|By Arabian Post Staff| Overall sentiment in the GCC’s construction sector has improved over the last two years by approximately 7 per cent (from 32 per cent to 39 per cent), according to recent findings from Pinsent Masons’ GCC Construction Survey. The findings show that the UAE remains the number one market expected to deliver growth in 2018, with 38 per cent of respondents expecting the country […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Rental rates and sales prices are expected to follow a similar path to 2017 with further moderate declines for Abu Dhabi due to the continuous delivery of new supply, according to the Q4 Abu Dhabi Real Estate Report from Asteco. Whilst rental rates for one bedroom apartments decreased by an average of AED 10,000 per annum, the larger two- and three bedroom units dropped […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Emirates Airline has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to acquire up to 36 additional A380 aircraft. The agreement was signed this morning at the airline’s headquarters in Dubai by Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive, Emirates Airline and Group, and John Leahy, Chief Operating Officer Customers, Airbus Commercial Aircraft. The commitment is for 20 A380s and an option for […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) is planning to significantly expand its use of Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS) technology to meet a six-fold increase in the utilization of CO2, for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), over the next 10 years. The volume of the greenhouse gas safely locked away underground will be equivalent to the CO2 emitted by more than one million motor […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and seven leading global Central Securities Depository (CSD) companies to collaborate on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) implementation in post trade operations, as well as capital market transactions. Today, securities processing, particularly in areas requiring multi-party contact and involving extremely cumbersome manual processes carry […]
|By Matein Khalid| Dubai based Gulf Islamic Investments (GII) acquired a one million square foot Amazon logistics center in Dortmund, Germany for $144 million. This deal is a testament to the boutique global merchant bank created in Dubai by GII’s co-founder/CEO Pankaj Gupta, who I am honored to call a friend. I consciously model my own firm Asas Capial on the strategic path laid out by GII and […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| DP World’ made a capital spending of over $1 billion in 2017 for a series of acquisitions, technology tie-ups and other activities, the company said in a statement. These investments saw the global trade enabler expand its business horizons across the world during the year. The expansion at Prince Rupert in Canada opened for business, DP World Limassol in Cyprus opened a new […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Dubai rental yields have trended lower structurally since 2009, indicating that investors are willing to accept risk with lower risk premia. Of all the major cities analyzed, Dubai remains far above the highest yielding city, suggesting that there is ample room for further yield compression, according to property portal Reidin. In the first nine months of 2017, even though level of transactions are […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| : The UAE once again captivated the world this New Year’s Eve with a dazzling spectacle to usher in 2018. Emaar’s ‘Light Up 2018’ Downtown Dubai celebration hosted more than a million visitors from across the world and reached an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide through live television broadcast and social media live streams. The mesmerising laser, light and musical fountain show not only […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Following objections raised by its national airline, India has rejected Dubai’s request for more landing rights to fly directly to under-served airports in the country, such as those in India’s North East. “We have decided against allowing any such access to Dubai. The request has been rejected,” Indian media reported quoting a senior aviation ministry official. Dubai’s DGCA has been seeking an increase […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Analysts fear that the GCC mobile phone market could see a slump in the wake of the 2018 VAT roll-out, as it happened in many countries, which saw a pre-VAT buildup of inventories, followed by a major slump in sales. Such concerns come at a time when the region’s mobile phone market is already in a state of flux, with IDC’s latest Quarterly Mobile […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Oman surprised analysts and other members of GCC union, which have been preparing to roll out a new tax system from the first of new year, by announcing that it was postponing the implementation of VAT until 2019. According to the earlier schedule, the VAT implementation was to start on January 1, 2018. The Ministry of Finance announced that the application of selective tax […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|New sectors such as privatisation, digital banking, fintech and blockchain will all become potentially important growth sectors for job creation in 2018, particularly in Dubai, according to Cooper Fitch Salary Guide for the next year. The economic outlook for the UAE for 2018 shows some good signs of growth, in terms of the creation of new opportunities and increased headcount for the year ahead, within the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The UAE budget, which was passed by the Federal National Council on Tuesday, allocates Dh10.4 billion to general and higher education, totalling 20 per cent of the budget. Dh26.3 billion or 51 per cent of the overall budget is dedicated to social development programmes and Dh4.2 billion or 8 per cent to the health sector. Some Dh22.1 billion or 43 per cent of the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Rhetoric casting the future of the Middle East as an existential battle between the two regional powers has soared – particularly on the Saudi side – over the past year. However, a direct military confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia remains unlikely, Control Risks, the specialist global risk consultancy, has warned that businesses in its Middle East risk map for 2018. Iran and Saudi […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| After posting a 10 per cent year-on-year rise in MENA region profits in 2017, Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, has consolidated its high-performing Dubai station as its regional hub of operations. The double-digit annual profit growth across the region, which has elevated MENA to the company’s third most profitable operation this year, had led Saxo’s Head of MENA, Mario Camara, […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| ADNOC Distribution, the retail and fuel-selling arm of Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil company, will be valued at $8.5 billion — around the middle of a range of possible valuations — when trading opens on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) next week. The sale of 10 percent of the unit in an initial public offering (IPO) was oversubscribed “multiple” times by institutional investors, and […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Gold prices were on track for their biggest weekly fall since May ahead of US employment data later that could influence the pace of US interest rate rises. The yellow metal broke below a recent trading range and tumbled through technical levels to its lowest since July as progress on US tax reform fuelled optimism about the US economy and boosted the dollar. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| All eyes are on the next GCC annual GCC summit to be held in Kuwait on December 5 and 6. This is the first annual summit after the rift with Qatar dogged the pan-Gulf alliance. Gulf officials said the summit will go ahead despite an ongoing dispute between GCC members Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, on one side, and Qatar on the other. The […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| UAE-based multinational company, Crescent Enterprises, has announced the successful closing of its investment in ColubrisMX and XCath, two next-generation micro-robotic medical device companies through its newly launched corporate venture arm, Crescent Enterprises Venture Capital (CE-VC). Developed at the University of Texas Medical School’s Microsurgical Robotics Laboratory and incorporated in Texas, USA, both companies design and develop next-generation robotic technologies that are expected to revolutionise […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|ADNOC plans to explore and appraise Abu Dhabi’s unconventional gas resources, as the company seeks to enable future value creation from its untapped gas resources, the company announced. ADNOC will spend over AED 400 billion over the next five years, as it embarks on its Upstream and Downstream expansion and growth projects, the company announced. The Supreme Petroleum Council (SPC) approved ADNOC’s key strategic […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Saudi Arabia’s freezing of bank accounts is credit negative for banks, Moody’s said in a review. On 8 November, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) froze a large number of bank accounts belonging to princes, ministers and businessmen who were arrested as part of an investigation by a new anti-corruption committee that began on 4 November. The rating agency said these actions are credit […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Dubai Land Department (DLD) has announced the updated rental index for 2018, covering all residential, commercial and industrial properties in the Emirate of Dubai. DLD’s specialists have adopted a variety of mechanisms to carry out the upgrade process, including reading the average data of tenancy contracts registered in the ‘Ejari’ system and the real estate data and units registered in DLD’s databases. The […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| In a major endorsement to Saudi economic reforms initiated by Crown Prince Mohammad Salman, a top executive of American financial giant Bank of America Merrill Lynch said Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation will be “unstoppable” and there has already been a positive shift in the Kingdom’s business culture. Hootan Yazhari, managing director of the bank’s Dubai-based research department, said there are key moves being […]
