|By Arabian Post Staff| The three-month Saudi Interbank Offered Rate, or Saibor, used as a benchmark to price loans, has climbed 15 successive months to the highest in seven years, Bloomberg reported. It gained 84 basis points this year to 2.385 percent on Sunday, compared with a 27 basis-point advance in the London Interbank Offered Rate for dollars. Meanwhile, the loans-to-deposit ratio among Saudi banks, a key measure of […]
|By Matein Khalid| The Algiers pact was a game changer in the international oil markets. Crude oil prices have risen to three month highs above $50 Brent after OPEC agreed to cut output to the 32.5 – 33 MBD range, with the symbolic Saudi-Iranian deal reinforced by a sharp drop in US inventories and Hurricane Matthew’s havoc in the Caribbean. Unfortunately for OPEC, the US land rig […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia said it was holding investor meetings in London, Los Angeles, Boston and New York from Wednesday to sell benchmark bonds maturing in five, 10 and 30 years. The issue is expected to be at least $10 billion. “It’s very good timing,” Bloomberg quoted Angelo Rossetto, a trader at GMSA Investments Ltd. in London, as saying. “I wouldn’t say now or never as […]
Standard Chartered Bank (China) (SCB China) has launched a direct trading business for RMB/AED and RMB/SR and the bank becomes the first batch of direct trading market-makers for RMB against AED and SR in China’s inter-bank FX market. Sami Mahfouz, head of Financial Markets UAE, said: “Standard Chartered has a broad network and historical presence in the Middle East and we offer one-stop products and solutions covering […]
The Interpreter By AMANDA TAUB It is a truth universally acknowledged by every war correspondent, humanitarian aid worker and Western diplomat: Some wars, like Syria’s, receive tremendous public attention, which can translate into pressure for resolution. But many others, like Yemen’s still raging but much ignored conflict, do not. Some of the reasons are obvious; the scale of Syria’s war is catastrophic and much worse than Yemen’s. […]
Facing the prospect of another sharp fall in oil prices, Opec has finally put forward a measure that they hope will keep a floor on oil prices until the next demand season arrives, said Barclays in a new report. Based on media reporting, Opec plans to appoint a committee to iron out production cuts and baseline levels, and some ministers are circulating a production level of 32.5-33.0 […]
The UAE was ranked first regionally and 16th globally in the latest Global Competitiveness Report issued by the World Economic Forum (Davos) in Switzerland. The report is one of the most important global competitiveness reports, which monitors annual performance and competitiveness of the economies of countries in terms of strength, weakness, impact on quality of life, prosperity and well-being of people. Switzerland, Singapore and the United States […]
Two years ago, Meitha Al Mazrooei and Rand Abdul Jabbar, two young architects, decided to form a partnership. The decision was born of frustration. Both had spent years studying their profession, Al Mazrooei at the American University of Sharjah (AUS) and Abdul Jabbar at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and Columbia University in New York, but given their views on the way that architecture is understood and […]
UAE. Mobile phones are the most commonly used device among consumers in the UAE and more than half of all consumers (59%) prefer using their smartphones over any other device to make payments, the new Mastercard Impact of Innovation Study reveals. The study surveyed 23,000 consumers in 23 different countries across the Middle East, Africa and Europe about their attitudes to digital technology. It found that while […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| OPEC members aren’t likely to reach a supply deal in Algiers next week, but an agreement to boost prices could be drawing closer after Saudi Arabia signaled for the first time in two years that it’s willing to cut production, Bloomberg reported. Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose rivalry thwarted a deal with other major producers in April, didn’t reach agreement after two days of […]
By PETER BAKER and RANA F. SWEIS September 20, 2016 AMMAN, Jordan — At the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ali Abu al-Sukkar’s telephone would not stop ringing Tuesday. It was Election Day, the first time the Islamist organization had taken part after nearly a decade of boycotts, and Mr. Sukkar found himself in demand. The deputy secretary general of the Islamic Action Front, the brotherhood’s political wing, Mr. Sukkar listed the […]
|By Matein Khalid| When Ben Bernanke uttered the word “taper” in May 2013, he triggered a bloodbath in emerging markets and a free fall in “fragile five” currencies that included the Indian rupee and the Indonesian rupiah. However, Asian equities markets, while not immune to a Fed rate hike, are far better positioned for higher US dollar interest rates than in 2013, let alone 2007 or 1998. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The global oil market will most likely remain oversupplied for the rest of 2016 and well into 2017, rating agency Standard & Poor’s has forecast. The view has been attributed to global oil production remaining in excess of demand, and the resulting persistently high crude oil and product inventories putting spot prices and near-term futures under significant pressure. Members of the Organization of […]
The Interpreter By MAX FISHER You could be forgiven, after five years of Syria’s war dominating front pages, for feeling lost. It is easy to track the war’s toll: It has killed 400,000 people, displaced millions, opened space for the Islamic State, and sucked in foreign powers, including the United States. It is harder to keep track of the how and why. The basics can seem even […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Switching from conventional ‘Western’ financial practices to Islamic banking gives distinct advantages to banks, with the change improving the liquidity and value of stocks, a study of the merger between a Bahrian Islamic bank and a conventional bank revealed. Researchers at the Universities of Birmingham and Brighton studied a merger that took place in Bahrain, between an Islamic bank and a conventional bank […]
|Arabian Post Research|The Middle East geopolitics is set to enter a new flashpoint over the US legislation that will ultimately allow families of the victims of 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabian for responsibility for the terrorist attack. Both the US House of Representatives and Senate have passed a bill to this effect unopposed, but President Barack Obama is expected to veto the legislation, although Congress could override […]
|By Matein Khalid|I had written a column two weeks ago outlining my view that US equities faced a dangerous autumn and the S&P 500 index was set for a fall of 150 points. However, even I did not expect the S&P500 index to fall 52 points on Friday (the Dow dropped 394 points and NASDAQ 133 points), its worst performance since the Brexit shock. It was even […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| With the Algiers meeting of OPEC drawing closer, the approach of the price boost initiatives is itself apparently evolving into something totally different from the initial idea of some sort of an output freeze. The new buzz word seems be ceiling rather than the freeze. Of course, the overriding consideration is voluntarism. According to reports, the OPEC producers, particularly the camp led by […]
|By Steve Austin| At first sight it appears that low oil prices are good for society. A low oil price helps us save dollars at the pump, acts as an economic catalyst making exchanges cheaper and thereby stimulating the economy. However, there are downsides as well, often out-of-sight-out-of-mind and we will address these today. Change in economic model For the first time we have entered an era […]
/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 […]
