UNITED NATIONS — Over the last four years, as four million Syrian refugees poured into neighboring countries and slipped inexorably into poverty, António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said he had pleaded in vain with world leaders to take their plight more seriously. But suddenly, at the United Nations General Assembly this week, leaders of the world’s most powerful countries want to meet with […]
Indonesia is drawing interest from Middle Eastern banks seeking to tap the world’s biggest pool of Shariah-compliant investors as some Islamic lenders wind down or close operations in Malaysia and Singapore. Emirates NBD PJSC wants to invest at least $300 million in a new Shariah lender or acquire a stake in an existing one, Dhani Gunawan Idat at Indonesia’s financial regulator said in a phone interview. That’s […]
INTERNATIONAL. The low level of insurance penetration seen in many Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, combined with the robust, albeit deteriorating, profitability achieved by the leading primary insurers, has made the region a target for international and domestic reinsurers. A new special report by A.M. Best examines how insurance markets in the MENA region have grown significantly over the past decade. MENA insurance premiums surpassed […]
INTERNATIONAL. What started as a civil war in Syria nearly five years ago has now evolved into an international crisis unmatched by any other since World War II. The global community now has a solemn obligation to end this humanitarian disaster, but it cannot do so unless all the powers affected by the conflict set aside their differences in order to end the suffering of millions of […]
Middle East By THOMAS ERDBRINK September 27, 2015 President Hassan Rouhani of Iran is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Monday. Thomas Erdbrink, the Tehran bureau chief for The New York Times, looks at what message Mr. Rouhani has for international leaders and how it might be received. What’s different from the last time President Rouhani spoke to the General Assembly? Mr. Rouhani, Iran’s leader since […]
Middle East Secretary of State John Kerry with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, on Sunday. By MICHAEL R. GORDON September 27, 2015 The Iraqi military announced Sunday that it had agreed to share intelligence about the Islamic State with Russia, the Syrian government and Iran, an agreement that caught the Obama administration off guard. The Iraqi military said in a statement that the new agreement was necessary because […]
Middle East Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the United Nations on Saturday. By MICHAEL R. GORDON September 26, 2015 UNITED NATIONS — Secretary of State John Kerry sought on Saturday to draw Iran into the search for a political solution to the Syrian conflict as he began a week of diplomacy over the brutal fighting there. “I view this week as […]
WASHINGTON — Nearly 30,000 foreign recruits have now poured into Syria, many to join the Islamic State, a doubling of volunteers in just the past 12 months and stark evidence that an international effort to tighten borders, share intelligence and enforce antiterrorism laws is not diminishing the ranks of new militant fighters. Among those who have entered or tried to enter the conflict in Iraq or Syria […]
Iran’s president and foreign minister dropped hints on Friday of movement toward a resolution in the fates of Americans imprisoned or missing in Iran. The president, Hassan Rouhani, who was visiting New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering, told guests at an invitation-only meeting in a nearby hotel that he wanted the governments of Iran and the United States “to be helpful” in finding […]
INTERNATIONAL. Gleaming glass skyscrapers, state-of-the-art technology, and wealthy merchant families have replaced the Gulf’s muddy towns and villages populated by traders and pearl fishers that once lacked electricity, running water or modern communications. The region’s modern day projection of a visionary cutting- edge, 21st century urban environment masks however the fact that some things have not changed. Gulf states continue to be ruled by the same families, […]
UAE. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said today that although it expects that some corporates and infrastructure issuers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will likely feel the weight of lower oil prices, most of its rated entities show resilient financials for now, in an industry report card published today titled, “Some Gulf Corporates Could Feel The Heat On Low Oil Prices.” Corporate and infrastructure companies in the […]
A senior French economic and political delegation is in Tehran to lay the groundwork for the first business contracts between France and Iran since an accord to curb its nuclear programme in July. France’s main business lobby group, the Medef, is sending a delegation comprising more than 100 firms to Iran, including companies such as oil major Total, planemaker Airbus and car manufacturer Peugeot. “We’re trying to […]
Dubai-based chartered accountants firm Sangani and Company has joined Kudos International Network as a full member auditing and accounting firm, the company announced. Kudos International Network is an international accounting and auditing network and member of Forum of Firms. Forum of Firms is an association of international networks of accounting firms performing audits of financial statements used across borders. The Forum’s objective is to promote consistent and […]
LONDON — Russia’s military buildup in Syria now includes surface-to-air missiles as well as combat aircraft with air-to-air capability, deployments that raise “serious questions” about Moscow’s role in the region, Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday. Russian officials have said that the purpose of the buildup at a base near Latakia, Syria, is to combat the Islamic State. But the deployment of air defense systems and […]
Middle East By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and ERIC SCHMITT September 17, 2015 The government of Iran released five senior members of Al Qaeda earlier this year, including the man who stepped in to serve as the terrorist group’s interim leader immediately after Osama bin Laden’s death, and who is the subject of a $5 million bounty, according to an American official who had been briefed on the matter. Iran’s release of the […]
Middle East Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday of foreign enemy subversions. By THOMAS ERDBRINK September 17, 2015 TEHRAN — Negotiating the nuclear agreement was a torturous, two-year process for Iran’s leaders, but a new kind of struggle is unfolding now in Iran, where the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Hassan Rouhani have begun to tackle a question Iranians have not thought about much since the revolution […]
|By Matein Khalid| The world’s emerging markets have been savaged by multiple economic, banking, currency and political shocks since 2011. Global emerging markets are far too diverse and nuanced to be analyzed as a single asset class but now trade at a 24% valuation discount to developed markets. The financial markets now price draconian scenarios for earnings, exports, sovereign credit, industrial production and economic growth. The shortage […]
WASHINGTON — President Obama will host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Nov. 9 in their first face-to-face meeting since their rupture over the international nuclear agreement with Iran, the White House said Wednesday. Mr. Obama invited Mr. Netanyahu to talk about the way forward now that the Iran agreement has cleared obstacles in Congress. The president has offered to find ways […]
Middle East By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE September 15, 2015 GENEVA — The brother of a Washington Post journalist imprisoned in Iran for more than a year appealed to a United Nations human rights panel on Tuesday to intercede with the Iranian authorities to obtain his release. Ali Rezaian, whose brother, Jason, was arrested in Tehran in July 2014, made his entreaty at a meeting in Geneva of the United Nations […]
Oil extended its decline below $45 a barrel in New York as a further pullback in US drilling failed to temper expectations that the global oversupply will persist for most of next year. West Texas Intermediate futures slipped 0.5 per cent after declining 2.8 per cent on 11 September when Goldman Sachs said the surprising endurance of the surplus could push prices down to $20 a barrel. The discount […]
HAJJA, Yemen — The airstrike slammed into Al-Sham water-bottling plant at the end of the night shift, killing 13 workers who were minutes away from heading home. Standing among the strewn bottles, smoldering boxes and pulverized machines a few days after the airstrike here, the owner, Ibrahim al-Razoom, searched in vain for any possible reason that warplanes from a Saudi-led military coalition would have attacked the place. […]
ABU DHABI // The last of the Emirati soldiers who sacrificed their lives defending the people of Yemen arrived home on Saturday, bringing the total number killed to 52. The servicemen died alongside Saudi Arabian and Bahraini troops when a missile fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels hit an arms depot in Marib province nine days ago. Their bodies were received in a ceremony at Al Bateen Airport, […]
Middle East News Analysis By PETER BAKER and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS September 11, 2015 WASHINGTON — Having beaten back a congressional campaign to derail his nuclear agreement with Iran, President Obama now faces a panoply of challenges that may be just as daunting: making the deal actually work while repairing relations with disaffected allies and constraining Tehran’s regional ambitions. He got started Friday even as the House was still voting by announcing […]
Middle East By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT September 11, 2015 The United States has confirmed the presence of traces of sulfur mustard, a chemical warfare agent, on fragments of ordnance recently used by the Islamic State in attacks in Syria and Iraq, according to two American officials familiar with the results of laboratory analysis of the samples. The laboratory tests, which were also performed on scraps of clothing from victims, […]
