|By Arabian Post Staff| The GCC’s first and the world’s only Shari’ah Compliant Spot Gold contract (DGSG), was listed on the DGCX on March 29th. The contract opened with world-record Exchange traded Shari’ah Compliant Gold volumes on the first day of trading. The product traded volume of 84 Kilograms worth USD 3.56 million, on its opening day. The contract’s launch follows months of planning and preparation for the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) announced FTSE Russel has decided to classify Tadawul as a “Secondary Emerging” market in the FTSE Global Equity Index Series, moving up from its previous status as “Unclassified”. This decision followed a series of market enhancements introduced by Tadawul and the Capital Market Authority (CMA) over the past two years. These developments have fulfilled market quality criteria set by […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Hindustan Infralog Private Limited (HIPL), a joint venture between DP World and the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), announces the acquisition of a 90% stake in Continental Warehousing Corporation (Nhava Seva) Ltd (CWCNSL), an integrated multimodal logistics player in India. CWCNSL’s founders, the Reddy family, will retain the remaining 10% shareholding and will remain involved in the business operations. The purchase consideration is […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Global trade enabler DP World announced strong financial results for the twelve months ending 31 December 2017. On a reported basis, revenue grew 13.2 percent and adjusted EBITDA increased 9.1 percent with adjusted EBITDA margin of 52.4 percent, delivering profit attributable to owners of the company of $1,209 million, up 7.3 percent, and EPS of 145.6 US cents. On a like-for-like basis, revenue grew […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Abraaj Group, the Middile East’s biggest private equity firm, is facing the biggest crisis in its history, with a number of major management changes and top-level resignations. According to reports, chief financial officer Ashish Dave has left the company and two other other senior executives are also preparing to leave. The investment firm, which manages $13.6 billion in assets, is also considering a […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) announced the signing of two historic agreements awarding Italy’s multinational oil and gas company Eni stakes in two of Abu Dhabi’s offshore concession areas. Eni joins an Indian consortium, led by ONGC Videsh, and Japan’s INPEX as stakeholders in the Lower Zakum concession. The awards mark the first time an Italian energy company has been given concession rights in Abu Dhabi’soil and gas sector. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Emirates NBD plans to raise its share capital by up to 7.35 billion dirhams ($2 billion) through the issuance of new shares, as Dubai’s largest lender prepares to bid for Turkey’s Denizbank. The bank said in January it had started initial strategic talks with Sberbank about a possible purchase of the Russian lender’s stake in Turkey’s Denizbank. The share hike, announced on Sunday, was […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The most popular area for renting an apartment in Dubai was Dubai Silicon Oasis, according to Bayut.com’s latest survey. Rents for 1 and 2 beds here were AED 55k and AED 80k respectively, representing a 0.20% drop for the latter while the former stayed stable. The price of studios in the neighbourhood dropped 5% to AED 38k. Last month’s most searched for area, Dubai […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saal, an innovative technology company based in Abu Dhabi, has launched saal.ai – a revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) framework, an enabler, ready to transcend and redefine current practices across industries and fuel economic and social growth. Capable of cognitive tasks such as reasoning, inference and retrieval, using data collected from multi-modal sensor inputs, saal.ai uses advanced computing and machine learning techniques to perform actions in the AI […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Emaar Properties recorded a net operating profit of AED 5.704 billion (US$ 1.553 billion) during full-year (January to December) 2017, a growth of 16 per cent over the FY 2016 net operating profit of AED 4.917 billion (US$ 1.339 billion). Total revenue for FY 2017 increased by 21 per cent to AED 18.812 billion (US$ 5.122 billion), over FY 2016 revenue of AED […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| DP World Ltd., the Dubai-based port operator that manages terminals from Hong Kong to Peru, and India’s National Investment & Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) plan to jointly invest up to US$3 billion in the South Asian nation, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO of DP World, disclosed at the sixth World Government Summit (WGS 2018) in Dubai. During a panel discussion titled […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Dubai residential market witnessed solid growth in off-plan sales transactions during the last quarter of 2017. According to a recent report by global real estate consultancy firm CBRE, off-plan sales accounted for more than 65 per cent of total sales transactions for the year ending 2017, an increase of approximately 56 per cent in the number of transactions and 44 per cent in […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| UAE residents consider VAT to be a challenge, but are largely optimistic about the year ahead, a YouGov survey revealed. The results found that 50 percent of residents have positive sentiment towards the UAE for 2018, while 34 percent are neutral and 15 percent are negative. Some 62 percent of residents feel the introduction of VAT will be a challenge for the country. The […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The increased availability of affordable properties in Dubai is encouraging residents of Sharjah and other northern emirates to move closer to their work places in Dubai, Asteco said in its latest report. This is despite despite waived deposit requirements, rent-free periods, increased number of payments (up to 12 cheques) and rent adjustments at their current residences. The Northern Emirates will remain an affordable […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Flight bookings for travel to the Middle East and Africa grew by 10.5 percent in 2017 and growth is set to continue in the first quarter of 2018, as bookings are currently 11.2 percent ahead of where they were at this time last year according to ForwardKeys, the company that helps forecast future travel by analysing around 17 million flight booking transactions a […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Fujairah, which hosts the Middle East’s largest commercial storage capacity for refined oil products, has engaged S&P Global Platts in a 3-year agreement to distribute the Emirate’s weekly inventory data as part of its effort to position the Indian Ocean port-city as a global oil trading and storage hub. After a successful one-year publishing agreement, the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone (FOIZ) agreed to extend […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|A buoyant GCC Bond and Sukuk market achieved an all-time high issuance of USD 70 billion in 2017, with sustained investor appetite expected in 2018, according to a co-authored white paper from Emirates NBD Asset Management (Dubai) and Fisch Asset Management (Zurich). The paper, titled “The GCC Fixed Income Market: Then and Now” identifies key themes in 2017 and provides an outlook for the […]
|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 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|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 […]
