Emaar Properties will launch its highly anticipated initial public offer of at least 15 percent of its shopping malls and retailing unit on Dubai’s main stock market in September, and plans to list the shares in October. The offer would be one of the largest equity sales in the Middle East since 2008, underlining Dubai’s recovery from a credit crisis that forced many state-linked developers to stall […]
Barack Obama got a warm reception in Rhode Island last week, yet his lack of strategy has dismayed many others Photo: AP Just in case you thought that the Leader of the Free World was secretly harbouring a calculated, well-developed plan for bringing Isil under control and putting Russia’s imperial leader back in his box, Barack Obama banged that idea firmly on the head last week. He gave […]
KUWAIT. A recent report issued by KFH Research, a subsidery for KFH Group, sees continued positive outlook for the Kuwaiti construction industry, on the back of strong domestic demand in the Kuwaiti economy and a pick-up in government capital spending. Overview and Outlook “While we remain fundamentally cautious about the country’s medium-term investment outlook, we note that higher growth in bank lending over the last few months […]
LEBANON. Byblos Bank issued today, in cooperation with the American University of Beirut through the Olayan School of Business, the results of the Byblos Bank/AUB Consumer Confidence Index for the first half of 2014. The results show that the Byblos Bank/AUB Consumer Confidence Index improved marginally in January and February, picked up pace in March and April, and regressed in May and June 2014. The Index reached […]
By Pratik Deb In the beginning of the last decade, the Left front government of West Bengal felt the urge to do ‘industrialisation’ with an additional fervour and gusto. Sure, there was Chief Minister’s annual trip to London, sure there were those occasional government ceremonies with a gathering of a few local industrialists, sure the authority was going on putting up the show of being proactive and […]
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE August 29, 2014 GENEVA — The number of refugees from the Syrian civil war has risen above three million, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday, calling the crisis “the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era.” More than a million people have fled in the last 12 months alone, the refugee agency said, counting only those who registered as refugees. The total number is believed to […]
A cluster bomb was spotted at the Taftanaz air base in Syria after rebels seized the site last year. By RICK GLADSTONE August 27, 2014 Cluster bombs, outlawed munitions that kill and maim indiscriminately, have caused more casualties in the Syrian civil war than in the 2006 Lebanon conflict, when Israel’s heavy use of the weapons hastened the treaty banning them two years later, a monitoring group said Wednesday. […]
DP World Jebel Ali, UAE. DP World After posting a decent set of numbers in the first half, a company can be excused if it sounds optimistic about its growth outlook. In DP World’s case – the numbers are more than decent. The Dubai-based ports operator, one of the largest globally, reported a solid 26% jump in six-month earnings as it added new capacity amid a pick […]
Two months ago, the U.K. became the first Western nation to sell Islamic bonds. But missing from the list of advisers and arrangers on the £200 million transaction were any of the country’s six shariah-compliant banks. One of them, Bank of London and the Middle East, doesn’t appear to have any hard feelings about it and applauds the rise in sovereign sukuks as they will help accelerate […]
West Texas Intermediate traded near the lowest closing price in seven months after speculators cut bullish bets and as supply rises in the U.S., the world’s biggest consumer. Brent was steady in London. Futures were little changed in New York after falling 0.3 percent yesterday. Crude inventories probably shrank by 1.8 million barrels to 360.7 million last week, a Bloomberg survey shows before an Energy Information Administration […]
UAE. With its oil wealth, population growth and strong demand for all manner of industrial and consumer goods, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is an attractive market for many manufacturers. There are, however, potential pitfalls in doing business in the region, particularly when it comes to appointing local agents to distribute products in the region. Many states in the MENA region have enacted commercial […]
|By TAP Staff| Forbes has ranked Dubai ahead of Los Angeles, Beijing and Sydney as the most influential city in the world. Dubai was ranked seventh on a list topped by London. The rankings are based on eight factors including the amount of foreign direct investment they have attracted; the concentration of corporate headquarters; how many particular business niches they dominate; air connectivity (ease of travel to […]
A revival of international bond issues from the Gulf is set to draw heavy demand from local and foreign investors, despite the latest geopolitical upheavals in the Middle East and the approach of higher U.S. interest rates. Gulf bond issuance has dried up since early July, because of a traditional summer lull in local investor activity as well as global market instability due to the crisis in […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Saudi Arabia set out draft proposals on foreign-shareholder limits as one of the world’s most restricted stock markets prepares to open its doors for the first time to investors outside the region. The Capital Market Authority may cap foreign ownership of a single stock to 49 percent, it said in plans posted on the Riyadh-based regulator’s website today. It may also set a 5 percent […]
Saudi Arabia set out draft proposals on foreign-shareholder limits as one of the world’s most restricted stock markets prepares to open its doors for the first time to investors outside the region. The Capital Market Authority may cap foreign ownership of a single stock to 49 percent, it said in plans posted on the Riyadh-based regulator’s website today. It may also set a 5 percent limit for […]
Here’s one of the usual everyday life frustrations if you live in Saudi Arabia: You want to eat cereal. You open the fridge and realize you’re out of milk. You get dressed, get in your car and drive to the supermarket. Then the moment your reach the supermarket, they close for prayer. The kingdom is the only Muslim country in the world where all businesses must be […]
People watched as rescue workers searched for victims under the rubble of a house in Rafah that witnesses said was destroyed on Thursday in an Israeli airstrike that killed three senior Hamas military commanders. By JODI RUDOREN and FARES AKRAM August 21, 2014 JERUSALEM — Israeli airstrikes killed three senior commanders of the armed wing of Hamas early Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, Israeli and Palestinian officials […]
Op-Ed Contributor By MICHAEL SINGH August 19, 2014 WASHINGTON — President Obama surprised many recently when he diagnosed the crisis gripping Iraq as partly an economic one, noting that Iraqi Sunnis were “detached from the global economy” and thus frustrated in achieving their aspirations. While Iraq’s chaos has many sources, the president is nevertheless on to something; and it’s not just Iraqi Sunnis, but the entire Middle East that […]
Militant Group Says It Killed American Journalist in Syria James Foley, in a photo from the website FreeJamesFoley.org, in Aleppo, Syria, in November 2012, the month he disappeared. By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI August 19, 2014 The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria posted a video on Tuesday that it said showed the beheading of James Foley, an American journalist who was kidnapped in Syria nearly two years ago, according to […]
August 19, 2014 Open Source By ROBERT MACKEY After St. Louis county police officers in full battle gear trained sniper rifles on peaceful protesters in the suburb of Ferguson last week, and then proceeded to douse the streets in tear gas and round up journalists, a Russia analyst named Mark Adomanis observed that images of a crackdown on dissent in the United States would make life easier […]
Islamic State insurgents released a video on Tuesday purportedly showing the beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley, who had gone missing in Syria nearly two years ago, and images of another U.S. journalist whose life they said depended on U.S. action in Iraq. The video, titled “A Message To America,” was posted on social media sites. It was not immediately possible to verify its authenticity. Foley, who […]
Seventy-year-old Saudi Arabian stock speculator Mohamed al-Otaibi says he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the crash of 2006, but he’s back trading again as the Arab world’s biggest bourse prepares to open to direct foreign investment. The activities of Otaibi and many thousands like him mean there will be a clash of investment cultures when international institutions enter the $580 billion Saudi market early next […]
Two weeks, three continents, and 100 meetings. That — and founder Jack Ma celebrating his 50th birthday on the road — is what it will take for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to pull off the largest initial public offering in U.S. history. The Chinese e-commerce company is weighing a plan to start marketing the share sale to investors on Sept. 3, with management traveling across Asia, Europe […]
Dubai’s two biggest builders are turning to bank borrowing to help fund projects as a rise in late payments from their customers takes the shine off a booming construction market. Arabtec Holding PJSC, the contractor that helped push Dubai stocks into a bear market in June, said money owed by clients rose to 8.8 billion dirhams ($2.4 billion) through the second quarter from 7.2 billion dirhams at […]
