KKR ‘s Samie says the key challenges in the region are valuations, regulations and issues with minority ownership. Nicolas Parasie for The Wall Street Journal KKR & Co. has been in the Middle East and North Africa since 2008. In what could be one of the largest buyout deals ever in the region, the New York-based private equity giant is jointly bidding for Kuwait’s Americana. The Wall […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Banks with experience arranging Islamic bond sales may stand to benefit from the potential opening of Saudi Arabia’s debt market to foreign investors, according to the investment banking unit of Mashreqbank PSC. (MASQ) “There’ll be a lot of potential for non-Saudi banks to get involved on the advising and arranging side,” Abdul Kadir Hussain, who oversees about $700 million as chief executive officer of Mashreq […]
President Obama on Wednesday in Washington. Mr. Obama says he is aware of the “political price” he pays for being deliberate. By PETER BAKER September 13, 2014 WASHINGTON — Just hours before announcing an escalated campaign against Islamic extremists last week, President Obama privately reflected on another time when a president weighed military action in the Middle East — the frenzied weeks leading up to the American invasion of […]
President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden Photo: AP Were it any other US president in recent memory, delivering a rousing White House address promising to “vanquish” the bloodthirsty militants of the Islamic State from the face of the earth would be dismissed as the “easy part”. Recall Joe Biden, the vice president with half an eye on a run for the top job in 2016, […]
Banks with experience arranging Islamic bond sales may stand to benefit from the potential opening of Saudi Arabia’s debt market to foreign investors, according to the investment banking unit of Mashreqbank. “There’ll be a lot of potential for non-Saudi banks to get involved on the advising and arranging side,” Abdul Kadir Hussain, who oversees about $700 million as chief executive officer of Mashreq Capital DIFC Ltd. in […]
Investors in Dubai continued to accumulate cash in early trade on Thursday ahead of the $1.4 billion initial public offer of Emaar Malls Group, a subsidiary of Emaar Properties, the largest listed developer in the emirate. The Dubai index fell 1.3 percent as most stocks were in the red. Emaar itself was the main drag, falling 1.8 percent as its shares no longer entitled their holders to […]
Colliers Houses prices in Dubai are cooling, and in some areas, they are even falling, according to the latest quarterly report from Colliers International. Average house prices were up 3% across Dubai in the second quarter, compared with the first three months of the year, and are still up 20% on a year-on-year basis. But average villa prices actually fell slightly from AED1,480 per square foot to […]
Dubai’s boom-and-bust real estate market can land you at the wheel of a Rolls-Royce or behind bars. Kabir Mulchandani should know: he’s experienced both. Five years after spending 140 days in jail facing charges of fraud and embezzlement for which he ultimately was cleared, the chairman of developer SKAI Holdings stands at a building site watching cranes start work on one of the company’s three projects. They […]
Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s prospects seem a lot brighter than they were the last time Tim Cook introduced an iPhone. When Chief Executive Officer Cook unveiled two new smartphone models 12 months ago, Apple’s stock was slumping and the company was losing market share to Samsung Electronics Co. and low-cost manufacturers such as Xiaomi Corp. Questions abounded about whether Apple could keep innovating without co-founder Steve Jobs. Fast […]
By Bjørn K. Haugland & Erik Rasmussen How can we use the pressure from global risks such as extreme weather or water scarcity to create new sustainable business opportunities? This might be the single most important question for any company today. In current strategizing and business developing, we are very good at spotting risks associated with the sustainability challenges facing us. Markets will change, access to critical […]
Photo: Alamy When we were young, my brother and I used to argue with our parents over bedtime, pushing it later and later so that we could squeeze in more stories. Beatrix Potter’s were our favourites, though my dad preferred Tom Sawyer. My mum and dad always read us to sleep, and when I was older, I waited to hear their footsteps on the stairs. As soon […]
By Paul Carsten BEIJING Mon Sep 8, 2014 11:12am IST A picture illustration shows a WeChat app icon in Beijing, December 5, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Petar Kujundzic/Files BEIJING (Reuters) – Apple Inc has a lot for which to thank people like Deng. A Beijing-based quality analyst, she gave only her surname as she’s embarrassed by how much money she spends playing mobile games on WeChat, a hugely popular […]
Valérie Trierweiler, the high-heeled hellcat whose memoir of their time together has plunged the surreally unpopular president into the biggest crisis anyone at the Elysée Palace can recall Photo: REX FEATURES Beneath the twinkling chandeliers of Cardiff Castle’s banqueting hall last week, François Hollande wore the pale, sweaty look of a man in big trouble. Back home, the economy was collapsing, the public was in revolt, the government […]
Tory strategists: George Osborne and Lynton Crosby (right) Photo: REX FEATURES The Scottish opinion polls were looking bad for the “No” campaign. Their ratings were sliding downhill faster than a fat man on a skeleton bob. A new report had claimed that there was £300 billion’s worth of oil waiting to be fracked off the coast of Scotland. And all they could offer to stem the Nationalist surge were […]
NEW DELHI: In a move that could benefit coal-fired power projects aggregating 20,000 MW set to come up by the end of 2016 but without any assured supply of the fuel, the power ministry has proposed that to start with, they be given at least 50% of the normative coal requirement to run the plants at a plant load factor (PLF) of 85%. If the plan materialises, […]
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. . . more could be done to improve the productivity of each police officer, says Tom Winsor Photo: Alamy At first, when her south London flat was broken into last winter, Zena Ambrose couldn’t have been more impressed with the response from the police. The communications consultant returned home from work late at night to find a burglar had stolen her MacBook, driving licence and designer clothes […]
Spurred by a rapidly deteriorating economy, the International Monetary Fund has approved a three-year extended credit facility worth $552 million with Yemen, the impoverished Arab nation that has become a breeding ground for the terrorist group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The lifeline will provide some relief for Yemeni authorities who face a myriad of political and security challenges that continue to drag on the economy. […]
By Nivedita Bhattacharjee MUMBAI Wed Sep 3, 2014 11:01am IST Android mascots are lined up in the demonstration area at the Google I/O Developers Conference in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, May 10, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Beck Diefenbach/Files MUMBAI (Reuters) – Google Inc’s (GOOGL.O) partnership with three Indian phone makers is set to rev up fast-growing demand for lower priced smartphones, and spell more trouble for […]
Islamic debt could become a source of funding for U.K. infrastructure projects from wind turbines to high-speed trains and airports as Britain cements its position as the first sukuk market in a non-Muslim nation. Investors including Bank of London and the Middle East see scope for the U.K. to issue Shariah-compliant bonds with varying maturities after the Debt Management Office attracted bids for more than 10 times […]
Rents are either falling or holding steady in Dubai’s freehold communities, reveals the latest update of Real Estate Regulatory Agency’s (Rera) rental index, as compared to the update released in May. Downtown Dubai, an upscale community, is witnessing rental declines across all categories of apartments – studios, one- and two-bed units. Studio rates are down 6.25 per cent to 7.14 per cent, as per the final index […]
|By TAP Staff|The global Sukuk industry is expected to be one of the fastest growing segments of the Islamic finance industry with huge growth potential in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, according to a report by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This is particularly true of Dubai where Sukuks are expected to play an important role over the next decade in securing funds for […]
By S Sethuraman Uncomfortably, for the Modi Government, despite full command of power at the national level and BJP’s majoritarianism, the first 100 days have fallen short of expectations, at national or global levels, of an economic resurgence or of promise of “change” of atmospherics towards greater transparency and accountability in governance. On the other hand, despite tight enforcement of Prime Ministerial authority, cracks had […]
By Eric Parnell, CFA: The market news coverage is becoming increasingly polarized. On one side of the debate are those that believe the sky is the limit for stocks in the months ahead. With stocks reaching a fresh all-time high on Friday, this view has yet to be invalidated. On the other side of the discussion are those that expect a significant stock market pullback is not […]
KUWAIT. A recent report issued by KFH Research, a subsidery for KFH Group, sees continued positive outlook for the Kuwaiti construction industry, on the back of strong domestic demand in the Kuwaiti economy and a pick-up in government capital spending. Overview and Outlook “While we remain fundamentally cautious about the country’s medium-term investment outlook, we note that higher growth in bank lending over the last few months […]
