Phoenix Power $146m IPO heavily oversubscribed MUSCAT, 10 hours, 58 minutes ago The flotation of Phoenix Power Co, owner of Oman’s largest power plant, has been heavily oversubscribed, attracting over RO1 billion ($2.6 billion) of bids from investors, the state-run Oman News Agency (ONA) reported on Sunday. The company sought to raise RO56.3 million ($146.3 million) by offering a 35 per cent stake in an offer open […]
BAHRAIN. On June 12, 2015, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services affirmed its long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on the Kingdom of Bahrain at ‘BBB-/A-3’. We also affirmed our long- and short-term foreign and local currency credit ratings on the Central Bank of Bahrain at ‘BBB-/A-3’. The outlooks on both Bahrain and its central bank remain negative. RATIONALE We expect that Bahrain’s fiscal […]
“I don’t discriminate with music,” says Mannan Alawar with a laugh, “as long as it’s good.” Whether he is reinventing the UAE national anthem on electric guitar for a YouTube audience or leaping into a crowd mid-solo, Alawar is hardly the average Emirati banker. The 24-year-old is a musician at heart, dividing his time between his day job, several bands and finishing a business degree. When he […]
Actors preparing for “1945,” a play produced by Al-Midan Theater after one inspired by the case of a convicted murderer generated protests. By DIAA HADID June 13, 2015 HAIFA, Israel — The play had been staged many times for Arabic-speaking audiences in Israel without controversy. But a performance with Hebrew subtitles for a wider audience was all it took to touch off a major furor. The play, “Parallel Time,” […]
After a federal court rejected attempts by cable and phone companies to stop net neutrality on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission’s plan for new Internet rules went into effect. Under the new rules, the FCC can assert extra authority over the Internet to establish equal access to Internet speeds and Web sites. Companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have claimed that the rules are beyond the FCC’s […]
By CHARLIE SAVAGE June 13, 2015 WASHINGTON — The United States has transferred six lower-level detainees from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where each had been held for more than 13 years, the military announced early Saturday. The departures, to Oman, were the first from the prison in six months and reduced the inmate population there to 116 prisoners. The six men are all Yemenis and have each […]
INTERNATIONAL. This year Ipsos celebrates 20 years of the European Media and Marketing Survey (EMS) or as it is called now, The Ipsos Affluent Survey Europe. The Affluent European whom the survey tracks comes in all shapes and sizes, with a myriad of different wants and needs, yet, these individuals (the Top 13% of income earners) have one thing in common: they have significant disposable income and […]
A logo is pictured at Google’s European Engineering Center in Zurich April16, 2015. Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann Google Inc (GOOGL.O) said on Friday that it is launching a live streaming gaming service called “YouTube Gaming”, creating a rival to Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) Twitch service. The service, to be available in the form of an app as well as a website, will focus exclusively on gamers and gaming. […]
ABU DHABI // The first flight carrying humanitarian aid from the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation to the people of Yemen left Abu Dhabi yesterday. The foundation said the flight would be the first of many before Ramadan begins next week, the state news agency Wam reported. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, ordered that […]
Some things can’t be summed up in 140 characters. Twitter Inc’s (TWTR.N) announcement that Dick Costolo would exit as CEO on July 1 was long on plaudits but offered few clues on how the company will tackle its biggest problem: user growth. Twitter’ shares were down 0.6 percent in early afternoon trading on Friday, after rising much as 3.9 percent just after the opening, as investors assessed […]
Businesses that need to handle workloads with a range of different demands have a selection of new cloud-based, general-purpose instances to choose from through Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS on Thursday announced the availability of M4 instances, a next-generation Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) offering. Powered by custom 2.4-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2676 v3 Haswell processors, M4 instances are designed to support a variety of applications, including relational and […]
A broker laughs while speaking to a colleague, as they trade on their computer terminals at a stock brokerage firm in Mumbai, March 4, 2015. Reuters/Shailesh Andrade/Files MUMBAI Regulators hope plans for a new bourse with less stringent listing requirements will lure a stream of startups in the country’s burgeoning technology industry, looking for a platform to raise capital for expansion. The eased rules, marking a change […]
Contributing Op-Ed Writer June 11, 2015 Shmuel Rosner TEL AVIV — Reuven Rivlin was elected president of Israel a year ago. Since then, this Likud Party member and former speaker of the Knesset has become Israel’s voice of moderation and reason on many issues. He has denounced racism, defended the autonomy of Israel’s judiciary and argued for better relations between Jews and Arabs. Mr. Rivlin is the […]
UAE. Dubai private sector companies indicated a modest rebound in output growth from the 18-month low recorded during April, according to the latest Emirates NBD Dubai Economy Tracker™ report. The latest survey also pointed to a slightly faster expansion of incoming new work, while modest job creation and positive sentiment regarding the business outlook was sustained. Of the three key sub-sectors monitored by the survey, construction was […]
UAE. Invesco today released its third annual Invesco Global Sovereign Asset Management Study[1], an in-depth report on the complex investment behaviour of sovereign wealth funds, conducted amongst more than 50 individual sovereign investors across the globe representing $7.09 trillion2 of assets, including Middle East based sovereign wealth funds. This year’s study took place against a backdrop of an extreme fall in the price of oil and provides […]
UAE. Economic Insight: Middle East Q2 2015 is produced by Cebr, ICAEW’s partner and economic forecaster. Commissioned by ICAEW, the report provides a snapshot of the region’s economic performance. The report undertakes a quarterly review of the Middle East, focusing on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait), as well as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon […]
ISTANBUL — Late into the night on Sunday on the shattered streets of Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish city devastated last year by battles with militants affiliated with the Islamic State, residents celebrated the outcome of the recent Turkish parliamentary election results, honking horns, cheering and firing their guns. The election, in which the Kurdish party surpassed a threshold for the first time to enter Parliament, was the […]
Bond issue … big shift in Saudi economic policy. Saudi may issue government bonds this year DUBAI, 6 days ago The Saudi Arabian government may resume issuing bonds this year, easing downward pressure on the country’s foreign reserves caused by low oil prices, a senior International Monetary Fund official said after talks with Saudi officials. “The sense we had is this year,” Tim Callen, chief of the […]
Researchers work at a laboratory at a genomics organization in Tianjin, China, April 2, 2014. Reuters/Stringer SHANGHAI/LONDON Years of pouring money into its laboratories, wooing scientists home from overseas and urging researchers to publish and patent is starting to give China a competitive edge in biotechnology, a strategic field it sees as ripe for “indigenous innovation.” The vast resources China can throw at research and development – […]
Video | U.S. General Affirms Support for Israel Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accepted an award from his Israeli counterpart and emphasized the American military’s strong relationship with Israel. By HELENE COOPER June 9, 2015 TEL AVIV — The Obama administration on Tuesday ramped up efforts to ease Israel’s opposition to a possible nuclear deal with Iran, as the top American military leader […]
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM June 9, 2015 CAIRO — Islamic State militants staged attacks near Baghdad and the Libyan city of Surt on Tuesday, underscoring the group’s persistent strength on both fronts despite a monthslong American-led air campaign against it in Syria and Iraq. In Libya, the Islamic State captured a critical power plant along the coastal road westward from its stronghold in Surt toward Misurata, a commercial center […]
Renovations have started at a 9.5-acre compound in the West Bank that started as a church-run hospital in the 1950s and later became a hostel for travelers. By JODI RUDOREN June 9, 2015 NEAR EL AROUB REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — The old stone compound set amid Palestinian farmland between the cities of Bethlehem and Hebron has a relatively new fence. The compound, with eight buildings spread over 9.5 […]
UAE. The European football market grew to total $28.9 billion in 2013/14. Revenue growth across all of the ‘big five’ European leagues (Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1, Premier League and Serie A), saw the combined revenues of the ‘big five’ leagues pass the $15 billion mark ($15.3bn), according to the 24th Annual Review of Football Finance from the Sports Business Group at Deloitte. Dan Jones, Partner in […]
In an image taken from a video on a militant website, the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, addressed followers last year in Mosul, Iraq. New insights yielded by a seized trove of materials in Syria include how he operates and tries to avoid being tracked by coalition forces. By ERIC SCHMITT June 8, 2015 WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have extracted valuable information about the Islamic State’s leadership structure, financial […]
