, in the last week, it fears emboldening Kurdish separatists. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. […]
Firms with women at top ‘perform better’ LONDON, 1 days ago Companies with higher female participation at board level or in top management exhibit higher returns, higher valuations and higher payout ratios, a report said. While the representation of women in management positions and on the boards of companies is similar, it is qualitatively different in its makeup, added the CS Gender 3000: Women in Senior Management […]
|TAP Special| The star-crossed Dubai Pearl project is in trouble again. Work on the project, which has a history of chronic fund shortages, missed deadlines and botched up designs, has been completely stalled and expectations of an early resumption of construction have been belied. In the wake of defaults of various nature, the structure faces the risk of even a second demolition, according to insiders. After the […]
As airstrikes led by the United States against the militant group Islamic State continued on Wednesday, for the first time in over two decades – Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf monarchies openly joined the campaign. While Arab participation in the strikes is of more symbolic than military value, analysts described it as a bold move for a group of countries that for long preferred to act […]
Shares of Marka started trading Thursday at a premium of 77% to its 1 U.A.E. dirham ($0.27) issue price. Asa Fitch for The Wall Street Journal Shares of Marka, a brand-new retail and hospitality company in the United Arab Emirates, began trading at a huge premium to their initial public offering valuation on the Dubai Financial Market Thursday, underscoring both a revival of confidence and what could […]
|By TAP Staff| The success of Emaar’s malls IPO has prompted Nakheel to consider a flotation on the local stock market. Such a possibility was indicated by top Nakheel official Sanjay Manchanda, who spoke to reporters at the sidelines of Cityscape. “The market is definitely very receptive to Dubai IPOs now. The success of Emaar will be an encouraging sign for us. Should we decide to list […]
As the U.S. and France launch airstrikes against the Islamic State, Lebanon’s artists and activists have been organizing one of the Middle East’s most strident cultural responses to the group following its rapid incursion on large swaths of Iraqi and Syrian territory this summer. An IS flag-burning trend, accompanied by a Twitter hashtag campaign mimicking the recent “ice bucket challenge” charity fad, cropped up a few weeks […]
A project displayed at Cityscape Global 2014. Rory Jones for The Wall Street Journal Dubai’s showcase annual real-estate event appears to offer more substance than style this year: Cityscape Global had fewer glitzy property launches on day one than last year, and there were no backroom scuffles as investors scrambled to snap up units of premier developers. There was still plenty of real estate for sale as […]
The Gate building at the Dubai International Financial Centre. Reuters Encouraged by strong growth in company registrations amid a resurgent Dubai economy, the emirate’s main financial free zone is now looking to double the number in the coming four years. The Dubai International Financial Centre, which was founded 10 years ago and serves as a point of entry into the Arab Gulf region for many international financial […]
