|By TAP Staff| Dubai developer Limitless has failed to repay over $500 million, which it had promised to pay banks from the proceeds of a land sale in Saudi Arabia as part of the debt restructuring deal with the banks and this has apparently caused concern among the banks. Last week Bloomberg had reported that the developer should have paid about $517 million to banks more than […]
|By Matein Khalid| I was in a pensive-philosophic mood last week as I decompressed from a trip to a hauntingly beautiful post Soviet country in the Caucasus, the land that produced Koba from Gori and Prince Pyotr Bagration, the fallen hero of Tsar Alexander’s imperial guard at Borodino. Yet Georgia gave me time and perspective to think about the financial firestorms on Wall Street, Marounuchi, the Gulf […]
|By Matein Khalid| Saudi Arabia has fascinated me since I first met Hani AZ Yamani as a teenage student all those years ago at Wharton. Hani’s father was Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, legendary Saudi Oil Minister (1962-86) under Kings Faisal, Khalid and Fahd. Sheikh Yamani managed the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, survived a terrorist assault in Vienna by Carlos the Jackal, midwifed the birth of Saudi […]
|TAP Special| The UAE healthcare sector witnessed another landmark deal when Aster DM Healthcare acquired an additional 57 per cent stake in Sanad Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, raising its total ownership stake to 97 per cent. The AED 900 Million (US$ 245 Million) investment in the Kingdom brings the total number of Aster DM Healthcare hospitals to six in the Gulf. Sanad Hospital has seen steady […]
|By Matein Khalid| 2015 has been a horror story for emerging markets and Asian shares have not escaped the fallout from the 40% plunge in Shanghai/Shenzhen since June. Yet financial markets discount the future while UAE investors invariably extrapolate the recent past. So even while I resurrect the ghosts of 1998 when Suharto’s regime fell amid anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta, South Korea was forced to accept a […]
SAUDI ARABIA. JLL, the world’s leading real estate investment and advisory firm, today released its third quarter (Q3 2015) Riyadh and Jeddah Real Estate Market Overview reports that asses the latest trends in the office, residential, retail and hotel sectors. Mr Jamil Ghaznawi, National Director and Country Head of JLL KSA, commented: “The Riyadh real estate market has maintained a steady performance this quarter. The office sector […]
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi security forces arrested a Syrian man accused of plotting attacks and his Filipino accomplice in a raid on an illegal explosives factory in Riyadh, the Interior Ministry said Saturday, according to the state news agency SPA. The ministry said the two people arrested in Wednesday’s raid belonged to a “deviant group” — a term used by Saudi authorities to refer to Al […]
Saudi Arabia has withdrawn as much as $70 billion from global asset managers as OPEC’s largest oil producer seeks to plug its budget deficit, according to financial services market intelligence company Insight Discovery. “Fund managers we’ve spoken to estimate SAMA has pulled out between $50 billion to $70 billion from global asset managers over the past six months,” Nigel Sillitoe, chief executive officer of the Dubai-based firm, […]
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, […]
Two years on from its launch in the city, ride-hailing service Uber is using its Middle East & Africa headquarters in Dubai to lay the groundwork for expanding in the region–through more than just operating in new cities. Since August 2013, the US-based company, which connects drivers and passengers through smartphone apps, has commenced operations within the GCC in Doha, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah and Saudi Arabia’s […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Arab kingdoms of the Persian Gulf have some the world’s highest per capita incomes. Their leaders speak passionately about the plight of Syrians, and their state-funded news media cover the Syrian civil war without cease. Yet as millions of Syrian refugees languish elsewhere in the Middle East and many have risked their lives to reach Europe or died along the way, Gulf nations […]
The Health Ministry said Thursday that 15 more people had died after contracting the Middle East respiratory syndrome, known as MERS, in the past seven days amid a surge of cases in the capital, Riyadh. The kingdom registered 47 new cases in the past seven days, all but two in Riyadh. That raises the total number nationwide to 1,165, with 64 receiving treatment and 603 fully recovered. […]
RIYADH // President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi has commended the UAE’s contributions in Yemen and praised the level of relations between the countries. The Yemeni leader said his meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, during his recent visit to the UAE had “widened the horizons of the distinguished relations between the two countries”. Mr Hadi […]
SANA, Yemen — After five months of war in which more than 4,000 people have been killed, Yemen’s government, exiled in Saudi Arabia, faces a fateful decision: leverage recent battlefield gains to negotiate a cease-fire with a weakened Houthi rebel movement, or try to rout the rebels once and for all. Backed by air support and ground troops from Persian Gulf nations, fighters allied with the government […]
ABU DHABI // Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, on Wednesday held talks with Yemen’s visiting leader on the future of his country and plans to help rebuild it. Yemeni president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi arrived on Wednesday for a two-day visit including talks with Sheikh Mohammed, also Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The two discussed progress made by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, […]
The days of very easy money are drawing to a close in the rich Gulf Arab oil-exporting economies as money market rates start to rise, partly because of the damage which cheap oil is doing to government finances. Loose liquidity created by inflows of oil money pushed short-term rates in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and neighbouring states to record lows last year, fuelling frenzied competition […]
SAUDI ARABIA. JLL, the world’s leading real estate investment and advisory firm, today has released its second quarter (Q2 2015) Jeddah Real Estate Overview report that assess the latest trends in the office, residential, retail and hotel sectors. Mr Jamil Ghaznawi, National Director and Country Head of JLL KSA, commented: “In the second quarter, the Jeddah real estate market remained in the upturn stage of its cycle. […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Saudi Arabia’s non-oil private sector began the third quarter of 2015 on a positive note, with business conditions improving at the fastest pace in three months during July. Stronger growth of the sector as a whole was mainly driven by sharper expansions in both output and new orders, while purchasing activity also rose more quickly. However, data for employment bucked the general trend, as the […]
SAUDI ARABIA. JLL, the world’s leading real estate investment and advisory firm, today released its second quarter (Q2 2015) Riyadh Real Estate Market Overview that asses the latest trends in the office, residential, retail and hotel sectors in Saudi Arabia’s largest city. Mr Jamil Ghaznawi, National Director and Country Head of JLL KSA, commented: “there has been relatively little change in the real estate market in Riyadh […]
SAUDI ARABIA. A recent study released by Glowork, the leading organization for women employment in the region highlights female’s perceptions before graduation. A total of 2000 women from 10 universities Kingdom-wide were surveyed. There were some interesting statistics revealed as it was broken down by city. 49% of women in Riyadh expected to work in a supervisor or manager level when graduating, it was much higher in […]
The yield on bonds of Abu Dhabi has decreased four basis points since 22 July, the day the UAE announced the move to remove fuel subsidies, Bloomberg reported. While the average yield on developing-country debt has increased 13 basis points since the 22 July announcement of fuel-price deregulation, the yield on bonds of Abu Dhabi has declined four basis points. The yield on bonds of the neighboring […]
ADEN // An Emirati plane landed in Aden at dawn on Friday, bringing humanitarian aid to the southern Yemeni city only hours after its airport came under rocket fire from rebels. In total, four aircraft have arrived at the port city since the symbolic reopening of Aden’s international airport on Wednesday, which followed nearly four months of fierce fighting. The UAE plane delivered medical supplies from the […]
INTERNATIONAL. In my “Net Assessment of the World,” I argued that four major segments of the European and Asian landmass were in crisis: Europe, Russia, the Middle East (from the Levant to Iran) and China. Each crisis was different; each was at a different stage of development. Collectively the crises threatened to destabilize the Eurasian landmass, the Eastern Hemisphere, and potentially generate a global crisis. They do […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The security forces in Saudi Arabia have carried out a nationwide dragnet in recent months that resulted in the arrest of more than 400 people believed to be connected to the Islamic State jihadist group, the Saudi Interior Ministry said on Saturday. The people who were arrested were linked to recent attacks inside the kingdom; they planned attacks or monitored potential targets, or used […]
