Billionaire investor George Soros said Europe faces 25 years of Japanese-style stagnation unless politicians pursue further integration of the currency bloc and change policies that have discouraged banks from lending. While the immediate financial crisis that has plagued Europe since 2010 “is over,” it still faces a political crisis that has divided the region between creditor and debtor nations, Soros, 83, said in a Bloomberg Television interview […]
Pakistan’s rupee surged 5.2 percent this week, the best performance among world currencies, as the nation’s rising foreign reserves and improving economy buoyed investor confidence. The country’s currency stockpile climbed to $9.52 billion this week, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said yesterday, from $8.3 billion at the end of 2013. The economy is on course to achieve the official target of 4.4 percent expansion in the year ending […]
Singapore’s shrinking brokerage industry is set to get even smaller as trading restrictions planned by regulators dent profits, according to a body that represents individual brokers. The average daily value of shares traded in the city, which slumped 40 percent in the first two months of 2014 from a year earlier, will decline further should rules be implemented that include requiring collateral for some trades and shortening […]
|By K Raveendran| Limitless, a major government related entity in the Dubai Inc, is understood to have approached lenders with a waiver request for the first amortization payment of $0.4 billion due in December 2014 under its 2012 debt restructuring agreement of a $1.2 billion loan. It was a similar waiver request in the past that had precipitated Dubai’s financial crisis beginning 2008. The $0.4 billion amortization […]
Gold is getting more attractive to hedge-fund managers even as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says the metal’s surprising rally this year will soon fizzle. Hedge funds and other speculators expanded bets on higher prices for a fourth week in New York futures and are now the most bullish since December 2012, government data show. While gold is off to its best start in six years after topping […]
Qatar will likely face higher labor costs as a result of publicity about deaths of migrant construction workers building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament, the International Monetary Fund said. Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported in September that dozens of Nepali workers had died during the summer in Qatar and that laborers were not given enough food and water. Qatar, which has denied the Guardian’s […]
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which generated one-third of its profit from trading last year, is restarting Middle East and North Africa equity sales in Dubai, according to two people familiar with the matter. The fifth-largest U.S. bank by assets is hiring Veer Ramlugon as part of the plans, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter isn’t public. Ramlugon, who declined to […]
|By Ole Sloth Hansen |February was a strong month for commodities, with the broad-based DJ-UBS Commodity index returning more than 5 percent. This was more than the S&P 500 Index, which reached even a new record high thereby moving in the opposite direction of bond yields and the macro data. Some of the major themes and factors behind this performance were: • Adverse weather in Brazil and […]
Dubai is considering listing some of its largest and most valuable state-controlled companies such as the Emirates airline in a move that could raise billions of pounds in revenue. Mohammed al-Shaibani, Dubai’s finance chief, revealed that some of the state-owned companies could also be partially floated on the London Stock Exchange and signalled that the emirate views the UK as a strategic location for future investment. “We […]
China’s credit-market gauges are triggering alarm bells, as banks grow cautious in lending to each other while investors prefer the safest government bonds. The spread between the two-year sovereign yield and the similar-maturity interest-rate swap, a gauge of financial stress, reached 121 basis points on Feb. 19, the widest in Bloomberg data going back to 2007. Two days later, the cost to lock in the three-month Shanghai […]
Middle East fund managers remain bullish on most of the region’s major equity markets, but some are shifting money from the United Arab Emirates to less richly valued markets, a Reuters survey shows. The survey of 15 leading investment managers, conducted over the past 10 days, found 53 percent – a four-month high – expected to raise their equity allocations to the Middle East over the next […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. says investors should buy record-low yielding sukuk from Dubai-based port operator DP World Ltd. (DPW) and Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority FZE before credit ratings improve. The yield on DP World’s $1.5 billion Islamic bonds due July 2017 slid 61 basis points this year to 2.6 percent at 2:22 p.m. in Dubai, the lowest level since they were sold in 2007. The yield […]
Indian central bank Governor Raghuram Rajan warned that inflation remained the biggest threat to growth, diverging from the nation’s finance chief, who highlighted diminishing price pressures. A developing economy like India that is seeking higher growth rates can tolerate higher inflation than advanced nations, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in an interview in Sydney, where he was attending the Group of 20 meetings with Rajan. Chidambaram, who […]
Rating agency Fitch sees the spillover from the strengthening Dubai economy, among other factors, to keep Abu Dhabi growth at 4-5 percent over the next two years. The other factors include high government spending and fruition of several major projects. Fitch Ratings has affirmed Abu Dhabi’s Long-term foreign and local currency IDRs at ‘AA’ with Stable Outlooks. The issue ratings on Abu Dhabi’s senior unsecured foreign and […]
DUBAI is poised to roll over a vital $10 billion debt facility with the central bank of the United Arab Emirates at a lower rate of interest, UK’s Telegraph newspaper revealed. Rolling over the debt, which is due at the end of this week, will soothe lingering concerns over the emirate’s ability to service its immediate debts as it prepares to embark on another burst of infrastructure […]
The two most-accurate gold forecasters are holding to their bearish forecasts for 2014 even after the metal posted its best start to a year since 1983. Futures rose 9.7 percent in 2014 through Feb. 14, rebounding from the biggest annual drop in three decades, and reached a three-month high. Holdings in exchange-traded products backed by bullion increased by 3.2 metric tons last week, the most since December […]
|By Steen Jakobsen|The negative start to this year came as a surprise to most investors as we came into the new year with the usual euphoria and expectations of a stock market ending 2014 up 10-15% and a Europe and US in continued recovery but January soon became all about a potential EM crisis which ended up hurting even developed markets return in this year first month. […]
A well-timed launch saw Dubai Investments Park achieve favourable terms on its debut $300 million, 4.296 percent five-year Reg S sukuk issue, a deal that may serve to accelerate the plans of other regional potential issuers. The real estate firm, rated BB by Standard & Poor’s, kicked off the deal in a strong week for emerging markets and to a market starved of Middle East paper: it […]
Risk appetite is in full flow, led by Turkey’s remarkable return to the international bond markets on Wednesday, just weeks after a currency crisis had thrown the country, and through it the emerging markets asset class, into a tailspin. Not only did the sovereign raise US$1.5bn, it did so through a 31-year bond as investors cast aside doubts about Turkey’s vulnerable political and financial situation – on […]
Gold rose 0.5 percent to a three-month high on Thursday, targeting a break above $1,300 after disappointing U.S. retail sales data weighed on the dollar and increased bullion’s appeal as a currency hedge. The dollar index tumbled 0.4 percent after U.S. retail sales fell unexpectedly in January and the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose last week, in the latest signs of slowing […]
|By Arjuna Mahendran|The GCC stock and bond markets remain a safe haven to investors, underpinned by solid fundamentals. The Expo 2020, MSCI inclusion of the UAE and Qatari markets in the emerging market (EM) category, infrastructure spending across countries – the GCC Railway project to mention one – the revival of trade, tourism and real estate – as tensions in Egypt, Syria and Iran subside somewhat – […]
Gold retreated from the highest level since November as a five-day advance damped physical demand and U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen pledged to continue with a gradual tapering of stimulus. Bullion for immediate delivery lost as much as 0.6 percent to $1,284.15 an ounce, and was at $1,286.78 at 3:12 p.m. in Singapore. Prices climbed to $1,293.93 yesterday, the highest level since Nov. 14, capping a […]
Asian stocks climbed, Australia’s dollar strengthened to its highest in a month and commodities rallied after Chinese trade data exceeded estimates. European equity futures increased while the U.S. currency weakened and gold halted a five-day gain. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 1.1 percent as of 4:12 p.m. in Tokyo as a measure of Chinese shares in Hong Kong headed toward the biggest two-day gain since November. […]
The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a one-year extension of federal borrowing authority on Tuesday after Republicans caved into President Barack Obama’s demands to allow a debt limit increase without any conditions. The 221-201 vote, carried mainly by Democrats, marked a dramatic shift from the confrontational fiscal tactics House Republicans have used over the past three years, culminating in last October’s 16-day government shutdown. It came […]
