Warren Buffett has thrown his weight behind scandal-hit Wells Fargo, saying it is “a great bank that made a terrible mistake” whose new chief executive Tim Sloan is “exactly right” for the top job. Breaking his months-long silence on the debacle, the head of Berkshire Hathaway, the bank’s biggest shareholder, confirmed he has not sold any shares after the scandal erupted over sales practices. The famed investor […]
By Tim Baysinger Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) said it was able to deliver more viewers than promised to advertisers on a U.S. election night livestream, good news for the microblogging site as it tries to ward off growing competition for ad dollars from Snapchat and Instagram. Twitter partnered with BuzzFeed to host an election night broadcast on Tuesday and attracted major advertisers, including Paramount Pictures, Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) […]
By Yashaswini Swamynathan U.S. stock index futures fell sharply on Friday as investors tailored their portfolios to benefit from president-elect Donald Trump’s proposed policies. The decline on Nasdaq futures was more pronounced. Facebook (FB.O), Apple (AAPL.O), Netflix (NFLX.O) and Alphabet (GOOGL.O) were off more than 1 percent in premarket trading, indicating that Thursday’s selloff in the technology sector was likely to continue. Investors also appeared to be […]
By David Randall | NEW YORK NEW YORK Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the U.S. presidential race is pushing mutual fund managers out of dividend stocks and into the shares of financial, industrial and materials companies that stand to benefit from rising inflation. Although inflation remains subdued by most measures, U.S. longer-dated Treasury yields rose on Thursday to their highest levels in more than 10 months after […]
By Vladimir Soldatkin | MOSCOW MOSCOW Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft reported strong cashflow on Friday, strengthening its position for a continuing acquisition drive despite a worse than expected 77 percent decline in third-quarter net profit. Rosneft, which bought a controlling stake in mid-sized oil company Bashneft for 323 billion rubles ($4.9 billion) last month, has been looking for ways to increase its global exposure and become […]
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been relatively quiet on the topic of his own personal political inclination in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But the unprecedented win of Republican candidate Donald Trump after such a tumultuous campaign has now prompted Cook to address his employees and the entire company in an effort to unite the people. How To Conduct Business After 2016 U.S. Elections […]
UAE. In the GCC, healthcare, industrials & materials and financial services have recorded the largest fluctuations in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity, despite the gradual decline witnessed by the industry since 2014. According to research published today in The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) 2016 M&A Report, Masters of the Corporate Portfolio, companies that regularly acquire and divest businesses as part of their corporate strategy consistently outperform less […]
UAE. Middle East businesses embracing digital transformations in order to gain business advantage and drive innovation are being warned to place digital trust and cyber security at the heart of such change. The advice has been issued by two new senior experts in IT, digital transformation and cyber security appointed by PA Consulting Group Middle East and North Africa as part of an aggressive recruitment phase to […]
By Makiko Yamazaki | TOKYO TOKYO Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp swung to an operating profit in the July-September quarter, driven by strong demand for NAND flash memory chips from Chinese smartphone makers. That boom in demand has been a blessing for Toshiba, which is seeking to recover from a $1.3 billion accounting scandal by turning itself into a company more focused on chips, nuclear energy and social […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Bank of America-Merrill Lynch has made moderate downward adjustments to its near-term growth forecasts in the light of the election of Trump as the next US President. “Given the high level of uncertainty about the exact policy changes at this stage, we are assuming that trade tensions and fiscal stimulus have offsetting impacts on growth in the medium term,” it said. While a wide […]
Emirates and the Gulf’s two other major airlines are likely to get pride of place at Frankfurt airport’s new terminal, allowing them to offer bigger premium-class lounges to compete more aggressively with local rival Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Frankfurt’s Terminal 3 will probably house Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways PJSC of Abu Dhabi, as well as Dubai-based Emirates, the world’s biggest carrier on international routes, Matthias Zieschang, chief […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Ministry of Finance (MoF) announced the UAE’s membership to the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information, following the UAE Cabinet’s decision in 2010 on MoF’s implementation of the G20 resolutions for the exchange of information for tax purposes. The Ministry will be responsible for coordinating with government bodies to collect financial information of international companies operating in the country. The UAE Cabinet had […]
By Abhirup Roy | MUMBAI MUMBAI Ford Motor Co is investing 13 billion rupees ($195 million) over the next five years in a technology and business centre in the Indian city of Chennai to develop new products, design mobility solutions and provide business services. Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford, which has already invested over $2 billion in India till date, will hire 3,000 people and bring in 9,000 from […]
UAE. Low natural gas and electricity prices have created a tough competitive environment for renewable energy, but this has remarkably had little impact on the momentum of alternative energy growth, finds a new Deloitte report entitled, “Alternative Thinking 2016: Five game-changers that are powering the future of renewable energy.” The report identifies the important trends and opportunities in the renewable energy industry. It also presents “what if” […]
INTERNATIONAL. Nine out of 10 banking professionals surveyed at large U.S., European and Canadian commercial banks said their company is currently exploring the use of blockchain technology for payments, according to a new report from Accenture (NYSE: ACN). The initiatives are designed to reduce costs, speed payments, reduce errors and drive new revenues. The report – Blockchain Technology: How banks are building a real-time global payment network – […]
The reality today is that most enterprise applications are well on their way to being cloud based. We’ve seen it with simple workloads such as HR and payroll, travel and expense management, and in the last decade we’ve seen the cloud as the new normal for customer relationship management (CRM) deployments. In fact, a recent Gartner report predicts that the public cloud services market in the Mena […]
By Jack Kim and Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL South Korean prosecutors raided the offices of Samsung Electronics on Tuesday as part of a probe over a political scandal involving President Park Geun-hye and her friend who is alleged to have exerted improper influence in state affairs. A prosecution official told Reuters the search is related to the scandal involving the president’s friend, Choi Soon-sil, but declined […]
DUBAI // Investors who say they have lost millions of dirhams in a Dubai foreign exchange scam have turned to private investigators from the UK to help to recover their funds. More than 240 people have contacted Carlton Huxley, a private firm of legal and law enforcement consultants specialising in complex fraud investigations. Experts from the firm visited Dubai this week to interview those claiming to have […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia’s $17.5 billion debut sovereign bond issue had a most successful start, with investor orders reaching $67 billion, according to reports. The huge response has meant that the oil kingdom is in a position to borrow more cheaply than was originally expected. According to Financial Times, the order book was also sufficiently large to enable the country to raise the amount it […]
|By Matein Khalid| The fall in oil prices since 2014 has triggered a liquidity crunch and higher funding costs in the UAE banking system. EIBOR is almost double the London interbank rate LIBOR. Non-performing loan (NPL) have begun to rise as property prices have fallen 20% from their peak and corporate/SME borrowers are hit by a sharp downturn in the business cycle. DIB shares reflect these macro […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| US$51.6 billion of Dubai’s debt will come due for repayment in 2016-18, with US$27.4 billion due in 2018, IMF has estimated. Over US$28.9 billion of Abu Dhabi’s debt will also come due during this period. According to IMF, these imply short-term rollover risks for both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but for a larger extent in the case of Dubai. The Fund feels that […]
|By Abdullah Aljunaid|The Alliance of Iran, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda and the attacks of September 11th 2001 Judicial rulings have shown that the calamitous and tragic events of September 11 were bourn 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, forinciting 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 […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| A high level panel will examine the effects and ramifications of de-risking for Middle East banks, under which correspondent banking relationships are constrained or blocked by international regulators protecting their banks from perceived risk such as money laundering or financing terrorism. The panel will discuss how banks manage de-risking, how it affects their small and medium sized corporate clients in the Middle East […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre is in the process of developing a National Bonds Sukuk Trading Platform, which uses assets in the local economy to structure Shariah-compliant consumer financing. This is pat of the initiative to develop new strategies to meet the liquidity management and personal financing needs of Islamic banks and Islamic windows at conventional banks. These products are expected to […]
