/By Matein Khalid/The oil market has been a rollercoaster in 2016. A global financial panic triggered by China’s yuan depreciation caused Brent crude to fall below $30 a barrel in late January. I was amazed at the sheer scale of the speculative short positions accumulated by oil traders and hedge funds in both West Texas and Brent futures markets, the highest since the oil crash of 2008. The […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Saudi Arabia’s non-oil private sector continued on its upward trajectory in August, with business conditions improving to the greatest extent in a year. Output and new business remained the key growth drivers – both rose sharply and more quickly than in July. Employment and input stocks also increased, with a number of companies looking to expand capacity in line with rising workloads. Meanwhile, price pressures […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — As Muslims from around the world head toward Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia and Iran have escalated their sectarian rivalry over which country represents the true Islam. Iran unleashed the first barb Monday, when the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Saudi Arabia of deliberately killing pilgrims during last year’s hajj. He called for the world’s Muslims to reconsider Saudi […]
/By Matien Khalid/I have been bullish on emerging market debt as an asset class since last autumn. Even though the Chinese yuan devaluation was toxic, this asset class is up 12% in 2016, thanks to almost $5 billion in cash inflows. The tax amnesty in Indonesia, the political changes in Brazil after President Dilma’s impeachment, the election of a center-right pro-business government and $16 billion sovereign debt […]
By Joseph Menn | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Apple Inc issued a patch on Thursday to fix a dangerous security flaw in iPhones and iPads after researchers discovered that a prominent United Arab Emirates dissident’s phone had been targeted with a previously unknown method of hacking. The thwarted attack on the human rights activist, Ahmed Mansoor, used a text message that invited him to click on […]
SANA, Yemen — Doctors without Borders announced Thursday that it would evacuate its staff from six hospitals in northern Yemen because it could not get assurances that its hospitals would not be bombed again. The group blamed the Saudi-led military coalition for the decision, calling its bombing “indiscriminate” and its assurances of protection for health workers “unreliable,” citing the aerial bombardment of Abs Hospital in Hajjah Province […]
INTERNATIONAL. Global bank rating trends were negative again in 1H16 for the fourth consecutive negative six-month period, says Fitch Ratings. The global distribution of Outlooks deteriorated in 1H16 as Negative Outlooks (22%) far outweighed Positives (5%), a level not seen since 2009. Emerging market (EM) banks experienced the majority of negative ratings trends, heavily influenced by rating actions in Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. In EMs, […]
CAIRO — Seven people were killed in Saudi Arabia when a missile fired from Yemen struck a commercial district in the city of Najran, the kingdom’s official news media confirmed on Wednesday. The attack, on Tuesday evening, appeared to have been carried out by Houthi militias in northern Yemen in retaliation for a series of deadly airstrikes by the Saudi-led military coalition on Monday and Tuesday. Those […]
CAIRO — An airstrike on a residential area near the Yemeni capital, Sana, on Tuesday killed 17 civilians, most of them women and children, as international criticism continued to build over a deadly bombing the day before of a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders. Residents of a village in Nehem District, northeast of the capital, said that warplanes from the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition fighting on […]
KUWAIT. On Aug 12, S&P Global Ratings affirmed its ‘AA/A-1+’ long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on Kuwait. The outlook is stable. The affirmation indicates that our ratings on Kuwait continue to be supported by the sovereign’s high levels of accumulated fiscal, external, and household wealth, despite the low oil price environment. The ratings are constrained by the concentrated nature of the economy […]
By SHUAIB ALMOSAWA and ROD NORDLAND August 13, 2016 SANA, Yemen — Airstrikes carried out by warplanes from a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia killed at least 19 people, mostly children, on Saturday in a residential area and a school in northern Yemen, witnesses and hospital officials said. One bombardment in the village of Birken in the Razih District, near Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia, struck the home of […]
INTERNATIONAL. The future for many young people across the Middle East and North Africa looks bleak. The World Bank records that 54% of the working age population in the Middle East and North Africa is unemployed with little prospect of any positive immediate change. An average of 28.7% of 15 to 24-year-olds in the Middle East and 30.6% of those in North Africa are unemployed according to […]
ABU DHABI // Pupils from the GCC are less likely than their expatriate peers to consider science as necessary to future employment, a new study has found. And the more educated GCC parents are, local pupils are more likely to believe they do not need science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) skills to get their desired job later in life. Family connections are often considered more important […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Saudi Arabia’s banks are seen more likely now than ever before to tap the international bond markets. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Saudi banks have less foreign currency debt outstanding compared to any other GCC country. Of the 57 securities outstanding from issuers in the kingdom, only one is a dollar bond from a bank, compared with more than 400 foreign-currency notes from […]
ABU DHABI // Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, received the Yemeni prime minister Dr Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr at the Sea Palace on Monday. Sheikh Mohammed and Dr bin Daghr discussed the latest developments in Yemen in light of progress achieved by government forces on a number of fronts and political developments, especially the peace […]
SANA, Yemen — A pharmacist, Sadam al-Othari, had a firsthand look at the results of the collapse in peace talks in Yemen between the Saudi-led military coalition and Yemeni militias over the weekend when a bomb exploded outside his drugstore, killing a customer and his young son and wounding Mr. Othari. The customer and his son were among 18 Yemeni civilians killed when coalition warplanes bombed Al […]
When Shahram Amiri emerged from the shadows into the spotlight six years ago, he was a young Iranian scientist who suddenly appeared on YouTube from a safe house, telling a bizarre story of having been kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency. Then, in another video that quickly followed, his story changed: He had come to the United States voluntarily to study, but desperately missed his son back […]
WASHINGTON — The Syrian military was foundering last year, with thousands of rebel fighters pushing into areas of the country long considered to be government strongholds. The rebel offensive was aided by powerful tank-destroying missiles supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia. Intelligence assessments circulated in Washington that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was losing his grip on power. But then the Russians arrived, bludgeoning […]
CAIRO — More than three months of peace talks to end the war in Yemen came to a halt Saturday, leaving in doubt the future of a shaky cease-fire and threatening to deepen what has a become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The United Nations’ special envoy on Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, announced the suspension on Saturday in Kuwait, where the talks were being […]
BREMEN, Germany — Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in the working-class city of Bremen last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria. He barely had time to settle in before members of the Islamic State’s secret service, wearing masks over their faces, came to inform him and his German […]
SAUDI ARABIA. — In line with its steadfast commitment to supporting the realization of the Saudi Vision 2030 – and its related strategic goals – The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has inaugurated a year-long Business Analyst Program in the Kingdom. The initiative is especially designed to help nurture young Saudi talents and equip the nation’s youth with the tools, knowledge, and leadership skills needed to excel in the […]
INTERNATIONAL. – Higher GDP per capita alone does not determine real quality of life. This is according to the Social Progress Index (SPI) 2016 published recently by US-based nonprofit, the Social Progress Imperative. The Index ranks Finland the world’s most socially progressive country, Canada in second place tops the G7 nations. Economic growth is not the sole determinant of quality of life The 2016 Index finds that whist […]
LIBYA. A multi-million redevelopment of Tripoli International Airport is getting ready for take-off following the Libyan Local Investment & Development Fund’s (LLIDF) appointment of PwC as its strategic advisor. The LLIDF is supporting the redevelopment of Libya through its new Investment Programme which includes the redevelopment of Tripoli International Airport into a world-class international airport. Based within a secure hub on the former airport site, the ambition […]
SAUDI ARABIA. JLL, the world’s leading real estate investment and advisory firm, today has released its Q2 2016 Riyadh and Jeddah Real Estate Overview reports assessing the latest trends in the office, residential, retail and hotel sectors. With Saudi Vision 2030 pivotal to the diversification and restructuring of the economy in lieu of decreasing oil prices, this report highlights that both Riyadh and Jeddah continue to maintain […]
