|By Arabian Post Staff|Analysts are consistently arguing in favour of a pickup in Dubai’s economic prospects in the wake of a possible boost in trade with Iran following the lifting of sanctions. Low oil price, which cast a shadow over the Gulf’s oil economies, has also affected Dubai, with its real estate sector, a key determinant of the emirate’s economic performance, showing signs of a clear slowdown. […]
In a move to help more companies adopt hybrid cloud infrastructures, IBM is beefing up its Direct Link service that allows customers to set up dedicated network connections from their IT infrastructures to the SoftLayer private network and cloud services. Big Blue just inked new collaboration deals with a number of new partners, including Equinix, Verizon and Digital Realty. IBM is focusing on the bigger picture: Organizations […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s City Football Group (CFG), which owns a number football related clubs and businesses, including Manchester City FC, New York City FC, Melbourne City FC, and a minority stake in Yokohama F. Marinos, has announced a partnership with a consortium of high profile Chinese institutional investors to create an unprecedented platform for the growth of CFG clubs and […]
|By Lawrence Williams| Let’s face it, the gold price seems to bear little correlation to global physical metal demand. In the face of reducing supply (low gold prices keep scrap sales depressed, new mined gold supply is plateauing and beginning to fall and sales out of the big gold ETFs this year are a fraction of those seen back in 2013) and increasing demand – China, India […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Zurich announced that it will begin a phased closing to new retail and small business customers in its general insurance business in the Middle East. Subject to an assessment of contractual obligations, existing portfolios in this business will be put into run off. This means that Zurich will effectively exit its general insurance businesses by the end of 2016 or as soon as […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| It is a double whammy for gold this Thursday. The metal was trading near its lowest in nearly six years while Reuters reported from Mumbai that third-quarter gold buying in India, the world’s biggest consumer, is likely to fall to the lowest level in eight years. Gold is hurt by poor investment demand as the dollar held at multi-month highs after U.S. economic […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| House prices in Dubai will bottom out towards the end of next year, real estate consultancy Cluttons said in its Dubai 2015/16 Winter Residential Property Market Outlook. House prices are expected to fall another 3-5 percent over the next 12 months. The report said values for both apartments (-0.8%) and villas (-0.5%) dipped marginally during the third quarter of this year, marking the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi nationals engaged in gold and jewellery business believe that the new foreign investment law, which allows expatriates to set up fully-owned businesses in the kingdom, would ultimately drive them away from their traditional business. According to Saudi media reports, they complain that some Arab expatriates have entered the market by obtaining Saudi citizenship, GCC passports and foreign investment license. A Abdul Ghani […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the IFC Asset Management Company are investing $27 million in Souq, the largest e-commerce platform in the Middle East and North Africa. The investment will support the company’s growth, boost e-commerce in the region, and help create jobs and drive innovation. The investment will help Souq diversify its offerings and enhance its logistics and […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Dubai’s investment plans are not threatened by the situation stemming from the fall in oil prices and its economic impact, Mohammad al-Shaibani, chief executive of state-owned Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), asserted. Although energy is a key determinant of business confidence, as far as Dubai is concerned, oil accounts for only 2 percent of the emirate’s economy, he pointed out. “There won’t be […]
CEO Satya Nadella (pictured) today revealed Microsoft‘s plans to enhance enterprise security and help its customers have stronger protection for what he referred to as the “mobile-first, cloud-first world.” Addressing the Microsoft Government Cloud Forum in Washington, D.C., Nadella said that Microsoft already invests $1 billion in security research and development each year, but despite that the company is creating a new Cyber Defense Operations Center. Nadella […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The United Arab Emirates may cut government spending as a result of the slump in oil prices, Central Bank Governor Mubarak Rashed Al Mansoori indicated. The decline in the government’s oil revenue “may trigger further fiscal consolidation, albeit at a gradual pace, to preserve priority spending in support of non-oil growth,” Al Mansoori said at a conference in Dubai on Monday. Oil accounted […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| A scenario of continued fall in oil prices, OPEC oil export revenue could fall by a quarter despite the higher output, according to International Energy Agency outlook for oil. In the Low Oil Price Scenario, the Middle East’s share in the oil market ends up higher than at any time in the last forty years, it says. According to IEA, lower prices are […]
|By TAP Staff| Total gold demand in Q3 2015 stood at 1,121 tonnes , an increase of 8% compared to the same period last year, according to the World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends report. Q3 2015 consisted of two distinct halves. In the first part, a number of factors, including ETF outflows, contributed to a price dip which buoyed consumer demand around the world. A shift […]
|By TAP Staff| Business confidence in the Middle East is at its lowest ebb for more than five years, according to the latest global survey of accountants. The Global Economic Conditions Survey (GECS) carried out jointly by ACCA (The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) and IMA (the Institute of Management Accountants) for the third quarter of 2015 suggests that the renewed fall in oil prices is likely […]
|By TAP Staff| Residential rents in Abu Dhabi may be reaching an affordability ceiling, particularly at the higher end of the market, the latest Abu Dhabi Real Estate Market Overview report by Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) and its real estate advisory subsidiary MPM Properties said. But given year on year growth, tenants in this segment are still seeing sizeable rental increases at lease renewal, the report […]
Two months after announcing a $50 million investment in artificial intelligence (AI) research, Toyota is more than doubling down on its bet. At a press conference in Toyko today, the car maker unveiled plans to spend $1 billion over the next five years to establish a new company — the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) — focused on AI and robotics. The institute will be located in Silicon […]
|By Matein Khalid| I was in a pensive-philosophic mood last week as I decompressed from a trip to a hauntingly beautiful post Soviet country in the Caucasus, the land that produced Koba from Gori and Prince Pyotr Bagration, the fallen hero of Tsar Alexander’s imperial guard at Borodino. Yet Georgia gave me time and perspective to think about the financial firestorms on Wall Street, Marounuchi, the Gulf […]
AUCKLAND, New Zealand The next revolution in space, making humdrum what was long the special preserve of tax-funded giants like NASA, will be launching next year from a paddock in New Zealand’s remote South Island. The rocket launch range is not just New Zealand’s first of any kind, but also the world’s first private launch range, and the rocket, designed by Rocket Lab, one of a growing […]
|By TAP Staff| The GFMS Gold Survey for the third quarter is bearish on the short term prospects of gold and expects the metal to trade back down below $1,100/oz for the remaining months of the 2015. According to the survey, published by Thomson Reuters, gold is set to remain under pressure until there is more clarity on the timing and the scale of US rates normalisation. […]
A Dell logo is pictured on the side of a computer in this photo illustration in the Manhattan borough of New York October 12, 2015. Reuters/Carlo Allegri NEW YORK Dell Inc is preparing to sell around $10 billion in non-core assets, including software and services, to reduce the heavy debt load it will be taking on to buy EMC Corp (EMC.N), according to people familiar with the […]
Boston-based enterprise storage provider ClearSky Data said it has raised $27 million in a Series B investment round led by Polaris Partners, along with Akamai Technologies. The money will be used by ClearSky to refine its managed service delivery model for enterprise storage, which the company said combines the performance and availability of primary storage with the economics and scalability of the cloud. ClearSky made a splash […]
|By TAP Staff| Emaar Properties recorded a growth in net profit of 16 per cent for the first nine months (Jan to Sept) 2015 to AED 3.048 billion (US$ 830 million) compared to AED 2.622 billion (US$ 714 million) during the same period in 2014. Revenues for the first nine months of 2015 were AED 9.849 billion (US$ 2.681 billion), a growth of 25 per cent over […]
|TAP Special by K Raveendran| Landmark events about the development of a shopping mall generally involve major leasing deals or signing up flagship brands, or the launch of the mall itself. But Qatar’s Tawar Mall, coming up in a prime Doha locality, was the scene of a bit of fanfare this week for none of the above. The mall owners, belonging to the leading Qatari business family […]
