Amina al-Rustamani, a member of a prominent UAE family, raised eyebrows among friends and relatives when she started her career in Dubai 13 years ago as an electrical engineer, becoming one of few females in the Middle East to enter the profession. Success in a male-dominated environment helped give her the confidence to rise up the career ladder and break more barriers. She is now chief executive […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is gaining ground in the debt markets of Gulf Cooperation Council states after the biggest U.S. bank helped manage this month’s Islamic bond sale by Saudi Arabia’s utility. JPMorgan is the biggest bond underwriter after HSBC Holdings in the six-nation GCC in 2014, its best start to a year since 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The New York-based lender advised on […]
Zain Saudi, Saudi Arabia’s third biggest telecoms operator, will buy fixed line capacity from its competitors to expand its service offering in the kingdom and aims to break even in less than five years, it said on Wednesday. The firm, which began operations in 2008, claimed 15 percent of Saudi’s mobile subscribers at 2013-end and has struggled to break the dominance of better-resourced rivals Saudi Telecom Co […]
Investors in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar booked profits for a second day on Monday as global markets remained gloomy and tension grew between Russia and the West over Ukraine. But all three bourses later recovered to different degrees. After opening slightly higher, the three bourses dipped along with Asian and European markets as Ukraine threatened military action against pro-Russian separatists occupying government buildings in the east […]
A drop in OPEC production came just as refineries began looking for supply, helping boost bullish speculative bets on crude last week by the most since July. The group, which pumps about 40 percent of the world’s oil, reduced output to the lowest for March since 2011 as a standoff between the Libyan government and rebels kept exports near the lowest level since Muammar Qaddafi was driven […]
Dubai’s benchmark stock index fell the most in a month, tracking a decline in global markets last week, on investor concern this year’s rally was overdone given prospects for earnings growth. Saudi Arabia’s gauge dropped. The DFM General Index tumbled 1.7 percent, the most since March 12, to close at 4,759.15 in the emirate. Dubai Islamic Bank , the United Arab Emirates’ biggest shariah-compliant bank, declined for […]
New York’s highest state court has ruled that a lawsuit by the Algosaibi family conglomerate, claiming that a Saudi billionaire who married into the family committed a $150 million fraud, should be heard in Saudi Arabia. In the lawsuit, Ahmed Hamad al Gosaibi & Brothers Co claimed that Maan al-Sanea, the billionaire head of the Saad Group, used its accounts with Dubai-based Mashreqbank PSC to commit fraudulent […]
Warburg Pincus, the private-equity firm managing about $37 billion in assets, is considering investments in Africa and the Middle East as capital starts to flow back into emerging markets. “We are looking beyond the core euro-zone markets into the rapidly growing emerging markets around Europe for investment opportunities,” Joseph Schull, head of Warburg Pincus in Europe, said in an interview yesterday. “Africa is the next big frontier […]
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Barack Obama declared the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace one of the two main U.S. foreign policy priorities for his second term. Fast-forward to today, the Obama administration faces a stark choice: expend more energy on a faltering peace process or absorb the hit to an already-troubled record in the Middle East and walk away from negotiations. Secretary of […]
|By TAP Staff|Last year the Pay TV market in the MENA region grew 11.2 percent in terms of market share and 14.13 percent in terms of subscriber numbers, according to the findings of the latest Middle East Media Market report released by IHS, a leading global source of business information and insight. Over the last decade (2004 – 2013) the number of primary Pay TV subscribers almost […]
Abu Dhabi’s largest oil refinery is preparing to boost production of the industry’s lowest-sulfur diesel within three months as standards for the fuel rise, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The emirate’s 400,000 barrel-a-day plant at Ruwais will only produce diesel with 10 parts per million of sulfur by July, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak […]
With a youthful, well-educated population, strong relationships with both neighbours and world powers, and a strategic location on the Gulf, major oil producer Kuwait should be as dynamic a hub for the region as Dubai or Doha. But while others in the Gulf have powered ahead, attracting foreign investment and developing infrastructure, Kuwait has stagnated, frustrating the people of a country once seen as a Middle East […]
After pouring billions of dollars into cities including London, New York and Sydney, individual investors and developers in China are expanding into Dubai. About a thousand individual Chinese investors spent 1.3 billion U.A.E dirhams ($353 million) on land, residential units and office real estate in Dubai last year, according to data from the Dubai Land Department. That is a nearly threefold increase from the 486 million dirhams […]
Saudi Arabian conglomerate Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers (AHAB) estimates its assets are worth less than a quarter of about $5.9 billion in claims made against it, a spokesman said as the group prepares a proposal to end one of the Middle East’s biggest corporate debt disputes. AHAB this week invited more than 70 financial institutions, including Saudi, regional and international banks, to a meeting in Dubai […]
|By TAP Staff|Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Company (AHAB) announced that it has invited financial institutions with claims against the company to attend a meeting in Dubai, UAE on May 7, 2014, at which AHAB will outline the terms of a comprehensive settlement agreement. The move by AHAB breaks a stalemate that has existed since late 2009 when AHAB’s last comprehensive proposal was rejected by financial institutions, […]
Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Co. invited creditors including BNP Paribas SA (BNP) and Standard Chartered Plc to discuss claims on $5.9 billion of debt as it seeks to recover from the Middle East’s biggest default. The Saudi Arabian company, with interests ranging from construction to finance, will “outline proposals aimed at achieving a comprehensive settlement” with more than 70 creditors at a May 7 meeting in […]
Saudi Arabia’s leaders hope U.S. President Barack Obama and their King Abdullah understand each other better after talks and can stabilise a close regional security alliance after months of rockiness over Middle East policy, diplomats said. Friday’s two-hour exchange at Abdullah’s desert camp did not yield a shared statement or any evidence of policy changes, leading some Saudis to question whether differences over Syria’s war or Iran’s […]
Middle East fund managers are willing to buy most of the region’s main equity markets on dips, believing corporate earnings and balance sheets will continue improving this year, a monthly Reuters survey shows. Markets retreated early this month as retail investors rushed to take profits during the worst of the geopolitical uncertainty over Ukraine. Dubai’s bourse fell 6.7 percent from its peak close to its trough. Qatar’s […]
Hanco, a Saudi Arabian auto rental company, said it acquired U.A.E.-based Byrne Investments from a private-equity group previously owned by HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) for 600 million dirhams ($163 million). Hanco, majority-owned by closely-held Bin Sulaiman Holdings, is buying Byrne’s equipment rental operations and modular building services business from Dubai-based Havenvest Private Equity Middle East Partnership, it said today in a statement. Persian Gulf companies are stepping […]
Rifts over foreign policy will likely make it harder for Arab leaders meeting at a summit this week to forge a common stand on regional challenges, including what many of them see as a threat from Iranian-U.S. rapprochement. And while the Arab League meeting may agree more humanitarian action in response to Syria’s war, any communique calling for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad will not reflect […]
| By Clyde Russel | The price of Middle East crude oils being supplied to Asia appears too high given an increase in supply from Iran, Iraq and rival Russia and muted demand from refiners. While benchmark Oman futures have declined 5 percent since the start of the year to end at $102.93 a barrel on Wednesday, the price relative to global marker Brent has been rising. […]
Buyout firm GrowthGate Capital plans to take freight-forwarding company Able Logistics Group public in Dubai around the end of this year, a senior GrowthGate executive told Reuters, in a sign of growing strength in the region’s equity markets. “We aim to make it this year or early next year,” Haythem Macki, a partner at GrowthGate, said. “The market is ready for it – there’s a lot of […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and HSBC Holdings are among banks planning to compete for a role in the largest Saudi Arabian share sale in at least 12 years, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. The banks will vie with local lenders including Banque Saudi Fransi (BSFR) and Gulf International Bank to be appointed as financial adviser on the sale of a 15 percent stake […]
Abu Dhabi, drawing lessons from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, is building “gold-standard” safety procedures into its plan to develop four nuclear reactors, a foreign adviser to the government said. The United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the capital, is investing in facilities for nuclear power, renewable energy and liquefied natural gas to cut its reliance on oil. The U.A.E. will be the first Arab state […]
