A surge in passenger car sales across most Gulf Arab countries underlines the momentum behind the region’s consumer spending boom, and sales are likely to continue rising strongly for at least a few years, automobile sector executives said. Car sales are an important indicator of business activity in a region where official macroeconomic data, such as gross domestic product, is often unreliable and released with delays of […]
Mutual funds run by T. Rowe Price Group Inc and Morgan Stanley are poised to send one sweet tweet. These early investors in Twitter Inc will reap exponential gains as the microblogging site goes public, while latecomers struggle for share allocations. T. Rowe’s New Horizons and Growth Stock funds may come out looking smartest, having scooped up millions of preferred shares for a pittance. While mutual […]
New research shows a steady increase in the extent to which Americans are geographically divided by income. Charts from a paper by Kendra Bischoff and Sean Reardon, professors at Cornell and Stanford respectively, on what they refer to as “residential segregation by income” show a shrinking number of Americans live in middle class neighborhoods, and a growing number of people living in poor, affluent, or high income areas. […]
Dubai is far from ready to relinquish its status as home to the world’s tallest tower. Emaar Properties Chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar has once again reiterated that a new tallest skyscraper in the world will be built in Dubai. “Emaar plans to build the tallest skyscraper in the world in Dubai,” Alabbar was quoted as saying in an interview to CNN, on the sidelines of launching of […]
Jignesh Shah resigned from the board of Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd., the nation’s biggest commodity trading platform, amid an investigation into the failure of a related spot bourse. Shah, 46, quit as non-executive vice chairman, according to a filing yesterday from the company he founded in 2003. He said he’s leaving to help ensure investors aren’t harmed by “mud-slinging” over the probe. India’s commodities futures […]
A row has flared up between leading planemakers over the width of tourist-class seats on long-distance flights, setting the tone for a bitter confrontation at this month’s Dubai Airshow. The dispute focuses on the width of seats provided on long-haul flights for economy passengers – not always the ones most courted by airlines, but whose allocated space holds the key to efficiency claims for the latest jets […]
Du, the United Arab Emirates’ second-biggest telecoms operator, remains at odds with rival Etisalat over the terms of a network sharing deal to open up fixed-line services in the country. Du’s CEO Osman Sultan voiced frustration at the impasse more than four years after talks between the companies began. Both are majority-owned by state-linked institutions. Du ended Etisalat’s domestic monopoly in 2007 and both offer fixed-line broadband […]
Emirates NBD is looking for acquisition targets in Turkey as Dubai’s largest lender scouts for opportunities beyond its home market, despite an improving economic environment within the emirate, its top executive said. ENBD, which completed in June the purchase of BNP Paribas’ Egyptian assets for $500 million, has been looking to diversify beyond Dubai after a real estate market crash in 2008-2010 severely impacted the bank. The […]
The Federal Reserve is expected to maintain its massive bond-buying campaign when it concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday and may point to softer readings on the U.S. economy to signal that the policy will be extended into 2014. The central bank, which will announce its policy decision at 2 p.m., has held interest rates near zero since late 2008 and has quadrupled the size of its […]
Bahrain is still in the early stages of a series of bank mergers designed to strengthen the sector in the face of regional competition, the central bank governor said. The tiny kingdom’s banking industry, once the most vibrant in the Gulf, was hit hard by the global financial crisis and, since 2011, by political unrest which has deterred some foreign investment. But Rasheed al-Maraj said there were […]
The UAE financial adviser study, conducted by the Durable Portfolio Construction Research Centre of Natixis Global Asset Management (NGAM), one of the 15 largest asset managers in the world based on assets under management, concludes that the UAE is one of the strongest markets for advisers globally, with great potential for further growth if current challenges are successfully overcome. Forty per cent of UAE advisers say their […]
Indians account for the largest number of Dubai property deals, followed by the British and Pakistanis, according to the Dubai Economic Outlook, Quarter 2 report for 2013, issued by the Secretariat General of the Dubai Economic Council (DEC). Many deals recorded as by British might also involve people of Indian origin holding British passports. The report indicates that the real estate sector in Dubai has witnessed a […]
Protesters marched on Capitol Hill in Washington on Saturday to protest the U.S. government’s online surveillance programs, whose vast scope was revealed this year by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden. People carried signs reading: “Stop Mass Spying,” “Thank you, Edward Snowden” and “Unplug Big Brother” as they gathered at the foot of the Capitol to demonstrate against the online surveillance by the National Security Agency. Estimates […]
Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), owner of the world’s biggest refinery complex, reported the slowest profit growth in four quarters after refining margins declined. Net income rose 1.5 percent to 54.9 billion rupees ($894 million), or 17 rupees a share, in the three months ended Sept. 30, from 54.1 billion rupees, or 16.70 rupees, a year earlier, according to a stock exchange filing yesterday. That beat the 54.2 […]
International Finance Corp., the World Bank’s investment arm, plans to sell a record $1 billion of rupee bonds offshore to fund its investments as India struggles to lure capital amid the slowest growth in a decade. The bond sale aims to “attract greater foreign investment in a time of renewed economic uncertainty across the world,” the Washington-based IFC said in a statement yesterday. The so-called synthetic debt […]
Chemical warfare and car bombings are just a few of the hazards working in war-torn countries such as Iraq and Syria. For Supreme Group BV, it’s the cost of doing business. Dubai-based Supreme delivers fuel and food — 100,000 meals a day — to troops stationed in some of the most inhospitable parts of the world, including Liberia, Mali and Sudan. The perilous business, where contractors dodge […]
Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen. Failure by the world’s largest borrower to pay its debt — […]
Asian shares, oil prices and the dollar came under pressure on Monday as politicians in Washington showed no signs of making progress to resolve the U.S. budget standoff, while safe-haven gold inched higher. Financial bookmakers expected European shares to follow Asia lower and open down between 0.4 and 0.5 percent. Democrats and Republicans remained far apart on ending the government shutdown, let alone reaching a deal on […]
President Barack Obama said he expects Congress will reach an agreement to raise the nation’s $16.7 borrowing limit in time to avert a default. “America has never not paid its bills,” Obama said in an interview with the Associated Press. “I don’t expect to get there.” The interview was released today as a partial shutdown of the U.S. government entered its fifth day and less than two […]
Gold analysts are bullish for a third consecutive week on speculation that the first U.S. government shutdown in 17 years and a standoff over raising the country’s debt limit will spur demand for the metal as a haven. Eighteen analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect prices to rise next week, eight are bearish and four neutral. That’s the longest positive run since July. Bullion capped a 7.6 percent […]
Reserve Bank of India data showed the highest ratio of short-term external debt to currency reserves in more than a decade, raising alarm bells at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Nomura Holdings Inc. The $97 billion maturing in less than a year amounted to 34.3 percent of reserves as of June 30, the highest since at least March 2001, RBI figures released Sept. 30 show. The ratio […]
Dubai, which roiled markets with its request to delay $25 billion of debt payments in 2009, faces the prospect of rising borrowing costs if it succeeds in a bid to hold the Expo 2020 World Fair, Bank of America Corp. said. The emirate needs about 26 billion dirhams ($7.1 billion) of infrastructure spending to host the event, HSBC Holdings Plc analyst Patrick Gaffney said by phone. At […]
Amid low levels of trust in the financial industry and concerns over product mis-selling, a new CFA Institute report aims to improve transparency and investor protection by examining disclosures on costs, performance, and risks associated with packaged retail investment products (PRIPs) Packaged Retail Investment Products: Investor Disclosure Considerations for a Key Information Document, informs the EU policy debate and the draft regulation on PRIPs from the investor […]
Today hospitals and health systems worldwide are facing a plethora of challenges; these include aging populations, evolving disease profiles, increasing demand by patients for quality care, mounting cost pressures and an uneven distribution of expert resources. In addition, healthcare delivery is shifting from a focus on specific health episodes to a continuum approach, with a greater emphasis on education and prevention. Luckily, however, technology may hold the […]
