GFH Financial Group hopes to largely complete the acquisition of Bahrain’s Bank Al Khair in the first quarter of next year and is at an advanced stage of exploring a merger with another Bahraini bank, its chief executive said on Tuesday. “The recent merger we announced was Bank Al Khair – we hope during the first quarter of 2017 to finish most of our acquisition,” Hisham al-Rayes […]
London’s FTSE 100 stands apart as the global laggard among major stock indices with investors giving it a wide berth almost a month since the election of Donald Trump. The performance reflects concern over Brexit negotiations hurting the shares of companies exposed to the UK economy while the pound’s recent rebound against the dollar and the euro offsets the boost for resource stocks from rising crude and […]
Wall Street climbed on Tuesday as telecom stalwarts AT&T and Verizon gained and bank shares added to their torrid post-election rally, helping the Dow set another record closing high. The S&P financial sector .SPSY rose nearly 1 percent, lifted by a 2.2 percent gain for Wells Fargo (WFC.N). The bank’s chief executive told an investor conference it will see a near-term profit hit because of the sharp […]
A man holds up his mobile phone showing a M-Pesa mobile money transaction page for the photographer at an open air market in Kibera in Kenya’s capital Nairobi (Reuters/Noor Khamis). This post features a conversation with Georgia Levenson Keohane, executive director of the Pershing Square Foundation, adjunct professor of social enterprise at Columbia Business School, and author of Capital and the Common Good: How Innovative Finance is […]
Hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand has returned almost 15 per cent this year by betting on a recovery in oil prices and he forecasts the rally has further to run after Opec’s agreement last week to cut supplies. The French founder of Andurand Capital, which has grown to be one of the world’s largest oil funds, returned 6.1 per cent in November as he positioned for crude’s […]
The petrochemical sector helped carry Saudi Arabia’s stock market to a fresh one-year closing high on Tuesday after crude oil prices hit a 17-month peak. The main Saudi index added 0.7 percent to 7,155 points in extremely heavy turnover with gainers outnumbering losers 139 to 18. The index is now up 3.5 percent year-to-date. The petrochemical sector stayed strong; it has been contributing to the market’s positive […]
06 December 2016 Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, today announces that it is launching a combination order ticket for all clients trading contract options. The combination order ticket will enable clients to deploy multi-legged option strategies by simultaneously placing orders to buy and/or sell different options from the same order ticket. Georgio Stoev, Futures and Listed Options Product Manager, said: “Instead of trading […]
If you set out to make a positive investment case for Italy 20 years ago, the best hope was to play down the myriad structural inefficiencies that blighted the corporate sector and argue that this was a good economy burdened by an unworkable state. Now, after years of no growth accompanied by stubbornly high public debt, a positive case looks even harder to make, especially after the […]
By Gavin Jones | ROME ROME Italy could have an election as early as February, a minister in Matteo Renzi’s outgoing government said on Tuesday after speaking with the prime minister. The comments will heighten support for a quick vote as the only way to avoid protracted political limbo in the euro zone’s third largest economy following Sunday’s “No” vote on Renzi’s constitutional reforms. The two largest […]
Good morning. Here’s our daily summary of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. It’s so quaint that politicians still get pissed at the press and utter some version of Mark Twain’s, “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” That was underscored again Monday by Donald Trump, who tweeted, […]
By Jonathan Cable | LONDON LONDON Britain will most likely leave the European Union having signed a bilateral trade agreement, according to a Reuters poll of economists on Tuesday that also suggested there remains little chance of the country slipping into recession. Since the June 23 decision to leave the EU, Britain’s economy has performed much better than had been previously feared. The Bank of England is […]
Brussels’ lead Brexit negotiator has called for an “orderly withdrawal” of the UK from the EU but warned the government will have less than two years to agree its exit in a tough negotiating timetable set by the bloc. In his first press conference after being appointed as head of the EU’s Article 50 Taskforce, Michel Barnier said it was “too soon to talk about the details” […]
Ouch. Shares in spread-betters have tanked after the Financial Conduct Authority announced a comprehensive series of proposals to tighten up on a business that it says is poorly understood by clients. Over 80 per cent of customers lose money on these financial-market bets, the FCA said. At pixel time: CMC Markets shares are down by over 30 per cent to 128.4p. Shares in IG Group are down […]
The vast majority of UAE-based CEOs are confident about prospects for their organisations over the next three years, according to the KPMG 2016 CEO Outlook report. The survey findings revealed that 76 percent of polled UAE-based CEOs – compared to 41 percent of global CEOs – believe that their business will change significantly over the next three years. The survey also found that UAE bosses believe that […]
In interviews with The New York Times, a former Taliban finance minister described how he traveled to Saudi Arabia for years raising money while ostensibly on pilgrimage. The Taliban have also been allowed to raise additional millions by extorting “taxes” by pressing hundreds of thousands of Pashtun guest workers in the kingdom and menacing their families back home, according to Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser. […]
Lego is undertaking the biggest organisational shake-up in its 84-year history, in a move aimed at exploiting its toy brand more broadly after a decade of strong growth for the maker of plastic bricks. Under the Danish toymaker’s new structure, its current chief executive, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp — who rescued the brand from near financial collapse in 2004 — will become chairman, taking over from Niels Jacobsen. […]
Anyone checking the exchange rate between China’s renminbi and the US dollar would have got a shock early on Tuesday when an apparent glitch resulted in quotes shown on Google and at least two other currency exchange websites showing an 8 per cent devaluation. When markets opened, the Chinese currency instead rose against its US counterpart, after the central bank set the midpoint of the renminbi’s 4 per […]
Time magazine said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi won its online readers’ poll which contributes to its selection of its person of the year. Mr. Modi beat U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama to win 18% of the vote. He also beat Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Mr. Modi last month unleashed chaos in the South Asian nation with a surprise […]
Flat6Labs Abu Dhabi, a digital media accelerator supported by twofour54 Abu Dhabi, showcased eight new start-up companies during its third Demo Day. The Demo Day, held under the patronage of HE Noura Al Kaabi, Minister of State for Federal National Council Affairs of the UAE and Chairwoman of the Media Zone Authority-Abu Dhabi, and twofour54, took place during the UAE Innovation week. In addition to the diverse […]
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com, When gold exploded to the upside earlier this year amid the biggest New Year’s stock market panic in history, we noted that the bull market had awoken. And despite arguments to the contrary from mainstream financial pundits that gold and silver were not monetary metals and nothing but historical relics, it became apparent during the Brexit vote that precious metals were the […]
By Swati Pandey and Charlotte Greenfield | WELLINGTON WELLINGTON New Zealand Finance Minister Bill English said on Tuesday he planned to stand for prime minister after John Key’s surprise resignation a day earlier. English, a former Treasury Department analyst who is also deputy leader of the ruling centre-right National Party, is viewed by both lawmakers and political analysts as the front-runner for the top job. “I can […]
The great American corporate buyback party was expected to fizzle out next year, leaving a hangover of debt and remorse. Instead, the boom may soon find renewed succour if US companies bring their pile of foreign-based cash back home. A tax holiday for US companies looms under president-elect Donald Trump, with some seeing this wave of cash as the catalyst of an investment boom and faster US […]
Wall Street rose on Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials setting fresh record highs, as services sector data gave further evidence of strength in the domestic economy. U.S. services sector activity hit a one-year high in November, with a surge in production boosting hiring, following on the heels of Friday’s employment report that showed strong job gains last month. U.S. stocks have climbed since the Nov. 8 […]
Italy’s president has asked Matteo Renzi to stay on as Italy’s prime minister until the country’s budget law is passed in parliament, extending his stay at the helm of the Italian government for possibly a week. At a meeting in the presidential palace in Rome, Mr Renzi expressed his intention to resign after suffering a bruising defeat in a constitutional reform referendum held on Sunday. But Sergio […]
