Nearly a decade ago, Warren Buffett bet Protege Partners, a fund of hedge funds, that over the course of 10 years the S&P would outperform Protege’s returns net of all fees, costs and expenses. To make it real, the loser agreed to pay $1 million to the charity of the winner’s choice. At this past year’s annual meeting, Warren Buffett provided an update on the now […]
By Karen Freifeld and Arno Schuetze | NEW YORK/FRANKFURT NEW YORK/FRANKFURT Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) has agreed to a $7.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale and pooling of toxic mortgage securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The agreement in principle, announced by Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt headquarters early Friday morning, offers some relief to the German lender, whose stock was […]
More than four decades after a sweeping British military withdrawal from bases “east of Suez”, the UK is scaling up its defence engagement in the Gulf and Asia in what analysts regard as a recognition of the region’s growing global importance. Britain is reopening a naval support facility in Bahrain, creating a permanent army presence in Oman and establishing new defence staff centres in Dubai and Singapore. […]
Europe’s Airbus signed a firm contract on Thursday to sell 100 jets to IranAir, completing a return by Western plane giants and paving the way for deliveries to start next month, a year after sanctions against Iran were lifted. The deal took weeks of shuttling between Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, and Tehran, complicated by a shortage of expert legal advice as Iran completes its biggest commercial […]
The Beyond the Net Funding Programme is proud to announce the results of our November 2016 grant application cycle. This cycle, we received 39 amazing applications from around the world. The project ideas were varied, original, and focused on helping local communities. It was hard, but the Selection Committee managed to pick six projects for funding. These projects were selected for their uniqueness, structure and the benefits […]
22 December 2016 The Capital Market Authority Board has approved the final version of the Parallel Market Listing Rules after the draft was published on the CMA’s website. The Authority ensured in the final draft that it took into consideration all recommendations, observations and opinions, received from investors and specialists, the interested an related parties during the public consultation. These Rules will be effective and enter into force […]
After India took the radical step of voiding the majority of its currency overnight to cut corruption and the nation’s reliance on cash, other countries with similar problems have been watching closely. Venezuala already followed suit by taking nearly half its bank notes out of circulation and now some politicians in Pakistan, India’s rival and neighbor, want their country to do the same. The upper house of […]
The UAE has among the lowest travel insurance penetration rates in the world, a Dubai-based financial consultancy has claimed. UAE holidaymakers are failing to take out adequate insurance when travelling abroad, with Nexus Group estimating that less than 1 percent of people are covered by a comprehensive insurance policy. The figure excludes minimal coverage that individuals have from a third parties such as a bank or as […]
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com, In the late 1400s, the city-states of Italy were among most dominant powers in the world. Most of the city-states had abandoned the feudal system that persisted across Europe. So Italy was one of the only places on the continent where anyone, including foreigners, could work hard, take risks, and become wealthy. People could start businesses and own private property– revolutionary […]
In the summer of 2015, I left Washington, D.C. and moved to Carrboro, population 19,582, in the middle of North Carolina. I had never lived in the South before, or in a small town. Most of my life had been spent along the Acela corridor, in Philadelphia and New York and Boston and Hartford, Connecticut. I thought we would stay a year, maybe two. This summer, we […]
ABU DHABI // Choosing to travel to the United States for his post-secondary education was a no-brainer for Saad Hamoodi. Not only would he be following in his father’s footsteps, but having studied in an American private school all his life, Mr Hamoodi was familiar and comfortable with the curriculum. “I graduated with the American system, so I’ve always been closer to that,” said the 26-year-old Emirati. […]
After five grinding years of losses, commodities are set to end higher in 2016 and investors are staking out increasingly bold calls for the coming year. This reflects signs that the prolonged decline in markets such as oil and metals is finally having an effect. Cuts in capital spending by producers have begun to choke off supplies as global demand creeps higher. It might not be a […]
A study by RMIT University has found that around 2 million Australians are often risking data breaches by logging into internet banking and conducting other financial transactions on unsecured public Wi-Fi networks. In compiling its report [PDF] Practicing safe public Wi-Fi: Assessing and managing data-security risks, RMIT surveyed 1,200 adult Australians, asking explicitly what they do on public Wi-Fi networks, as well as what they know about […]
BEIJING China on Thursday dismissed accusations from Taiwan that it engaged in “dollar diplomacy” to get Sao Tome and Principe to ditch ties with the self-ruled island, saying a petty Taiwan was besmirching China’s good name. The tiny West African state’s decision this week has angered Taiwan, which says the move will not help already strained relations with China. Taiwan says China took advantage of Sao Tome’s […]
AP Images A new European Court of Justice ruling has made it more difficult for Britain to seal a major trade deal with the European Union post-Brexit. The European Court of Justice’s Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston published a legal opinion saying that all 38 national and regional parliaments, around five regional and linguistic parliaments in Belgium, and at least five upper chambers in Europe have to approve […]
2016 was fact-checking’s finest year [1]. No it wasn’t, it was the year of “post-truth” [2] — some preferred “post-fact” [3] — and fact-checking is a fool’s errand. The discussion about facts in journalism worldwide has rarely been as fractured and animated as it has been in 2016, so we collected 366 links, one for each day of the year, to try and make sense of what […]
By Lawrence Delevingne and Olivia Oran | NEW YORK NEW YORK Wall Street holiday parties this year took place in luxury venues like the Waldorf Astoria, featured women dressed as glowing angels, and had fine wine, scotch and bourbon on hand. But organizers of the soirées, conscious of tighter budgets and public scrutiny, are not eager to discuss the merriment. Big financial firms started curtailing year-end bashes […]
22 December 2016 MARC has affirmed South Korea’s foreign currency sovereign rating of AAA with a stable outlook based on its national rating scale. The rating reflects MARC’s opinion of the sovereign’s ability to meet its foreign currency obligations in full and on time. The government of South Korea (GoK) has no debt rated by MARC. The rating also serves as a country ceiling for ringgit-denominated debt […]
Thursday 08:10 GMT Overview European stock indices are slipping back, following Wall Street’s lacklustre lead as the Dow Jones Industrial Average moved further away from the 20,000-point milestone while the US dollar weakened, also cooling from its strong run. Hot topic European banking stocks are under scrutiny. It comes after news that Monte dei Paschi di Siena is to be rescued by the Italian state using a […]
Iceland Of all the world leaders shamed over hidden wealth stashed offshore, none was more unfortunate than Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. The hapless prime minister of Iceland was caught on camera desperately trying to work out how to explain the presence of his signature on the documents of Wintris Inc, a company in the British Virgin Islands that held shares in one of the country’s failed banks. As […]
Infrastructure of Berth 5 and Berth 6 at final stages of this year’s strategic expansion 21 December 2016 King Abdullah Economic City, The infrastructure works for Berth 5 and Berth 6 are about to be finished in a few weeks, King Abdullah Port announced on Wednesday. The two berths are part of the port’s strategic expansion plan, which aims to significantly uprate the port’s capacity, thus boosting […]
Submitted by a Zero Hedge reader who wishes to remain anonymous: OPEN LETTER TO MINISTER-PRESIDENT SEEHOFER(Sent before the carnage in Berlin’s Christmas market) Dear Minister-President Seehofer, I would like to commend you on your opposition to mass uncontrolled immigration into Europe. One would think that it would be trivial to praise politicians – who are elected to uphold law and order, meaning our culture and values – […]
By Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL South Korea on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant for a daughter of the woman at the centre of President Park Geun-hye’s corruption scandal and investigators raided the National Pension Service over possible links to the scandal. A special prosecutor’s investigation started on Wednesday into the influence-peddling scandal that threatens to make Park, 64, the first democratically-elected leader to leave office early […]
SYDNEY The U.S. dollar held near 14-year peaks on Wednesday as global yield spreads moved inexorably in its favor, while a falling yen lifted Japanese shares to a one-year top. The Nikkei .N225 added 0.3 percent in thin trade, while Australia’s main index climbed 0.6 percent to its highest in 17 months after Wall Street racked up more records. Japan’s government upgraded its overall assessment of the […]
