Saudi Arabia’s currency peg is no longer sustainable amid a slump in oil prices that threatens to further crimp government financing, according to Commerzbank AG. The cost of buying 12-month dollar-riyal forwards has risen almost 1 percent since early December to about 3.83 per dollar, Commerzbank said in a report on Tuesday. Upward pressure on the forwards will probably increase over the “coming weeks and months,” it said. Saudi […]
At almost any other time, an escalating diplomatic conflict between OPEC members Iran and Saudi Arabia would mean a spike in oil prices. That the rally this time couldn’t be sustained shows just how abnormal things are in the oil market. Brent crude has fallen 0.5 percent this week as a global supply glut and the slowest Chinese growth in a generation trumped mounting strife between the […]
Saudi Arabia’s move to isolate Iran raises the specter of deepening conflicts in the volatile Middle East after the biggest meltdown in relations between the two regional powers in almost three decades. The Saudi government and staunch ally Bahrain severed diplomatic ties, giving Iranian ambassadors 48 hours to leave after protesters set the Saudi embassy in Tehran on fire over the weekend following the execution of Saudi cleric […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Etihad Airways launched fresh legal action in a bid to overturn a German court’s decision to revoke the approval for 29 of its codeshare flights with airberlin. Last week, the Administrative Court of Braunschweig decided that the German Ministry of Transport was entitled to reject the 29 Etihad Airways – airberlin codeshares, which had been approved only until 15 January 2016. As the […]
Oil gained for a second day as Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran a day after its embassy in Tehran was attacked to protest the Saudis’ execution of a prominent Shiite cleric. Futures rose as much as 3.5 percent in New York, extending Thursday’s 1.2 percent advance. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned of repercussions and protesters armed with rocks and firebombs attacked the Saudi embassy […]
India’s rupee fell the most since November on speculation demand for riskier assets will be hurt as tensions in the Middle East intensify and poor Chinese economic data adds to concern over global growth. Emerging-market stocks and currencies dropped Monday as manufacturing in China weakened for a fifth straight month, the longest such streak since 2009. Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran and expelled the Islamic Republic’s diplomats, […]
A Samsung logo is seen at Samsung Electronics’ headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, December 18, 2015. Picture taken on December 18, 2015. Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji SEOUL South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said it expects a difficult business environment in 2016 due to weak global economic conditions and heightened competition in key businesses including memory chips and smartphones. In a statement on Monday, Samsung said Chief […]
|By Matein Khalid| Emerging markets were an entirely predictable horror story once again in 2015. The oil/mining bust, currency meltdowns, China’s hard landing, sovereign credit downgrades, banking system crises, corruption scandals and geopolitical crises from Ukraine to Syria, the Black Sea to the South China Sea devastated investor wealth in emerging markets. India’s Sensex and Nifty were down 9% while the rupee has depreciated to 66 […]
|By Hanan Alsuraihi| “Hezbollah and the Iranian regional strategy” is considered one of the hottest themes debated today in the Arabic and Islamic world. It focuses on the role of Hezbollah in the Iranian scheme of things. The Iranian strategy is cloaked in secrecy and disguised in an Islamic dress. It is a project that draws on the intelligence, political skill, publicity and media so as not […]
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI India has become a battleground over the right to unrestricted Internet access, with local tech start-ups joining the front line against Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg and his plan to roll out free Internet to the country’s masses. The Indian government has ordered Facebook’s Free Basics plan to be put on hold while it decides what to do. The program, launched in […]
Abu Dhabi: Saudi Arabia’s subsidy scheme is poised for a change as the country announced that they would be reviewing government support for energy, water and electricity prices in the next five years. A 2016 budget document by the Ministry of Finance said that reviewing government support is aimed at achieving efficiency in energy use, conserving natural resources, stopping waste and irrational use, and minimising negative effects […]
Gulfnews.com A convoy of ambulances carrying more than 125 fighters from the besieged rebel-held Syrian town of Zabadani arrive at the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, December 28, 2015. Beirut: A rare UN-backed deal between Syria’s warring sides saw hundreds of fighters and civilians evacuate three towns on Monday, as bomb blasts in the regime-held city of Homs killed at least 14 people. President Bashar […]
Emirates Global Aluminium (Emal) a joint venture between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, is said to be paying almost 40 percent more for a loan compared with last year as liquidity in the Gulf tightens after the plunge in oil prices. The state-controlled company will pay 200 basis points, or 2 percentage points, above the London Interbank Offered Rate on a $4.9 billion, seven-year conventional loan and an […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Buoyed by sharp fall in gold prices globally, India is likely to see a jump of 11 per cent in imports of the metal to 1,000 tonnes this year, according to the All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation. The world’s second-biggest gold consumer imported around 900 tonnes in 2014. “Gold import is estimated at around 1,000 tonnes in 2015 calendar year, compared […]
Oil speculators are buying options contracts that will only pay out if crude drops to as low as $15 a barrel next year, the latest sign some investors expect an even deeper slump in energy prices. The bearish wagers come as OPEC’s effective scrapping of output limits, Iran’s anticipated return to the market and the resilience of production from countries such as Russia raise the prospect of […]
|Arabian Post Special|The UAE Central Bank is solidly backing the UAE banks in dealing with the ‘de-risking’ policies imposed by US banks on the UAE banks. The central bank is seized of the problems faced by the UAE banks in this regard. The new U.S. regulations have imposed extra burdens and costs on banks in the United States, which is forcing these banks to cut their international […]
|By Matein Khalid| In retrospect, the last six years were a unique period in global central banking, an epic monetary experiment that averted a Great Depression after Lehman’s failure and interbank/credit contagion plunged the world into recession in 2008-9. Yet the Fed (and later Bank of Japan, ECB and even PBOC) quantitative easing also led to asset bubbles, credit market excesses, currency wars and the mispricing of […]
A Samsung logo is seen at Samsung Electronics’ headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, December 18, 2015. Picture taken on December 18, 2015. Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji SEOUL Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd will start making new chips for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc next year, South Korea’s Electronic Times reported on Tuesday citing unnamed sources. The paper said Samsung’s foundry business and Globalfoundries will jointly start producing a […]
Reuters/Abhishek N. Chinnappa/Files MUMBAI Flipkart on Monday denied a newspaper report that said venture capital firm Accel Partners had sold a small stake in India’s biggest online marketplace to sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) for $100 million. “This information is incorrect. There has been no such transaction,” a Flipkart spokesman told Reuters in an emailed statement. The Economic Times newspaper earlier on Monday reported the […]
Almost every Middle Eastern stock index declined after oil, the region’s main source of income, sank to the lowest in seven years, damping the outlook for government spending. Dubai’s DFM General Index ended its longest winning streak in almost three months, sliding 1.5 percent, the most in a week, to close at 3,026.05. Emirates NBD PJSC’s 4 percent retreat was the biggest contributor. The Tadawul All Share […]
Crude slid to the lowest level in more than six years in New York as a rising number of oil rigs in the U.S. signaled the supply glut will be prolonged. Futures dropped as much as 1.9 percent after Baker Hughes Inc. reported that the number of active oil rigs in the U.S. climbed by 17 this week to 541. U.S. crude stockpiles surged to 490.7 million […]
In 1977, Rick Hoyt told his father Dick he would like to participate in a 5 mile run. It was a benefit for a Lacrosse player who had become paralyzed. Rick was diagnosed at birth as a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, and was unable to walk or speak naturally. Running a race seemed impossible but there are always ways to surpass those boundaries. Dick ran the race […]
CHINESE SLOWDOWN HAS TO BE MONITORED
By Anjan Roy
At long last the US Federal Reserve – America’s central bank—has raised the interest rates, albeit hardly. This is the first hike in interest rates by the US central bank in over a decade.
The US Fed rate hike has been by a very small margin – from zero to just about 0.25% to 0.5%. It was so gradual and soft that the rate hike did not cause the disruptions in the global financial markets that everyone expected from such a decision.
The first question here is how will it affect India? It should not, and this has been borne out by what happened in the day after the Fed rate hike. The stock market remained more or less flat. The exchange rate also remained stable. The fund managers did not immediately think of taking money out of India and that left the financial markets unruffled.
But then w
Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell PLC on Thursday called for tougher regulation of the Dubai crude benchmark, the Middle East’s most important oil-pricing mechanism, which has pushed up the region’s prices relative to other grades. “Regrettably, there have been times in recent months where the price of Dubai (crude) was assessed well in excess of the fundamental refining value of other comparable Middle Eastern crudes,” Shell […]
