| M A Hossain |United States has walked- out of the Iran deal that had been touted mainly by Barack Obama. Washington’s argument in this latest development is pretty clear. In their opinion, Iran though had stopped its nuclear development program, still was pursuing the ballistic missile development project. Meaning, Tehran did not abandon its nuclear ambition. Most importantly, Iran is seen as a potential threat to […]
|By Matein Khalid| I had written an article titled “six reasons to be bullish Saudi equities in 2018, published in the KT on January 28. Yet I was surprised to see Saudi Arabian equities become the world’s second best performing stock market in 2018 after Egypt. The Saudi equity index fund (KSA) I recommended in my column is up 18% at a time when the MSCI emerging markets […]
By Matein Khalid A dismal legacy of civil war, sanctions, insurgency, foreign invasion and terrorism has had a catastrophic impact on the Iraqi economy. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told the assembled global elite at Davos 2018 that Iraq needed $100 billion in postwar construction. Yet money alone will not solve Iraq’s problems of systemic corruption, a society divided by sectarian cleavages, poverty, the displacement of 2 million […]
By James M. Dorsey The Gulf crisis that pits a United Arab Emirates-Saudi-led alliance against Qatar is escalating in discreet but no less worrisome ways that effect major third-party commercial interests and could increase international pressure for a resolution of the dispute. In a major shift away from Saudi and UAE restraint in attempting to force the international community and multi-nationals from taking sides in the 11-month […]
By James M. Dorsey Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s investment of $1 billion and option to pump a further $480 million into Richard Branson’s ventures in space, confirmed during the prince’s recent visit to the United States, was more than just another headline-grabbing move. By focusing on space sciences, long a field rejected by ultra-conservative Islamic scholars, some of whom insist that the earth is flat, Prince […]
By James M. Dorsey Twin attacks earlier this week on Pakistani security forces in the troubled province of Balochistan cast a light on a sustained and violent campaign against police and paramilitary units as well as Shiite and Christian minorities. The attacks by groups, some of which have had links to Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence apparatus as well as Saudi Arabia, spotlight the Pakistani state’s inability to […]
By James M. Dorsey Stepped up Saudi efforts to forge close diplomatic, economic and cultural ties to Shia-majority Iraq in a bid to counter significant Iranian influence in the country appear to be paying off. The Saudi initiative demonstrates the kingdom’s ability to engage rather than exclusively pursue a muscular, assertive and confrontational policy towards the Islamic republic and its perceived allies. It raises the question whether […]
By James M. Dorsey Bangladesh, in a twist of irony, is looking to Saudi Arabia to fund a $ 1 billion plan to build hundreds of mosques and religious centres to counter militant Islam that for much of the past decade traced its roots to ultra-conservative strands of the faith promoted by a multi-billion dollar Saudi campaign. The Bangladeshi plan constitutes the first effort by a Muslim country to enlist […]
By James M. Dorsey Iranian leaders are struggling, three months after anti-government protests swept the Islamic republic, to ensure that environmental issues that helped sparked a popular uprising in Syria in 2011 leading to a brutal civil war don’t threaten the clergy’s grip on power. Like Syria, Iran has been confronting a drought that has affected much of the country for more than a decade with precipitation dropping to its lowest […]
By James M. Dorsey When Miguel Torres, scion of an iconic Spanish winemaking dynasty, described the impact of the Catalan quest for independence on his more than a century-old business in a letter to wine writer Andrew Jefford, little did he realize that he had put his finger on one of the current world’s most fundamental battles: nationalism and populism vs. inclusive multi-culturalism. It is a struggle that is tearing […]
By James M. Dorsey In his effort to improve Saudi Arabia’s badly tarnished image and project the kingdom as embracing an unidentified form of moderate Islam, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has hinted that he envisions a conservative rather than an ultra-conservative society, but not one in which citizens are fully free to make personal, let alone political choices of their own. Prince Mohammed’s vision, although […]
By James M Dorsey The Middle East has a knack for sucking external powers into its conflicts. China’s ventures into the region have shown how difficult it is to maintain its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. China’s abandonment of non-interference is manifested by its (largely ineffective) efforts to mediate conflicts in South Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan as well as between Israel and Palestine and even between Saudi […]
By James M. Dorsey Saudi Arabia, in an indication that it is serious about shaving off the sharp edges of its Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism, has agreed to surrender control of the Great Mosque in Brussels. The decision follows mounting Belgian criticism of alleged intolerance and supremacism that was being propagated by the mosque’s Saudi administrators as well as social reforms in the kingdom introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, including […]
|By Manish Rai| The recent protests in Iran rang a warning bell for the ruling theocracy in Tehran. What started in Iran’s second largest and holy city of Mashhad over rising prices, transfigured into widespread, unprecedented protests against the theocratic regime in towns and cities across the country. The earlier protests mainly emerged from capital Tehran and some major cities. But the latest ones touch a vast panoply […]
|By Matein Khalid| When I first started on a Treasury bond futures trading desk in New York fresh out of Wharton, a senior mentor once advised to keep track of the four heartbeats of gold finance in real time. The price of money (interest rates), the price of currency (the US dollar), the price of oil and the price of gold. The price of money can be […]
|By Matein Khalid| Dubai based Gulf Islamic Investments (GII) acquired a one million square foot Amazon logistics center in Dortmund, Germany for $144 million. This deal is a testament to the boutique global merchant bank created in Dubai by GII’s co-founder/CEO Pankaj Gupta, who I am honored to call a friend. I consciously model my own firm Asas Capial on the strategic path laid out by GII and […]
By Saifur Rahman Indian investors top the list of foreign nationals with Dh15.6 billion investment in Dubai’s real estate in 2017, according to Dubai Land Department. Although this is higher compared to Dh12 billion invested by Indian nationals in Dubai’s real estate in 2016, this is still lower compared to the peak figure of Dh20 billion invested by Indian nationals in 2015, Dubai Land Department statistics show. Indians […]
By Manish Rai Last year in June Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a land, sea, and air blockade on Qatar for its alleged support to terror outfits and being too close to Iran. The Arab neighbours thought that by imposing this blockade they can pressurise Qatar to set aside its own ambitious foreign policy and toe the line of its bigger neighbours. But during […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Rhetoric casting the future of the Middle East as an existential battle between the two regional powers has soared – particularly on the Saudi side – over the past year. However, a direct military confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia remains unlikely, Control Risks, the specialist global risk consultancy, has warned that businesses in its Middle East risk map for 2018. Iran and Saudi […]
|By Matein Khalid|Emaar Properties will sell 20% of its UAE development portfolio in an initial public offering in November. This is the first IPO in the UAE capital markets in the last three years and follows bellwether offerings such as Emaar Malls and Emaar Misr. Emaar’s Dubai development’s adjusted net value is 24.1 UAE dirhams and I would not be surprised if the post IPO revalues the […]
|By Matein Khalid| Trump’s post Charlottesville remarks, the Barcelona terrorist attacks and Cisco’s results unnerved the US stock market bulls last week. Friday was a surreal moment in the history of Wall Street. It was entirely rational for traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor to cheers and the Dow Jones Index rise 150 points when news broke that Trump had fired his alt-right, white nationalist chief strategist […]
|By Matein Khalid| The financial markets finally cottoned on the increasingly sordid political realities created by the Trump White House. Trump could well be impeached for obstruction of justice if he tried to pressure FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation on disgraced General Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian intelligence before the election. The appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the scandal means Washington is […]
When The Washington Post broke the story this week that President Trump shared highly classified intelligence from a U.S. ally with Russia, not everything the reporters knew made it into print. Halfway through the story, this paragraph referring to the ISIS plot revealed by Trump appeared: “The Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that […]
The grandiose reception seeks to convince Mr. Trump that his priorities are theirs, too, and that they are indispensable partners in fighting terrorism, in confronting Iran, in bolstering American businesses and perhaps even in pursuing peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Continue reading the main story “It is a remarkably buoyant moment for them,” said Stephen A. Seche, a former United States ambassador to Yemen and the executive […]
