AMIRIYAT FALLUJA, Iraq — One of the Iraqi civilians who risked an escape from the sprawling battle for Falluja made it as far as the Euphrates River. He was there for all to see on Sunday morning: His body, tied to the side of a boat, bobbed in the muddy waters next to a rickety bridge that separates Baghdad from the violence of Anbar Province. “Sheikh, sheikh, […]
PARIS — With the Obama administration having effectively given up on negotiating a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, France tried its hand on Friday at making Middle East peace but ended the day with little to show for its efforts. Even before President François Hollande convened diplomats from 29 countries for the session — including Secretary of State John Kerry but no representatives of either […]
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund made its highest-profile deal, investing $3.5 billion in U.S. ride-share company Uber Technologies Inc. as the country seeks to diversify its assets with more overseas acquisitions. Yasir Alrumayyan, managing director of the Public Investment Fund, will take a board seat at the San Francisco-based company after the deal, which values Uber at $62.5 billion, the company said in a statement. It’s the biggest […]
INTERNATIONAL. –(BUSINESS WIRE)–Shifting power relationships in the Middle East are reordering regional geopolitics, entrenching a stalemate of conflict that threatens to further destabilize the region. Wars in Syria and Yemen and against the Islamic State, combined with the balancing of supply and demand in oil markets later this year, will likely return a risk premium to oil prices in 2017, says a new special report by IHS […]
UAE. According to a new report, PwC Middle East’s ‘Care Anywhere: Moving health and wellness out of the hospital into the hands of the consumer’, technology is providing the opportunity for new ways of accessing and delivering healthcare. In a society that is living longer, with Governments facing the growing burden of long-term chronic disease and increasing costs of treatment, innovation and technology could be the catalyst […]
New fatwa matches a view expressed in April by Dubai’s Islamic Affairs & Charitable Activities Department Manama: A Saudi scholar has banned the use of other people’s Wi-Fi without their knowledge, saying that Islam could not tolerate theft. “Taking advantage of the Wi-Fi service illegally or without the knowledge of other beneficiaries or providers is not allowed,” Ali Al Hakami, a […]
Basma Abdel Aziz was walking in downtown Cairo one morning when she saw a long line of people standing in front of a closed government building. Returning hours later, Ms. Abdel Aziz, a psychiatrist who counsels torture victims, passed the same people still waiting listlessly — a young woman and an elderly man, a mother holding her baby. The building remained closed. When she got home, she […]
TEHRAN — In a sign of further tension between regional rivals, Iran will not allow its citizens to travel to Saudi Arabia for the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in September, Iran’s state television reported on Sunday. The decision, which means that tens of thousands of Iranians cannot make their spiritual journey to the main pilgrimage site of Islam, came after several failed rounds of talks between […]
|Arabian Post Staff| Banks in Saudi Arabia are coming under fresh pressure over products that allow speculators to bet against the kingdom’s currency peg, Bloomberg reports quoting people with knowledge of the matter. Bloomberg said the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency has asked lenders to explain why they are offering dollar-riyal forward structured products to customers less than four months after the regulator banned options contracts that let […]
By TIM ARANGO May 28, 2016 BAGHDAD — American commandos are on the front lines in Syria in a new push toward the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Raqqa, but in Iraq it is an entirely different story: Iran, not the United States, has become the face of an operation to retake the jihadist stronghold of Falluja from the militant group. On the outskirts of Falluja, tens of […]
SAUDI ARABIA. The recent Ministerial Resolution on the Saudisation of the sale and repair of mobile phones, together with the earlier resolutions on the retail of female clothing, indicate a growing approach by the Ministry of Labour to require the complete Saudisation of certain activities within the retail sector. In this article we examine the existing requirements and also the proposal for a weighted Nitiqat. Sale and […]
|By Matein Khalid| In retrospect, 2016 will go down in German political and economic history as a significant game changer, on the scale of 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall), 1990 (reunification) and 1999 (the Euro), even 1945 (launch of Deutschemark), 1945 (Third Reich surrenders), 1943 (Stalingrad) and 1933 (Hitler elected). Chancellor Merkel, renamed Mutti Multi kulti, allowed a million migrants to settle in Germany. The far right […]
Sources tell Gulf News media reports have exaggerated the reasons behind the lay-offs Dubai: The Saudi-owned pan-Arab Al Arabiya has fired dozens of employees in a restructuring move. Saudi Akhbaar24 broke the story claiming fifty employees had been let go, among them some well-known and long-serving staffers. A trusted source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the news to Gulf News but […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The overall tourism spend by visitors to the UAE declined by 6% in the first quarter of 2016, according to a report on consumer card spends by Network International, the leading payment solutions provider in the MENA region. Due to a continuous appreciation in the US Dollar along with a bullish global economic outlook and a fall in the prices of crude oil, […]
Dubai: The cost of insuring exposure to Saudi Arabia risk for a five-year period widened by 8 basis points ahead of its bond issue as investors increased hedging bets. The five-year Saudi Credit-Default (CDS) Swaps jumped to 160 basis points on Tuesday compared to 152 basis points last Monday, data showed. “This accounted for their large […]
UAE. Cyber-crime is not a new phenomenon, but it’s hitting the headlines as never before. According to PwC Middle East’s latest report, there is a renewed willingness among organizations to invest in security, with many organizations incorporating strategic initiatives to improve security and reduce risks. PwC Middle East’s Global State of Information Security survey 2016 looks at how the survey results from over 300 Middle East companies […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Dubai’s government owned property developer Limitless will make an early payment of 2.07 billion dirhams ($564 million) to banks and trade creditors after reaching a second debt restructuring deal with them, Bloomberg reported. The company will pay 1.9 billion dirhams to banks this month, covering 43 percent of the outstanding loan amount, Limitless said in an e-mailed statement on Thursday. It will pay 163 million […]
|By Matein Khalid| If ever there was a year to win or lose money big time in emerging markets, 2016 was it. As an investor in the world’s dark alleys (the Third World rebranded as EM!), I am forced to dissect geopolitical, government/monetary policy, foreign exchange, flows, positioning and current account, volatility and credit cycle trends across emerging markets to develop money making strategies. It helps that I […]
Markets move ‘sideways-to-soft’ ahead of Ramadan amid fears international markets will not be robust Dubai: UAE indices fell on Monday, extending losses for another session as traders repositioned themselves ahead of the Ramadan season. The Dubai Financial Market General Index (DFMGI) closed 0.43 per cent lower at 3,290.37, while the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange General index closed 0.66 per cent lower at 4,345.31. “UAE markets are moving […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia ranks among the top dozen foreign holders of U.S. debt, the Treasury Department disclosed, breaking its silence on the issue for the past four decades. “The stockpile of the world’s biggest oil exporter stood at $116.8 billion as of March, down almost 6 percent from a record in January, according to data the Treasury disclosed Monday in response to a Freedom-of-Information […]
INTERNATIONAL. /PRNewswire/ — The CFO has never been held more accountable for the company’s success, and the ability of finance teams to extract value from company data is the key to delivering on the chief executive’s expectations. Oracle’s study, Modern Finance: Driving Transformation from Within, found that closer alignment between the CFO and CIO is crucial if finance leaders are to effectively help the business achieve its […]
UAE. According to a new survey released by PwC Middle East, capital projects and infrastructure has been greatly impacted by slowdowns and deferrals of government spending as a result of ‘lower for longer’ oil prices. PwC Middle East’s survey titled “Delivering during change” includes responses from over 130 owners and developers across the region from a range of sectors including transport, cities and urban development, social infrastructure, […]
UAE. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region witnessed only two IPOs raising US$615.0m in Q1 2016, representing another quarter with limited IPO activity, according to EY. Capital raised through MENA firms in Q1 2016 increased by 141%, while the number of IPOs were consistent (2 IPOs), compared with Q1 2015. Phil Gandier, MENA Transactions Leader, EY, says: “Q1 2016 witnessed limited IPO activity, in line […]
|By Matein Khalid| The April payrolls data demonstrated that US economic growth has hit a soft patch. The US economy only added 160 jobs in April, less than the expected 203,000 average in the first three months of 2016. One disappointing data point does not imply a macroeconomic trend reversal since the US economy added 2.8 million jobs between March 2015 and March 2016. Statistical and measurement errors […]
