A deadly respiratory virus that originated in Saudi Arabia two years ago has reached Iran, infecting two sisters in the southeast province of Kerman, the health ministry reported. In a statement posted on the ministry’s website, it said two other members of the same family had the symptoms of the disease, known as Middle East Respiratory Syndome or MERS, but their cases had not been confirmed. According […]
|Wael Mahdi| The official who designed Saudi Arabia’s strategy to lure $109 billion in investment for solar energy left his post, raising questions over how quickly the effort will progress. Khalid al-Sulaiman, a vice president of the King Abdullah City for Renewable and Atomic Energy, has departed because the government didn’t renew his contract, three people with knowledge of the decision said. Another person close to the […]
DAMASCUS, Syria — For Younes al-Nasr, a lifelong train lover, the Hejaz railway station here in the heart of the Syrian capital is a repository of shelved ambitions. Every day, Mr. Nasr, 68, a Transportation Ministry employee, pads around his offices in the Ottoman-era building, where light filters through red, yellow and blue stained glass. He imagines the past — the few short years a century ago […]
The surge in oil prices driven by Chinese demand has added $1 trillion to output in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries over 10 years, according to HSBC Holdings Plc. The six-member bloc’s gross domestic product increased to $1.7 trillion between 2003 and 2013, bringing per capital GDP to an average of $35,000, HSBC said in a report on the effect of a “globalizing China” on the Middle […]
Qatar’s Ooredoo has signed a $1 billion five-year revolving credit facility, the telecommunications operator said in a statement on Thursday. Ooredoo will use the new facility to repay a $750 million loan due in May 2015, with the rest to be allocated for general business purposes, a filing to Qatar’s stock exchange said. Seventeen banks helped to fund the loan, including Barclays , HSBC and Qatar National […]
Islamic finance has been one of the fastest-growing sectors in global finance but the industry has yet to shake off perceptions about high costs and complexity that are holding back some issuers. Sukuk, or Islamic bonds that follow religious principles such as a ban on interest and speculation, are now a major funding tool for companies in the Middle East and southeast Asia, and are becoming increasingly […]
Some 10 days before the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in 2011, a small startup accelerator was born with grand ambitions to serve the region’s entrepreneurs. Those ambitions had to be put on hold for six months with the ensuing political turmoil in the country. But now, in less than three years, Cairo’s Flat6Labs has established a platform, and most notably a brand, across the Middle […]
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani, who played a key role in Glencore International Plc’s takeover of Xstrata Plc, is returning to dealmaking a year after his ouster as prime minister and head of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. Sheikh Hamad is injecting 1.75 billion euros ($2.4 billion) into Deutsche Bank AG through his Paramount Holdings Services Ltd. investment vehicle, the Frankfurt-based bank said May 18. […]
Dubai’s index makes its one-day decline in eight months on Monday and technical indicators suggest it will fall further, while most other Middle East markets also retreated. Dubai fell 5.5 percent to 4,856 points, its lowest close in a month and biggest one-day loss since Aug. 27. “I think we’ll see more selling – the key is that Dubai broke and then closed below 5,000 points,” said […]
Scientists leading the fight against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome say the next critical front will be understanding how the virus behaves in people with milder infections, who may be spreading the illness without being aware they have it. Establishing that may be critical to stopping the spread of MERS, which emerged in the Middle East in 2012 and has so far infected more than 500 patients in […]
Qatar is pledging labor-law reform in response to what critics have called systemic exploitation that traps thousands of foreign workers in low-wage jobs and squalid living conditions. Construction workers at a building site in Doha, Qatar Getty Images The reforms proposed Wednesday include an abolition of the so-called kafala sponsorship system and removing the need for a visa to exit the country. They come as Qatar prepares […]
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — The United States Defense Department is considering a request from the Army to transfer Private Chelsea Manning, convicted of leaking national security data to WikiLeaks, to a civilian prison so that she can get treatment for her gender disorder, a Pentagon official said Wednesday. Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had approved a request from […]
Kingdom Tower, the Saudi skyscraper set to be the world’s tallest building, will probably have construction funding in place by the end of the first half, the developer’s chief executive officer said today. The company is in talks to bring in Riyadh-based Alinma Bank as an adviser and lender, Mounib Hammoud, CEO of Jeddah Economic Co., told reporters today on the sidelines of a conference in Dubai. […]
Dennis Lockhart, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, spoke to the American Business Council of Dubai on Sunday. Reuters Large Middle Eastern holders of U.S. Treasuries shouldn’t worry about the stability of their investments especially as the U.S. economy shows more signs of improvement following the worst recession in a generation, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said on Sunday. U.S. government debt has long been a key […]
|By TAP Staff|Traditionally renowned for its love of fragrances, the Middle East region continues to be one of the key focus areas for international fragrance brands. With research from leading analysts Euromonitor International indicating that per capita consumption of premium fragrances in key markets such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE overshadows that of markets such as the US and the UK, it’s not surprising that the […]
SolarReserve, a closely held U.S. power plant developer, is studying whether to bid for a 100 megawatt facility in Dubai and looking at projects in Jordan, Chief Executive Officer Kevin Smith said in an interview in Dubai. The company expects to hear by the end of the year whether it, GDF Suez (GSZ) unit International Power Ltd. and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar have won the right to build […]
Dubai’s bourse has outpaced other Gulf markets by a wide margin in terms of companies’ first-quarter profit growth, data show, supporting its position as the top performer in the region. The emirate’s benchmark soared 108 percent last year and is up 57 percent this year, making it one of the world’s top-performing stock markets over the past 17 months. Although some analysts believe the market is overbought, […]
|By TAP Staff|Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers today offered to make an upfront payment equal to approximately 10 percent of creditors’ claims as part of a settlement proposal to a group of banks and other financial institutions. The claims asserted by banks, totaling billions of dollars, arise out of liabilities incurred through a massive fraud perpetrated by Maan Al Sanea when he was head of the Money […]
As Dubai freight-forwarding firm Able Logistics Group began preparing early this year to go public, it conducted a leveraged recapitalisation, taking on fresh bank debt so it could pay a cash dividend to shareholders. By the standards of developed Western markets, the transaction was routine. But for the Middle East it was an unusually creative deal, a sign that the region’s private equity industry is finally building […]
Dubai shares jumped the most since January after first-quarter earnings boosted investor sentiment. Qatar’s gauge also advanced. The DFM General Index (DFMGI) surged 3.3 percent, the biggest jump since Jan. 23, to 5,247.29 at the close. The measure has soared 56 percent this year, making it the best performer among more than 90 benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg. Dubai Islamic Bank advanced 5.5 percent after first-quarter profit more […]
The United Arab Emirates will have its own stand-alone exchange-traded funds with this week’s launch of the iShares MSCI UAE Capped ETF (UAE). On May 30th, both Qatar and the UAE will get promoted by the MSCI index folks being frontier markets to becoming full-fledged emerging markets. As of this year’s first quarter, the UAE and Qatar occupied the second- and third-largest country weights in the MSCI […]
The first U.S. case of Middle East Respiratory Virus (MERS), a viral respiratory illness, has been confirmed within U.S. borders, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday A SARS-like virus, MERS was first detected in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Dr Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on a conference call the first U.S. case of […]
When French wine and cognac bottle maker Saverglass decided to expand three years ago, it chose a relatively remote, less affluent location in the United Arab Emirates for its plant rather than the business hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The company sited its 75 million euro ($105 million) factory, which produces some 400,000 bottles a day, in the desert emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, an hour’s […]
Middle East fund managers have become more cautious about stock markets in the United Arab Emirates because of concern that Dubai may be overheating, a monthly Reuters survey shows. The survey of 15 leading investment managers, conducted over the past 10 days, found they are still bullish about the region’s stock markets in general: 33 percent expect to increase their Middle East equity allocations in the next […]
It is now clear that the chances of a fire sale of Dubai’s ‘jewels in the crown’ — a reference to blue-chip assets such as Emirates airline and Jebel Ali Free Zone — stand completely mitigated as the emirate takes firm control of its financial situation. Analysts are in near agreement that Dubai’s sovereign debt is stabilising and deleveraging is progressing. A definite improvement has happened in […]
A sense of euphoria can be felt as you walk onto the Dubai Financial Market’s (DFM) trading floor. Excited investors sit huddled at tables, eyes fixed on trading screens. Occasionally the floor erupts in applause as certain stocks shoot up to target levels. A local investor in his fifties who gives his name as Abu Hany, dressed in the traditional white robes of the Gulf, describes himself […]
Qatar has resolved its dispute with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, according to Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohamed Al-Attiyah. The spat was nothing more than “differences in opinion,” Attiyah told reporters in Kuwait. The resolution came at an April 17 meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, and the results aren’t “considered concessions by anyone,” he said. It’s up to Qatar’s fellow Gulf Arab countries […]
Emaar Properties, Dubai’s largest listed real estate developer, predicted on Wednesday that its profits would more than quadruple by 2018 as the emirate’s economy booms and the company’s overseas business expands. The company, about 29 percent owned by the Dubai government, is seen by many investors as a proxy for the emirate’s economy, which relies heavily on real estate development, tourism and the retail industry – sectors […]
| By K Raveendran| There has been a considerable media buzz over the recent Saudi announcement that work to build the a kilometre tall Kingdom Tower in Jeddah is set to start within a few days. The regional media, in particular, is celebrating the prospect of the new tower deposing Dubai’s iconic Burj Khalifa, currently the world’s tallest skyscraper. According to the project consultants, the Saudi tower […]
Qatar reduced the number of stadiums it plans to build for the 2022 soccer World Cup by a third amid rising costs and delays. The country, which won the right in 2010 to host the world’s most-watched sporting event, plans to build eight stadiums for the games, Ghanim Al Kuwari, the organizing committee’s senior manager for projects, said at a conference in Doha yesterday. The country originally […]
