Luxury brands are stepping up the battle for travelling shoppers with more outlets at airports and on cruise ships, tapping into one of the fastest growing sections of the market that looks set to keep booming thanks to soaring numbers of Asian tourists. Revenues from travel retail, which also includes sales on airplanes, rose 9.4 percent in 2012 to $55.8 billion, according to a market study by […]
Surging vegetable prices led wholesale price inflation to a 14-month high in November, reinforcing expectations Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will have to raise interest rates again this week at a time the country’s economy is flagging. Policymakers have been grappling with high prices for food staples such as onions and potatoes even after the RBI raised interest rates by a quarter percentage point in each of […]
Japan and Southeast Asian countries called for freedom of the air and sea on Saturday, as China’s military assertiveness raises regional tensions and after U.S. and Chinese warships narrowly avoided collision in the disputed South China Sea. China’s recent announcement of an air defense zone covering disputed islands in the East China Sea and its territorial claims in the South China Sea have raised concerns that a […]
India’s (SENSEX) benchmark stock index surged to a record and the rupee climbed to a four-month high after the nation’s main opposition party won the state polls. The S&P BSE Sensex rose 1.5 percent to 21,311.03 at 12:03 p.m. in Mumbai and the currency touched 60.8475 per dollar, the strongest level since Aug. 12. Ten-year bonds ended a seven-day losing run. ICICI Bank soared 4.6 percent, sending […]
Booming housing markets in emerging Asia have pushed global residential property prices to a new peak, according to a report on Friday. Consultancy Knight Frank’s global house price index rose 4.6 percent over the 12 months to the end of September, taking it 4 percent higher than its previous peak in the second quarter of 2008. “The index’s strong performance has been assisted not just by headline […]
Middle East crude for immediate delivery traded at its biggest premium in two years to later shipments last month after Royal Dutch Shell bought an unprecedented number of cargoes. The price gap between the earliest loadings of the benchmark Dubai grade and those for two months later climbed to $2.82 a barrel on Nov. 21, the widest spread since 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The […]
The Palestinian poet and filmmaker Hind Shoufani moved to Dubai for the same reasons that have attracted millions of other expatriates to the glitzy emirate. In 2009, after decades in the storied and mercurial Arab capital cities of Damascus and Beirut and a sojourn in New York, she wanted to live somewhere stable and cosmopolitan where she also could earn a living. Five years later, she’s won […]
Asian shares were in a buoyant mood, with Japanese stocks hitting their highest close in nearly six years after the yen fell sharply on relatively positive U.S. economic data, while two major regional currencies slumped. Financial bookmakers expected major European indexes to open flat to modestly higher on Thursday . U.S. jobless claims unexpectedly fell last week and the November Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer confidence improved […]
Emerging Asian currencies took a battering and regional shares tumbled to six-week lows on Wednesday as mixed signals from Federal Reserve officials raised fresh concerns about an imminent rollback of the U.S. central bank’s asset-buying stimulus. The dour mood looked set to carry over into Europe, where financial spread betters predicted Britain’s FTSE 100 to fall as much as 0.7 percent, Germany’s DAX off 0.4 percent and […]
Merlin Entertainment, the Madame Tussauds and amusement parks operator, in which Dubai International Capital once held 28 percent stake, is setting up a Legoland park in Dubai along with other potential sites in Japan and South Korea. This is part of the company’s plans to expand globally, which will see the setting up Madame Tussauds in San Francisco and Beijing next year. Dubai had sold its stake […]
A surge in passenger car sales across most Gulf Arab countries underlines the momentum behind the region’s consumer spending boom, and sales are likely to continue rising strongly for at least a few years, automobile sector executives said. Car sales are an important indicator of business activity in a region where official macroeconomic data, such as gross domestic product, is often unreliable and released with delays of […]
Fosun International Ltd., a Chinese conglomerate that invests in everything from steel to pharmaceuticals to Club Med, has agreed to buy the office tower at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza from JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a whopping $750 million. This isn’t an isolated incident. Zhang Xin, a billionaire property developer who grew rich building Beijing’s central business district, recently bought about 20 percent of the General Motors […]
Asian stocks marked time on Wednesday with nervous investors praying that frantic talks in Washington to avert a U.S. debt default could lead to a deal before the Oct 17 deadline, after which the government would run out of ways to borrow. U.S. Senate aides said an agreement to lift the government’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit was near but details still needed to be worked out, leaving markets clinging […]
Asian shares rose to their highest in nearly five months on Tuesday on heightened hopes for a deal in Washington to reopen the U.S. government and avert a possible debt default, though investors will remain wary until they see the final outcome. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.8 percent to its highest since May 23. Japan’s Nikkei share average added 0.5 percent, hitting […]
Yields for real estate in Dubai have compressed and investors are now open of acquiring assets at yields closer to emerging Europe and higher than established markets such as Moscow, the 2013 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Real Estate Investor Sentiment Survey by Jones Lang LaSalle said. The survey indicated strong demand amongst regional investors for Dubai real estate, leading to the creation of a seller’s […]
Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen. Failure by the world’s largest borrower to pay its debt — […]
Asian shares, oil prices and the dollar came under pressure on Monday as politicians in Washington showed no signs of making progress to resolve the U.S. budget standoff, while safe-haven gold inched higher. Financial bookmakers expected European shares to follow Asia lower and open down between 0.4 and 0.5 percent. Democrats and Republicans remained far apart on ending the government shutdown, let alone reaching a deal on […]
Barclays completed its 5.8 billion pound ($9.4 billion) fundraising on Friday to meet a capital shortfall identified by its regulator, after almost 95 percent of the British bank’s investors stumped up more cash. Barclays launched its rights issue three weeks ago, prompted by the British regulator’s demand that it improve its leverage ratio – a measure of its capital to assets – to 3 percent by mid-2014. […]
Investors who behave conventionally are likely to get burned if the political standoff over the federal budget and the debt ceiling ends up forcing the United States to default. But portfolio managers and strategists say that if investors put their trading hats on, they may be able to protect themselves and even possibly come out ahead. “The next two weeks could cause a lot of pain in […]
Dressed in a green surgical gown and cap, British restaurateur Rekha Patel cradled her newborn daughter at the Akanksha clinic in northwestern India as her husband Daniel smiled warmly, peering in through a glass door. “I can’t believe we have our own child at last,” said Patel, 42, gazing in wonderment at five-day-old Gabrielle. “We are really grateful to our surrogate mother who managed to get pregnant […]
The dollar held near a 7-1/2 month low against a basket of currencies on Tuesday as much of the U.S. government began to shut down after Congress failed to agree a compromise bill to fund government operations. Competing spending measures flew back and forth between Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Democratic-led Senate late into Monday night in Washington but Congress deadlocked over efforts by some Republicans to […]
Cash-rich Asian and Middle Eastern lenders are taking a larger share of the $100 billion global aircraft financing market as Western rivals step back due to the liquidity crunch and stricter regulations, a top executive at Airbus said. European commercial banks, previously the primary funding source for airlines, have substantially cut their exposure to the aviation sector after the continent’s debt crisis, leaving a funding gap for […]
U.S. stock futures and the dollar came under pressure on Monday as a shutdown of the U.S. government seemed ever more likely, while the euro had political troubles of its own as the Italian government teetered on the edge of collapse. Hardly helping was a surprise downward revision to activity in China’s factory sector. While the final HSBC Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) did edge up to 50.2 […]
Concern over budget and debt negotiations in Washington weakened the dollar on Friday and kept a lid on gains in world shares stemming from a positive batch of U.S. jobs numbers. Investors are worried that political maneuvering over the passage of bills needed to keep the U.S. government running beyond September 30 and avoid a debt default could threaten a fragile economic recovery. “Everyone instinctively wants to […]
