UAE. End of Service Gratuity (Gratuity) is a statutory severance pay across most Middle Eastern jurisdictions and one which is conceptually analysed as akin to a retirement savings scheme or pension scheme. This article explores some of the common pitfalls and tricky issues which arise in relation to statutory Gratuity in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) under Federal Law No.8 of 1980 Regarding the Organisation of Labour […]
NASA and the U.S. Department of State were among the federal agencies that received low marks on IT security, according to a recent report card issued by the New York-based firm Security Scorecard. Also receiving low grades were the states of Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Washington. The 2016 U.S. Government Cybersecurity Report, released earlier this month, analyzed the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of some 600 local, state and federal government […]
TORONTO Canada’s Liberal government is prepared to overhaul the country’s laws governing broadcasting, media and cultural industries to support local content, Heritage Minister Melanie Joly told the Globe and Mail in a report on Saturday, announcing a new policy direction in what she called a broken system. Canada’s broadcast regulator has long had requirements for networks to carry certain amounts of local content. But it cut that […]
Details are pictured on the backside of an Apple Iphone 6 on a table in a restaurant in Hanau, Germany, April 10, 2016. Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach NEW YORK The U.S. Justice Department on Friday dropped its effort to force Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to help unlock an iPhone in a drug case in New York after someone provided authorities the passcode to access the device. In a letter filed […]
|By Matein Khalid| While the S&P500 fell only 1.2% last week, things will get uglier in April and May. Fed chair Yellen is playing with fire in talking down US interest rates and inflation risk. The Volatility Index (VIX), Wall Street’s barometer of greed and fear, does not capture the rising global financial and political risks at only 15. Market breadth, sector divergence, smart money flows, sentiment, leadership, […]
India’s most reliable source of foreign funding is under threat. Remittances fell to $15.8 billion last quarter, the lowest since April-June 2011 and a 9.4 percent drop from a year earlier, as the global slowdown and slumping oil prices reduce demand for foreign workers. Indians working abroad — from construction laborers in Dubai to Silicon Valley engineers — send home the most money in the world, helping to pay for […]
|By Matein Khalid| “Stop the murder, stop the lies, out, out, you nest of spies!” So chanted the crowd outside South Africa House on Trafalgar Square in the autumnal mists of London circa 1988. The anti-apartheid struggle was the moral compass of my generation, from the Soweto riots to Steve Biko’s murder to the horrific “necklacings in the townships and killing fields of the Limpopo to Madiba’s release […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Hedge funds which bet on Saudi riyal’s dollar peg are reported to have lost heavily as the price rebound in the oil has apparently removed all immediate possibilities of Saudi Arabia abandoning the currency’s peg with the dollar. Several US hedge funds are understood to be among the losers. According to Bloomberg, contracts used to speculate on the kingdom’s exchange rate in the […]
|By Matein Khalid| I was surprised by the dovishness of the Federal Reserve’s FOMC policy statement last week given the white hot US labour market and metrics of wage inflation. Hence the $29 rally in gold, the plunge in the Volatility Index to 15, the fall in the US dollar and the surge in oil/mining shares. The Yellen Fed is still worried about deflation risk in China, Europe […]
|By Alaa Alghamdi| Judicial rulings have shown that the calamitous and tragic events of September 11 were borne out of a relationship between Iran and Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. Will the coming days reveal a similar relationship with Daesh too? Hezbollah is widely known for its support of terrorism, for inciting sectarian strife in the Arab countries, and for the cooperation of its members with drug dealers in Europe, North and South America, Africa, as a means to finance multiple activities, ease the burden on the Iranian treasury offering them substantial financial support, in […]
|By K Raveendran| With the VAT announcement already having been made, the next landmark decision business circles are keenly watching out for is the establishment of the UAE Federal Tax Authority. The new authority or department is expected to be entrusted with the task of implementing and collecting various taxes, including the proposed corporate taxes. In June last year, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) had outlined in […]
/By Arabian Post Staff/ Standard & Poor’s has re-affirmed its view that Saudi riyal peg to the dollar, a subject currently topping market debate, is unlikely to be changed over the next few years. The rating agency’s rationale is that at a time of already significant change and regional geopolitical instability, politically conservative regimes such as those in the GCC are unlikely to increase uncertainty about their […]
|By Matein Khalid| The global credit cycle has an immediate impact on the UAE via oil prices, the US dollar peg, cross border bank credit flows, Federal Reserve monetary policy and world trade. The IMF has cut its 2016 growth forecast to 2.6%, the lowest since 2010. A leading developer just booked a 20 fold rise in penalties from walkaway offplan home buyers. Banks hire “loan rangers” […]
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is no believer in gold’s rally, predicting losses over the coming year as the Federal Reserve increases U.S. interest rates no fewer than three times. Futures dropped. “Our economics team forecasts that the Fed will raise rates by 25 basis points three times this calendar year, to 1.3 percent,” analysts including Jeffrey Currie and Max Layton wrote in a report received on Tuesday, […]
Almost 10,000 Department of Homeland Security employees awoke this morning to find that their personal information had been stolen from the agency’s servers and leaked on the Internet. For his next trick, the same hacker said he’ll release the personal details of 20,000 FBI staff members. The information in the data dump includes names, job titles, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. The attacker targeted not only DHS […]
Gold and its miners’ stocks are rocketing higher as speculators and investors alike return to this left-for-dead sector. This sudden deluge of capital inflows has crowned gold stocks the best-performing sector of this young new year by far, shocking traders. And this stunning reversal of fortunes in both the metal and the companies producing it is only starting, so it’s exceedingly important to understand what’s going on. […]
An Apple logo hangs above the entrance to the Apple store on 5th Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City, July 21, 2015. Reuters/Mike Segar NEW YORK Apple Inc (AAPL.O) must pay VirnetX Holding Corp (VHC.A) more than $625 million for using the patent licensing company’s Internet security technology without permission in its FaceTime and iMessage features, a federal jury in Texas said on Wednesday. […]
|By Matein Khalid| “One country, two systems”. This was the historic formula under which Margaret Thatcher agreed to hand over the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China, then ruled by Paramount Leader Deng Xiao Ping. The Hong Kong dollar’s spike to 7.81, on the high end of its 7.75 – 7.85 band, demonstrates the sheer scale of the speculative attack against […]
A remote-controlled Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Quadricopter is seen during a flight demonstration at the Google I/O Conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco, California June 28, 2012. Reuters/Stephen Lam/Files SAN FRANCISCO Google’s secretive drone delivery project could include a component designed to store packages securely. A patent filed Tuesday in the United States by the company, a unit of Alphabet Inc, describes a “delivery receptacle” designed to […]
The $15 trillion rout in global equity markets since May is reawakening the lure of gold for investors seeking safety. Hedge funds more than doubled their net-long position in bullion last week, just three weeks after they were the most-bearish ever. Investor holdings of gold through exchange-traded products are expanding at the fastest pace in a year, and the value of the ETPs has jumped by $3 […]
|By Matein Khalid| I had called for Brent crude to fall to $30 in successive columns since the November 2014 OPEC conclave in Vienna, when Saudi Arabia abandoned its traditional role as the “swing producer” the central bank of black gold. The world oil markets now face a supply shock, a demand shock, epic volatility and the loss of the “swing producer”. The world is running out […]
As the chattering chieftains of the global economy gather this week in Davos, Switzerland, they’re facing the darkest outlook since the financial crisis tipped the world into recession seven years ago. The Chinese slowdown and accompanying slide in the yuan are imperiling already sluggish international growth, oil is trading at its lowest level in more than a decade, stocks have suffered their worst January ever, and the […]
|By Matein Khalid| This was the ghastliest week for global risk assets since September 2011. Not even 290,000 new US jobs in December could negate the raw fear on Wall Street generated by the 10% fall in Shanghai, a yuan depreciation, market meltdowns of 6 – 7% in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Mumbai and New York. Four months ago, I had published a KT article titled “History’s […]
|By Matein Khalid| Emerging markets were an entirely predictable horror story once again in 2015. The oil/mining bust, currency meltdowns, China’s hard landing, sovereign credit downgrades, banking system crises, corruption scandals and geopolitical crises from Ukraine to Syria, the Black Sea to the South China Sea devastated investor wealth in emerging markets. India’s Sensex and Nifty were down 9% while the rupee has depreciated to 66 […]
