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 Arabian Post Staff|Emirates NBD plans to raise its share capital by up to 7.35 billion dirhams ($2 billion) through the issuance of new shares, as Dubai’s largest lender prepares to bid for Turkey’s Denizbank. The bank said in January it had started initial strategic talks with Sberbank about a possible purchase of the Russian lender’s stake in Turkey’s Denizbank. The share hike, announced on Sunday, was […]
By James M Dorsey The Middle East has a knack for sucking external powers into its conflicts. China’s ventures into the region have shown how difficult it is to maintain its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. China’s abandonment of non-interference is manifested by its (largely ineffective) efforts to mediate conflicts in South Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan as well as between Israel and Palestine and even between Saudi […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Emaar Properties recorded a net operating profit of AED 5.704 billion (US$ 1.553 billion) during full-year (January to December) 2017, a growth of 16 per cent over the FY 2016 net operating profit of AED 4.917 billion (US$ 1.339 billion). Total revenue for FY 2017 increased by 21 per cent to AED 18.812 billion (US$ 5.122 billion), over FY 2016 revenue of AED […]
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 Arabian Post Staff| Flight bookings for travel to the Middle East and Africa grew by 10.5 percent in 2017 and growth is set to continue in the first quarter of 2018, as bookings are currently 11.2 percent ahead of where they were at this time last year according to ForwardKeys, the company that helps forecast future travel by analysing around 17 million flight booking transactions a […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|A buoyant GCC Bond and Sukuk market achieved an all-time high issuance of USD 70 billion in 2017, with sustained investor appetite expected in 2018, according to a co-authored white paper from Emirates NBD Asset Management (Dubai) and Fisch Asset Management (Zurich). The paper, titled “The GCC Fixed Income Market: Then and Now” identifies key themes in 2017 and provides an outlook for the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Overall sentiment in the GCC’s construction sector has improved over the last two years by approximately 7 per cent (from 32 per cent to 39 per cent), according to recent findings from Pinsent Masons’ GCC Construction Survey. The findings show that the UAE remains the number one market expected to deliver growth in 2018, with 38 per cent of respondents expecting the country […]
|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 […]
Carillion, the British company building a number of high profile construction projects across the Gulf region, including building part of the infrastructure for Qatar 2022 World Cup, has collapsed. The implications of the development on the Qatar World Cup are yet unknown. British media reported that Carillion collapse is one of the UK’s biggest corporate failures, leaving the future of some of its Middle Eastern projects unclear. The […]
|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 Matein Khalid|The rise in Brent crude to $60 a barrel and the trade volume ballast generated by the world’s first post Lehman synchronized economic recovery is hugely positive for UAE economic growth in 2018. After all, the UAE is unique because Abu Dhabi’s 100 billion barrels of proven oil reserves is complemented by Dubai’s role as the Gulf’s financial, logistics, aviation, shopping and services hub. The […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Analysts fear that the GCC mobile phone market could see a slump in the wake of the 2018 VAT roll-out, as it happened in many countries, which saw a pre-VAT buildup of inventories, followed by a major slump in sales. Such concerns come at a time when the region’s mobile phone market is already in a state of flux, with IDC’s latest Quarterly Mobile […]
|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 Arabian Post Staff| ADNOC Distribution, the retail and fuel-selling arm of Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil company, will be valued at $8.5 billion — around the middle of a range of possible valuations — when trading opens on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) next week. The sale of 10 percent of the unit in an initial public offering (IPO) was oversubscribed “multiple” times by institutional investors, and […]
|By Alaa Alghamdi| One of the most powerful ways in which individuals can understand the worldview of another culture is through art. Even if economics, politics, and lifestyles may divide different nations, art can provide a common, sympathetic connection and remind others that similarities between human beings are greater than differences. This is one of the underlying rationales for Desert to Delta, an exhibition of art and cinema […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| All eyes are on the next GCC annual GCC summit to be held in Kuwait on December 5 and 6. This is the first annual summit after the rift with Qatar dogged the pan-Gulf alliance. Gulf officials said the summit will go ahead despite an ongoing dispute between GCC members Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, on one side, and Qatar on the other. The […]
|By Matein Khalid|I am often asked by investors to articulate my “philosophy” of real estate investing. Tough question. My ideal deal is one where it is possible to buy brick and mortar assets at 60 – 70% of replacement cost. This usually occurs in the aftermath of a banking crisis or economic shock. This was the case in Florida homes in 2009 or Spanish office space in […]
|By Alaa Al Ghamdi| One of the most common distinctions made in the discourse of international relations is that of hard versus soft power. Hard power refers to traditional modes of influencing international relations through force, such as through military might or economic power (such as withholding a critical natural resource like oil). Soft power refers to cultural power, such as the arts, intellectual ideas, and tourism. Saudi […]
|By Matein Khalid| US and global equities surged on news of the US House of Representatives pass the tax reform bill, Cisco and Walmart posted blowout earnings and a potential bidding war emerged for Fox’s media assets. The rally on Thursday followed a week of carnage in the US high yield debt markets, flattening of the US Treasury yield curve and losses in the major stock market indices worldwide. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Saudi Arabia’s freezing of bank accounts is credit negative for banks, Moody’s said in a review. On 8 November, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) froze a large number of bank accounts belonging to princes, ministers and businessmen who were arrested as part of an investigation by a new anti-corruption committee that began on 4 November. The rating agency said these actions are credit […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| In a major endorsement to Saudi economic reforms initiated by Crown Prince Mohammad Salman, a top executive of American financial giant Bank of America Merrill Lynch said Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation will be “unstoppable” and there has already been a positive shift in the Kingdom’s business culture. Hootan Yazhari, managing director of the bank’s Dubai-based research department, said there are key moves being […]
