When a scrap metal dealer from U.S. Midwest bought a golden ornament at a junk market, it never crossed his mind that he was the owner of a $20 million Faberge egg hailing from the court of imperial Russia. In a mystery fit for the tumultuous history of Russia’s ostentatious elite, the 8-cm (3-inch) golden egg was spirited out of St Petersburg after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution […]
| By Clyde Russel | The price of Middle East crude oils being supplied to Asia appears too high given an increase in supply from Iran, Iraq and rival Russia and muted demand from refiners. While benchmark Oman futures have declined 5 percent since the start of the year to end at $102.93 a barrel on Wednesday, the price relative to global marker Brent has been rising. […]
BlackRock Inc.’s Sam Vecht says investors are following the herd in selling emerging markets to invest in the most-developed economies, a strategy that has historically yielded “underwhelming” results. Investors “are selling emerging markets which have very low valuations, significant dividend yields but have underperformed in recent times,” Vecht, London-based manager at BlackRock Emerging Europe Trust Plc, said in e-mailed comments yesterday. In exchange, they’re buying assets in […]
Growing tension between the West and Russia ahead of Ukraine’s weekend referendum in Crimea pushed down stocks on major world markets on Friday and drove up buying of safe-haven gold and the yen. Financial markets watched nervously as the West increasingly talked about sanctions and Russia hit back with promises of retaliatory measures and displays of military prowess. The vote being held on Sunday by pro-Moscow authorities […]
|By TAP Staff| A Global Financial Centres Index compiled by London-based consultancy Z/Yen using assessments of financial services professionals has come up with a most astonishing finding: Dubai comes three points behind Qatar. According to the index, Qatar, Dubai and Riyadh took places 26, 29 and 31 respectively, but continued to rise in the index, while 23 of the 27 European centres declined in rank. New York […]
|By Rajhkumar K Shaaw and Santanu Chakraborty| For the first time in five years, Nilesh Dedhia is buying Indian stocks. The 48-year-old owner of a die-casting factory in Mumbai is among a growing number of local investors returning to the $1.2 trillion equity market on speculation national elections in May will deliver a government with the mandate to revive economic growth from a decade low. That optimism […]
|By Eric Balchunas| Coffee is up 80 percent this year. Lean hogs are up 28 percent. Corn is up 13 percent. Gold is up 12 percent. Most of these same commodities were down last year, and any of them could fall at the drop of a hat. So how do rational investors participate in the upside for unpredictable commodities without losing their all-cotton shirts? One approach is […]
|By K Raveendran| Abu Dhabi is set to launch an inaugural issuance of treasury bills of around $1 billion this year, along with an issue of $500 million commercial debt by Sharjah to invest in capital projects, sources familiar with the subject reveal. Also on the cards s a sukuk issue by Ras Al Khaimah, which has to refinance about $400 million in debt coming due this […]
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 […]
Asian shares cautiously rebounded from two-week lows on Thursday but gains were pared after disappointing retail sales and factory output data underscored investors’ concerns over slowdown in China. A standoff in Ukraine and a massive fall in copper prices in recent weeks also spooked investors, although a flat close on Wall Street and some positive data in Australia and Japan helped to cushion the blow. European shares […]
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 […]
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 […]
Dry cargo shippers with smaller vessels are shifting to more-risk, more-reward spot markets, eyeing rising demand for sugar and grains — commodities well suited to versatile supramax and handysize ships. Ship owners generally prefer long-term charters in a weak market. The Baltic Dry Index o-year lows in recent weeks but confidence has been rocked by South Korean dry bulk group Korea Line Corp filing for bankruptcy protection, […]
|By Mayank Bhardwaj and Jo Winterbottom| A bad monsoon in India is the one that fails to deliver enough rain … most of the time. This year, a lack of rainclouds could be the silver lining that the government needs. India has no place left to store more grain, and can ill afford a hefty payout to farmers for the truckloads of produce that another monsoon could […]
Drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd has recalled more than 64,000 bottles of the generic versions of its cholesterol-lowering drug in the United States due to reports of a dose mix-up, U.S. regulators said. Ranbaxy recalled tablets of atorvastatin calcium, the generic name for Lipitor’s active ingredient, after a pharmacist found a 20-milligram tablet in a sealed bottle marked for 10-milligram tablets, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration […]
|By TAP Staff| The Dubai Mall gets more foot traffic than the Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls and Disney World combined. Attracting 75 million visitors a year, it is one of the most visited tourist attractions on the planet. The Dubai Mall is no ordinary shopping center. Recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest shopping mall (in terms of total floor space) it is larger than […]
| By TAP Staff| UAE banks outperformed their counterparts in the rest of the GCC in terms of net profits for 2013. The UAE banks were followed by Qatari banks, which took the second overall position. According to an analysis of the GCC banking sector by Global Investment House, profits of banks in the UAE grew 15.8 percent YoY while the banks in Qatar recorded a growth […]
Investor sentiment toward Dubai is about the best it has been since before the Persian Gulf emirate skirted default amid the global credit crisis. The cost of insuring its debt against non-payment with credit-default swaps was quoted at 189 basis points at the end of last month, the least since the 187 reached in May, which was the lowest since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., […]
Stocks slid while oil prices shot up on Monday, after Russia bloodlessly seized a part of Ukraine, escalating tensions between Russia and the West to a level not seen since the end of the Cold War. U.S. stock futures fell 0.7 percent from a record high hit on Friday while Japan’s Nikkei average tumbled 1.3 percent. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.6 percent. […]
The rupee is trading lower at 61.88/89 versus Friday’s close of 61.75/76. It fell to 61.95 in early trades. Global risk aversion on geopolitical tensions in Ukraine weighing on most Asian currencies. China manufacturing PMI hits a seven-month low, further hurting risk currency sentiment. India’s December GDP came in at a below expected 4.7 percent, data released after market hours on Friday showed. The Japanese yen rose […]
|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 […]
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 […]
Citigroup Inc said on Friday that it has discovered at least $400 million in fraudulent loans in its Mexico subsidiary and said employees may have been in on the crime. The bank wrote down bogus loans to a company whose assets Mexican law enforcement officials have now seized. Citigroup’s 2013 profit fell by $235 million to $13.67 billion after the write-down. Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat […]
