Dubai Investments, a diversified manufacturer and investor in property, plans to increase the limit on foreign ownership of its shares to 35 percent of its total capital, the company said on Sunday. Foreign investors now hold 13.7 percent of Dubai Investments’ shares out of the total 20 percent allowed, bourse data shows. The firm’s shareholders, including sovereign fund Investment Corp of Dubai which has an 11.5 percent […]
Wall Street leaders including Lloyd Blankfein and James Gorman, who have courted business in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, are facing a dilemma as tensions over Ukraine escalate. Their scheduled attendance at Putin’s annual investor showcase in St. Petersburg in May is in doubt as sanctions imposed by the U.S. in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea — and retaliatory moves by Putin — threaten the ties between Russia’s […]
Bank of America Corp. (BAC)’s Merrill Lynch unit is hiring the head of VTB Capital’s Middle East cash-equity sales and sales trading in Dubai, Karim Nsouli, two people familiar with the matter said. Nsouli will take over from Veer Ramlugon, who handled Middle East equity and equity-derivatives for BofA Merrill Lynch in Dubai, the people said yesterday, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. […]
Buyout firm GrowthGate Capital plans to take freight-forwarding company Able Logistics Group public in Dubai around the end of this year, a senior GrowthGate executive told Reuters, in a sign of growing strength in the region’s equity markets. “We aim to make it this year or early next year,” Haythem Macki, a partner at GrowthGate, said. “The market is ready for it – there’s a lot of […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and HSBC Holdings are among banks planning to compete for a role in the largest Saudi Arabian share sale in at least 12 years, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. The banks will vie with local lenders including Banque Saudi Fransi (BSFR) and Gulf International Bank to be appointed as financial adviser on the sale of a 15 percent stake […]
After a year of waiting, the man running what could be the biggest-ever technology IPO finally lost patience with Hong Kong. Joe Tsai, the Alibaba Group Holding executive in charge of plans for the highly anticipated deal, only abandoned hope of a Hong Kong listing in the last few weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. The company’s shareholding structure, giving senior managers sway over board […]
Dubai’s government will consider establishing the world’s first fully sharia-compliant export-import bank to promote the emirate’s foreign trade, the Department of Economic Development said on Wednesday. The bank would provide financing to companies involved in trade while helping them to reduce their risks and gain market access, the department said in a statement without giving details of the proposed institution’s structure or financing. Noor Investment Group, which […]
|By TAP Staff| Gulf sovereign wealth funds are steadily increasing their investment into Western real estate, says property consultant JLL in a new report. According to the report, 2013 saw more than $13 billion invested in Western overseas property, surpassing the previous peak JLL recorded in 2006. London remained the favourite Western destination for real estate investment, with Knightsbridge, Kensington, Mayfair and the City being the most […]
Emaar Properties, developer of the world’s tallest tower, hired Morgan Stanley to advise on the sale of a 25 percent stake in its shopping malls and retail business after revenue at the unit surged. The company is also considering appointing a local bank as additional adviser on the secondary offering, Chairman Mohamed Alabbar said today in an interview in Dubai. Emaar is seeking to complete the deal […]
Russia’s economy is showing signs of a crisis, the government in Moscow said as the U.S. and the European Union announced sanctions over the country’s support for the Crimea region breaking away from Ukraine. “The situation in the economy bears clear signs of a crisis,” Deputy Economy Minister Sergei Belyakov said in Moscow yesterday. The cabinet needs to refrain from raising the fiscal burden on companies, which […]
Gary Dugan, chief investment officer for Asia and the Middle East at private bank Coutts, has resigned to take the CIO job at National Bank of Abu Dhabi , sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. A Coutts spokeswoman confirmed that Dugan had resigned without elaborating. NBAD declined to comment. Before Coutts, Dugan was CIO of Dubai’s Emirates NBD.-Reuters
Standard & Poor’s plans no rating action relating to Dubai’s Emaar Properties after the emirate’s largest listed developer announced plans to spin off its retail unit, an analyst covering the company said on Monday. Emaar said on Saturday it planned to list 25 percent of its shopping malls and retailing unit in a public offer expected to raise around 8 to 9 billion dirhams. The move, which […]
As U.S. and European officials threaten sanctions in their face-off with Russia over Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s $160 billion in oil and natural gas exports may be his most potent weapon to limit punitive measures. The U.S. and its European allies, set to meet today in Brussels, have few levers to deter Putin even as they warn Russia not to annex Crimea after a referendum in Ukraine’s southern […]
Within 18 months of leaving his trading job to open a lunchtime eatery at the Dubai financial center in 2011, Nabil Al Rantisi was back: selling stocks and rebuilding one of the city’s largest brokerages. “I saw my window of opportunity,” Rantisi, managing director of Mena Corp Financial Services LLC, said in a March 9 telephone interview from Dubai. “Things started picking up in September 2012. By […]
Dubai refinanced $20 billion at a quarter of the original cost, freeing cash to service liabilities and fund expansion plans. The emirate rolled over $10 billion of bonds owed to the central bank and a loan of the same amount due to Abu Dhabi’s government, and will pay a fixed interest of 1 percent on both, according to a statement on state-run WAM news agency yesterday. The […]
Dubai is considering regulatory reforms to persuade more funds to base themselves in its financial centre, though industry experts believe that other parts of its investment environment may also need to change for the emirate to compete globally. The proposed rules would create a new class of funds in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) in an effort to attract asset managers, such as hedge funds and […]
|By Rajhkumar K Shaaw and Santanu Chakraborty| For the first time in five years, Nilesh Dedhia is buying Indian stocks. The 48-year-old owner of a die-casting factory in Mumbai is among a growing number of local investors returning to the $1.2 trillion equity market on speculation national elections in May will deliver a government with the mandate to revive economic growth from a decade low. That optimism […]
|By Eric Balchunas| Coffee is up 80 percent this year. Lean hogs are up 28 percent. Corn is up 13 percent. Gold is up 12 percent. Most of these same commodities were down last year, and any of them could fall at the drop of a hat. So how do rational investors participate in the upside for unpredictable commodities without losing their all-cotton shirts? One approach is […]
|By K Raveendran| Abu Dhabi is set to launch an inaugural issuance of treasury bills of around $1 billion this year, along with an issue of $500 million commercial debt by Sharjah to invest in capital projects, sources familiar with the subject reveal. Also on the cards s a sukuk issue by Ras Al Khaimah, which has to refinance about $400 million in debt coming due this […]
|By TAP Staff| A private-public investment consortium has been formed to finance the establishment of the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX). Investment consortium partners include Ghana’s top tier financial institutions, Data Bank Agrifund Manager Ltd, Ecobank Ghana Ltd, UT Bank Ghana Ltd, as well as IFC, 8 Miles Fund and eleni, with minority stakeholding by the Government of Ghana. The consortium partners and the Government of Ghana have […]
The world’s most-profitable banks have never been so unloved by stock investors. China’s four-biggest lenders, which reported $126 billion of earnings in the 12 months through September, sank to the lowest valuations on record in Hong Kong trading yesterday. The MSCI China Financials Index dropped to an almost decade low versus the global industry benchmark while the market value of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., […]
Billionaire investor George Soros said Europe faces 25 years of Japanese-style stagnation unless politicians pursue further integration of the currency bloc and change policies that have discouraged banks from lending. While the immediate financial crisis that has plagued Europe since 2010 “is over,” it still faces a political crisis that has divided the region between creditor and debtor nations, Soros, 83, said in a Bloomberg Television interview […]
Pakistan’s rupee surged 5.2 percent this week, the best performance among world currencies, as the nation’s rising foreign reserves and improving economy buoyed investor confidence. The country’s currency stockpile climbed to $9.52 billion this week, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said yesterday, from $8.3 billion at the end of 2013. The economy is on course to achieve the official target of 4.4 percent expansion in the year ending […]
Saudi Arabia’s drive to make Qatar abandon its embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood may founder because of the limited leverage the Saudis and their allies can exercise over the world’s richest country. Qatar traded more with Singapore in 2012 than it did with the three Gulf neighbors — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — that withdrew their ambassadors from Doha last week to protest […]
