The Reserve Bank of India on Monday said domestic banks will be allowed to offer structured derivatives through their overseas branches even if these products are currently not allowed in India. The change marks a revision from rules passed in 2008 that mandated domestic lenders had to consult with the central bank before offering complex derivative products not allowed at home to overseas customers. Offshore branches of […]
Dubai Financial Market (DFM) will introduce a pre-closing period to its trading sessions from May 14 that will make closing prices more predictable and eliminate large last-minute swings, the bourse said on Sunday. DFM said the move was timed to come ahead of the inclusion of the United Arab Emirates in the list of emerging markets by index compiler MSCI at the end of this month, which […]
Dennis Lockhart, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, spoke to the American Business Council of Dubai on Sunday. Reuters Large Middle Eastern holders of U.S. Treasuries shouldn’t worry about the stability of their investments especially as the U.S. economy shows more signs of improvement following the worst recession in a generation, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said on Sunday. U.S. government debt has long been a key […]
With Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. filing to go public, the biggest winner won’t be founder Jack Ma or his fellow executives or even venture capital backers like Silver Lake Management LLC. It’ll be Japan’s Masayoshi Son. Fourteen years ago, Son’s SoftBank Corp. started with a $20 million bet on a then-unknown Web portal connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. That site evolved into China’s biggest Internet shopping […]
Financial Technologies (India) Ltd. slumped by its trading limit in Mumbai after Chairman Jignesh Shah was arrested by the police as part of an investigation into the biggest payment default in India’s commodity market. The shares fell 5 percent to 276.30 rupees, the lowest close since Feb. 13. Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd. (MCX), in which Financial Technologies owns 26 percent stake, declined 6.7 percent to […]
Dubai’s bourse has outpaced other Gulf markets by a wide margin in terms of companies’ first-quarter profit growth, data show, supporting its position as the top performer in the region. The emirate’s benchmark soared 108 percent last year and is up 57 percent this year, making it one of the world’s top-performing stock markets over the past 17 months. Although some analysts believe the market is overbought, […]
|By TAP Staff|The Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), owner of many of Dubai’s corporate jewels, such as the Emirates airline and the airport duty-free business, said its revenues grew 18 percent to $24.8 billion in the second half of 2013. The numbers were revealed in the prospectus released in connection with the plan to raise about $750m in its first Islamic bond issue. The latest full-year revenue […]
|By TAP Staff|Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers today offered to make an upfront payment equal to approximately 10 percent of creditors’ claims as part of a settlement proposal to a group of banks and other financial institutions. The claims asserted by banks, totaling billions of dollars, arise out of liabilities incurred through a massive fraud perpetrated by Maan Al Sanea when he was head of the Money […]
Dubai will not have any issues in repaying all its debt maturing in 2015, and more state-linked firms are likely to repay obligations ahead of schedule, a top government official said on Tuesday. “We will have no issues in repaying debt coming up next year,” said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, a close advisor and uncle to Dubai’s ruler. Sheikh Ahmed, a key figure in the emirate’s […]
As Dubai freight-forwarding firm Able Logistics Group began preparing early this year to go public, it conducted a leveraged recapitalisation, taking on fresh bank debt so it could pay a cash dividend to shareholders. By the standards of developed Western markets, the transaction was routine. But for the Middle East it was an unusually creative deal, a sign that the region’s private equity industry is finally building […]
Low cost airline ‘flydubai’ will start its flights from Dubai to three Indian cities, including Delhi, from next month, doubling the number of its destinations in India. flydubai will start flights to Thiruvanthapuram, Kochi and Delhi from Dubai, taking the number of its services to six Indian cities, airline Chief Executive Officer Gaithal Gaith said here today. From June 1, the airline will start a four times […]
|By TAP Staff|A new Standard & Poor’s report has picked holes in UAE’s banking regulations and the legal infrastructure, citing these as risks for property and casualty insurance sectors. Financial system risk primarily arises from shortcomings in bank regulation, which the agency considers to be weak, although it acknowledges that the banking supervision is being improved. The report cites tighter mortgage regulation and limited credit exposure to […]
Dubai shares jumped the most since January after first-quarter earnings boosted investor sentiment. Qatar’s gauge also advanced. The DFM General Index (DFMGI) surged 3.3 percent, the biggest jump since Jan. 23, to 5,247.29 at the close. The measure has soared 56 percent this year, making it the best performer among more than 90 benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg. Dubai Islamic Bank advanced 5.5 percent after first-quarter profit more […]
Banking and finance professionals in the Middle East plan to seek new jobs this year after bonuses failed to meet expectations, according to eFinancialCareers. Almost 60 percent of the region’s financial services employees plan to change position, with 45 percent saying they were disappointed with their bonus, eFinancial said in an e-mailed report. Bonuses rose for half of Middle East finance professionals, compared with 49 percent in […]
|By Nicole Blackmore| Is Dubai the new Spain? Britons are abandoning their place in the Spanish sun for countries with better work opportunities and more stable house prices – and the Middle East is one of several areas attracting growing numbers of emigrants. While Dubai may not be a popular retirement option given the high cost of living, young professionals are moving there in droves. NatWest’s latest […]
The United Arab Emirates will have its own stand-alone exchange-traded funds with this week’s launch of the iShares MSCI UAE Capped ETF (UAE). On May 30th, both Qatar and the UAE will get promoted by the MSCI index folks being frontier markets to becoming full-fledged emerging markets. As of this year’s first quarter, the UAE and Qatar occupied the second- and third-largest country weights in the MSCI […]
Abu Dhabi government-owned General Holding Corporation (Senaat) has shelved plans for a stock market debut, four sources aware of the matter said, as the emirate takes a cautious line on financial commitments in the wake of its bailout of Dubai. Despite enjoying significant hydrocarbon wealth, the largest of the seven United Arab Emirates has been wary of its financial position since providing Dubai with a $20 billion […]
Dana Gas Islamic bond was the best-performing dollar sukuk in the world last month as the energy company’s rising stock price prompted investors to exchange their debt into shares at a profit. The fuel producer’s $425 million convertible bond due October 2017 made 3.46 percent last month, compared with an average 0.41 percent return for all dollar-denominated sukuk, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The share conversion […]
Dubai contractor Arabtec Holding plans to list a portion of its construction unit in an initial public offering (IPO) on the Abu Dhabi bourse next year, the group chief executive said on Wednesday. IPOs dried up in the UAE when its financial crisis erupted five years ago but a recovery in the economy, especially in Dubai, has led to some firms announcing plans to list shares in […]
Deutsche Lufthansa’s new chief executive officer identified the menace of fast-expanding Gulf carriers such as Dubai-based Emirates as his biggest challenge, threatening to reopen a war of words with Mid-East operators. Carsten Spohr, who takes over from Christoph Franz as CEO of the German company on May 1, said the emerging long-haul heavyweights represent a different proposition to short-haul discount operators such as Ryanair Holdings Plc. “Those […]
Mubadala Development Co rejected bids from GDF Suez SA and Veolia Environnement SA (VIE) for its cooling business in favor of talks with National Central Cooling Co. (TABREED), three people with knowledge of the matter said. The Abu Dhabi state-owned fund, which owns a 15 percent stake and convertible bonds in National Central, may complete a sale for about $300 million, the people said, asking not to […]
It is now clear that the chances of a fire sale of Dubai’s ‘jewels in the crown’ — a reference to blue-chip assets such as Emirates airline and Jebel Ali Free Zone — stand completely mitigated as the emirate takes firm control of its financial situation. Analysts are in near agreement that Dubai’s sovereign debt is stabilising and deleveraging is progressing. A definite improvement has happened in […]
Emaar Properties is talking to regulators about the possibility of listing its shopping malls unit on Dubai Financial Market (DFM), the emirate’s main bourse, instead of Nasdaq Dubai, sources aware of the matter said on Monday. Last month, Dubai’s biggest property firm hired Morgan Stanley to manage an 8-9 billion dirham ($2.2-2.5 billion) listing of the unit, which would be one of the biggest equity deals in […]
London-based RiverCrossing Capital Partners, a new Islamic investment firm, has launched its first product, a U.S. real estate fund, as part of a plan to offer non-traditional asset classes to institutional investors in the Gulf. The firm will develop asset-based funds with a non-cyclical nature, a departure from other sharia-compliant real estate funds which have focused on more traditional commercial and residential properties that perform in line […]
