IZMIR, Turkey — Rescuers battled on Wednesday to reach miners trapped underground after more than 200 were killed in one of the worst mining disasters in Turkey in decades. Despite the extensive rescue operation, a senior official said hopes of finding survivors were “dimming.” More than 200 were thought to be still underground after an explosion in a power distribution unit on Tuesday set off a fire […]
Middle East borrowers are increasingly weighing Australian-dollar bonds as they seek to tap one of the world’s biggest sources of pension funds, according to HSBC Holdings Plc. Three regional lenders including National Bank of Abu Dhabi sold A$1.05 billion ($984 million) of debt this year, known as Kangaroo bonds, compared with two sales in 2013 for A$475 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “We expect to […]
Samsung Electronics Co Chairman Lee Kun Hee, who leads Asia’s biggest technology company and helps generate about a quarter of South Korea’s economic output, remains in stable condition after emergency surgery following a heart attack. Lee, 72, is at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul after being resuscitated following an acute myocardial infarction, Rhee So Eui, a spokeswoman for Samsung Group, said in an e-mailed statement. Lee, who […]
If you are looking for an explanation as to why crude oil prices in Asia aren’t lower, then the blame rests squarely with Chinese stockpiling. China’s record imports of 6.78 million barrels per day (bpd) in April give the impression that oil demand is roaring ahead, but the reality is that almost half a million bpd is being put into storage tanks. The authorities don’t officially disclose […]
|By TAP Staff|The ability of mortgaged buyers of Dubai properties to step on to the housing ladder is set to be curbed in the near to medium term, real estate consultancy Cluttons has predicted.This in turn will impact on the volume of transactions being recorded, the agency said in its report titled Dubai Spring 2014 Residential Market Outlook. “ We are already seeing the first signs of […]
Gold fell to its weakest in a week early on Monday as the euro hovered near a one-month low on fears of policy action from the European Central Bank, but the metal recovered some losses on safe-haven demand over escalating violence in Ukraine. Spot gold eased 0.2 percent to $1,286.40 an ounce by 0313 GMT, after dropping to a one-week low of $1,279.60 earlier in the session. […]
With Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. filing to go public, the biggest winner won’t be founder Jack Ma or his fellow executives or even venture capital backers like Silver Lake Management LLC. It’ll be Japan’s Masayoshi Son. Fourteen years ago, Son’s SoftBank Corp. started with a $20 million bet on a then-unknown Web portal connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. That site evolved into China’s biggest Internet shopping […]
Dubai’s bourse has outpaced other Gulf markets by a wide margin in terms of companies’ first-quarter profit growth, data show, supporting its position as the top performer in the region. The emirate’s benchmark soared 108 percent last year and is up 57 percent this year, making it one of the world’s top-performing stock markets over the past 17 months. Although some analysts believe the market is overbought, […]
Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange plans to sell shares in an initial public offering as the Arab world’s largest bourse seeks to gradually open up to foreigners and boost institutional investment. Tadawul, as the gauge is known, will hire advisers soon for the share sale, Chief Executive Officer Adel Al Ghamdi said at a conference in Riyadh today. That would make it the second market in the Gulf […]
|By TAP Staff|The UAE central bank is considering the establishment of a Shariah Governing Unit to oversee Islamic finance on the recommendations of the Islamic Banking Committee. The progress on this front was reviewed by the UAE Banks Federation at the CEO Advisory Council meeting, which focused on a number of critical issues facing the banking sector in the UAE. During the meeting, Federation’s specialised committees reported […]
HSBC Holdings, the biggest manager of bond sales in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, expects debt issues in the region to raise as much as $40 billion in 2014, almost matching last year’s total. Sales will start to catch up with 2013 volumes in the next two months, Mustafa Aziz Ata, head of Middle East and North Africa debt capital markets at the London-based bank, said in […]
Dubai may need stronger measures to counter property speculation in the emirate, a senior International Monetary Fund official said on Tuesday as it warned again about a potential real estate bubble. Growth in the Gulf emirate, the region’s trade and business hub, picked up strongly last year as the government committed to real estate projects worth tens of billions of dollars following a property market crash in […]
As Dubai freight-forwarding firm Able Logistics Group began preparing early this year to go public, it conducted a leveraged recapitalisation, taking on fresh bank debt so it could pay a cash dividend to shareholders. By the standards of developed Western markets, the transaction was routine. But for the Middle East it was an unusually creative deal, a sign that the region’s private equity industry is finally building […]
Banking and finance professionals in the Middle East plan to seek new jobs this year after bonuses failed to meet expectations, according to eFinancialCareers. Almost 60 percent of the region’s financial services employees plan to change position, with 45 percent saying they were disappointed with their bonus, eFinancial said in an e-mailed report. Bonuses rose for half of Middle East finance professionals, compared with 49 percent in […]
|Andy Greenberg| Just as antivirus researchers congratulated Apple for keeping the iPhone free of nasty apps five full years after its release, spammers seem to have finally tarnished that spotless record. Antivirus researchers at Kaspersky say they’ve spotted an app known as “Find and Call” in both the iPhone App Store and Google’s Play market that secretly uploads all of a user’s contacts to a remote server and then sends […]
Dana Gas Islamic bond was the best-performing dollar sukuk in the world last month as the energy company’s rising stock price prompted investors to exchange their debt into shares at a profit. The fuel producer’s $425 million convertible bond due October 2017 made 3.46 percent last month, compared with an average 0.41 percent return for all dollar-denominated sukuk, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The share conversion […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Trying to become even bigger — and make more money — Facebook will allow users to reveal a little less. The social network announced on Wednesday that when its 1.3 billion users log in to other websites or mobile apps through their Facebook identities, they will be able to limit what they reveal to the site or app to just their email addresses and public […]
With its $2 billion purchase of Oculus Rift, Facebook has made its second bold acquisition of a rising technology star, little more than a month after its $19 billion mega deal with WhatsApp. This time it’s not the price tag surprising everyone, but the strategy. Does Mark Zuckerberg envision a future where strapping a headset to our faces becomes the default route to going on Facebook? It’s left many scratching their heads. Zuckerberg, […]
When French wine and cognac bottle maker Saverglass decided to expand three years ago, it chose a relatively remote, less affluent location in the United Arab Emirates for its plant rather than the business hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The company sited its 75 million euro ($105 million) factory, which produces some 400,000 bottles a day, in the desert emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, an hour’s […]
A sense of euphoria can be felt as you walk onto the Dubai Financial Market’s (DFM) trading floor. Excited investors sit huddled at tables, eyes fixed on trading screens. Occasionally the floor erupts in applause as certain stocks shoot up to target levels. A local investor in his fifties who gives his name as Abu Hany, dressed in the traditional white robes of the Gulf, describes himself […]
Reuters | Jim Finkle – BOSTON, April 27 (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp is rushing to fix a bug in its widely used Internet Explorer web browser after a computer security firm disclosed the flaw over the weekend, saying hackers have already exploited it in attacks on some U.S. companies. PCs running Windows XP will not receive any updates fixing that bug when they are released, however, because Microsoft […]
DP World Ltd., the world’s third-biggest port operator, asked lenders to cut the price on a five-year credit facility by a third to benefit from falling interest rates, two bankers familiar with the request said. The port operator, owned by Dubai World, one of the emirate’s three main state-controlled holding companies, is seeking a reduction to 150 basis points, or 1.5 percentage points, over the London interbank […]
Investors are switching their attention back to developing countries’ debt after flirting with U.S. and European junk bonds during a year of turbulence in emerging markets. A long sell-off in anticipation of U.S. stimulus withdrawal meant emerging sovereign debt posted negative returns last year but the sector has enjoyed one of its best starts to a year in a decade in 2014, investors say, with returns of […]
Omar Sharif is undoubtedly the biggest film star from the Arab world, an icon since he first emerged as a wobbling, pixelated speck on a desert horizon in Lawrence of Arabia. Unfortunately, to many he’s the only film star from the Arab world, something that Irish director Jim Sheridan has taken it upon himself to fix. “I used to be very friendly with Marlon Brando,” explains Sheridan […]
