When the British government said last month it would issue its first Islamic bond, the implications went far beyond the debt market: it was a signal that London will not back down in an escalating tussle among cities for Islamic financial business. London has long been the default center for international firms to issue sharia-compliant bonds, part of a fast-growing Islamic finance sector that will be worth […]
Emerging Asian currencies took a battering and regional shares tumbled to six-week lows on Wednesday as mixed signals from Federal Reserve officials raised fresh concerns about an imminent rollback of the U.S. central bank’s asset-buying stimulus. The dour mood looked set to carry over into Europe, where financial spread betters predicted Britain’s FTSE 100 to fall as much as 0.7 percent, Germany’s DAX off 0.4 percent and […]
Emad Mansour, a veteran Gulf Arab banker, is planning to set up an investment bank in Dubai’s tax-free financial zone, he said on Sunday, joining a growing list of regional bankers taking advantage of a revival in deal making and a retreat by big investment banks. Mansour, who has about 20 years of investment banking experience in the region, was most recently the chief executive of Doha-based […]
Merlin Entertainment, the Madame Tussauds and amusement parks operator, in which Dubai International Capital once held 28 percent stake, is setting up a Legoland park in Dubai along with other potential sites in Japan and South Korea. This is part of the company’s plans to expand globally, which will see the setting up Madame Tussauds in San Francisco and Beijing next year. Dubai had sold its stake […]
Dubai’s economy expanded 4.9 percent in the first half of 2013, led by the hotel and restaurant industry, as the Middle East’s financial and transport hub rebounds from its debt crisis. Gross domestic product expanded to 169 billion dirhams ($46 billion), the statistics office said in an e-mailed statement today. Growth quickened from a 4 percent pace in the first half of 2012. The hotels and restaurants […]
A surge in passenger car sales across most Gulf Arab countries underlines the momentum behind the region’s consumer spending boom, and sales are likely to continue rising strongly for at least a few years, automobile sector executives said. Car sales are an important indicator of business activity in a region where official macroeconomic data, such as gross domestic product, is often unreliable and released with delays of […]
Mutual funds run by T. Rowe Price Group Inc and Morgan Stanley are poised to send one sweet tweet. These early investors in Twitter Inc will reap exponential gains as the microblogging site goes public, while latecomers struggle for share allocations. T. Rowe’s New Horizons and Growth Stock funds may come out looking smartest, having scooped up millions of preferred shares for a pittance. While mutual […]
Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT), a global insurance provider, has entered into a strategic partnership Insure Direct, a Dubai-based insurance brokerage, by acquiring a stake in the UAE firm. The strategic partnership adds considerable international and specialist expertise to Insure Direct’s capabilities and will enable Insure Direct to satisfy significant and growing demand from clients in several key sectors, a statement said. Insure Direct’s operations in Dubai, Bahrain […]
The 2013 Dubai Airshow is expected to be one of the most popular in the show’s history, with more than 1,000 exhibitors and 60,000 visitors already registered.The five-day show, which kicks off November 17 this year, will be held for the first time at the city’s new $32 million Al-Maktoum International Airport — set to be the world’s largest on its 2027 completion. “The days where air […]
Now that the foundation of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s statue – to be the world’s tallest – has been laid, a small rocky island in the middle of the Narmada riverbed and facing Gujarat’s Sardar Sarovar Dam is seeing a lot of activity. The first phase of the project, for which bids have already been invited, is estimated to cost around Rs 2,063 crore. This phase will involve […]
Dubai is far from ready to relinquish its status as home to the world’s tallest tower. Emaar Properties Chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar has once again reiterated that a new tallest skyscraper in the world will be built in Dubai. “Emaar plans to build the tallest skyscraper in the world in Dubai,” Alabbar was quoted as saying in an interview to CNN, on the sidelines of launching of […]
Jignesh Shah resigned from the board of Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd., the nation’s biggest commodity trading platform, amid an investigation into the failure of a related spot bourse. Shah, 46, quit as non-executive vice chairman, according to a filing yesterday from the company he founded in 2003. He said he’s leaving to help ensure investors aren’t harmed by “mud-slinging” over the probe. India’s commodities futures […]
Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange is planning to launch a spot gold contract next year, the first of its kind in the Middle East, which it hopes will help take the emirate from being a regional to a more international trading center for the precious metal. Nimesh Shah, a gold dealer at Richcomm Global Services in Dubai, said the spot contracts need to account for relatively small […]
Bahrain is still in the early stages of a series of bank mergers designed to strengthen the sector in the face of regional competition, the central bank governor said. The tiny kingdom’s banking industry, once the most vibrant in the Gulf, was hit hard by the global financial crisis and, since 2011, by political unrest which has deterred some foreign investment. But Rasheed al-Maraj said there were […]
The UAE financial adviser study, conducted by the Durable Portfolio Construction Research Centre of Natixis Global Asset Management (NGAM), one of the 15 largest asset managers in the world based on assets under management, concludes that the UAE is one of the strongest markets for advisers globally, with great potential for further growth if current challenges are successfully overcome. Forty per cent of UAE advisers say their […]
Emirates NBD, Dubai’s biggest bank, raised its estimates for economic growth in the United Arab Emirates this year to 4.4 percent, aided by an increase in oil output. The forecast was raised from 3.8 percent, putting the second-biggest Arab economy on track for a higher growth rate than Saudi Arabia for the first time in at least four years, according to the bank’s quarterly economic report released […]
From Saudi Arabia to Israel, traditional U.S. allies in the Middle East are beginning to ask: Is America turning its back on us? President Barack Obama’s diplomatic overtures to old foe Iran and his last-minute refusal to attack Syria have officials in Israel, the Gulf countries and Turkey wondering if Washington is deliberately neglecting them to avoid being dragged into a Middle East facing deeper sectarian strife […]
Hong Kong restaurant owner Hudson Chang says he can’t lower the bar much further for hiring staff. He warns his employees repeatedly about sending messages on their iPhones during work hours. He pleads with them to be more pleasant to customers. Still, he can’t afford to fire anyone: He can’t be sure of finding a replacement. “We don’t really have much choice,” said Chang, 39, owner of […]
Fosun International Ltd., a Chinese conglomerate that invests in everything from steel to pharmaceuticals to Club Med, has agreed to buy the office tower at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza from JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a whopping $750 million. This isn’t an isolated incident. Zhang Xin, a billionaire property developer who grew rich building Beijing’s central business district, recently bought about 20 percent of the General Motors […]
Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) is hosting global investor calls as it revives plans to issue a US dollar-denominated hybrid bond it originally marketed in May. The company operates Carrefour stores across the Middle East. The potential bond, which could become the Gulf’s first international hybrid to be issued by a corporate borrower, will be callable after the first five years. The coupon on the bond will […]
An international meeting in Paris next month may trigger billions of dollars of fresh investment in Dubai – and, if plans are not handled carefully, contribute to the kind of boom-and-bust cycle which nearly bankrupted the emirate four years ago. Dubai is competing with Izmir in Turkey, Sao Paulo in Brazil and Yekaterinburg in Russia for the right to host the 2020 World Expo. A vote of […]
Investors are becoming more discerning about where they put their money, shying away from countries such as Brazil, India (SENSEX), Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa. Behind the discrimination is a new-found focus on current-account deficits and structural weaknesses exposed by the likelihood of less stimulus from the Federal Reserve and cooling demand in China, according to economists from HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and International […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon has pleaded with and complained to the U.S. Justice Department but cannot convince the government to end its criminal probe of his bank because prosecutors are not yet certain of their findings, people familiar with the matter said. Dimon has negotiated a tentative $13 billion deal to settle many of the U.S. investigations into mortgage bonds that JPMorgan – and […]
Asian stocks marked time on Wednesday with nervous investors praying that frantic talks in Washington to avert a U.S. debt default could lead to a deal before the Oct 17 deadline, after which the government would run out of ways to borrow. U.S. Senate aides said an agreement to lift the government’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit was near but details still needed to be worked out, leaving markets clinging […]
