Within 18 months of leaving his trading job to open a lunchtime eatery at the Dubai financial center in 2011, Nabil Al Rantisi was back: selling stocks and rebuilding one of the city’s largest brokerages. “I saw my window of opportunity,” Rantisi, managing director of Mena Corp Financial Services LLC, said in a March 9 telephone interview from Dubai. “Things started picking up in September 2012. By […]
|By Rajhkumar K Shaaw and Santanu Chakraborty| For the first time in five years, Nilesh Dedhia is buying Indian stocks. The 48-year-old owner of a die-casting factory in Mumbai is among a growing number of local investors returning to the $1.2 trillion equity market on speculation national elections in May will deliver a government with the mandate to revive economic growth from a decade low. That optimism […]
Billionaire investor George Soros said Europe faces 25 years of Japanese-style stagnation unless politicians pursue further integration of the currency bloc and change policies that have discouraged banks from lending. While the immediate financial crisis that has plagued Europe since 2010 “is over,” it still faces a political crisis that has divided the region between creditor and debtor nations, Soros, 83, said in a Bloomberg Television interview […]
Pakistan’s rupee surged 5.2 percent this week, the best performance among world currencies, as the nation’s rising foreign reserves and improving economy buoyed investor confidence. The country’s currency stockpile climbed to $9.52 billion this week, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said yesterday, from $8.3 billion at the end of 2013. The economy is on course to achieve the official target of 4.4 percent expansion in the year ending […]
Saudi Arabia’s drive to make Qatar abandon its embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood may founder because of the limited leverage the Saudis and their allies can exercise over the world’s richest country. Qatar traded more with Singapore in 2012 than it did with the three Gulf neighbors — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — that withdrew their ambassadors from Doha last week to protest […]
Dubai’s non-oil trade expanded 7.6 percent last year, slowing from 13 percent growth in 2012, but the emirate’s trade with Iran stabilised despite U.S. economic sanctions, according to Dubai customs data released on Sunday. The non-oil foreign trade of Dubai, one of seven members of the United Arab Emirates, rose to 1.329 trillion dirhams ($362 billion) in 2013. The emirate exports small amounts of oil and imports […]
|By Mayank Bhardwaj and Jo Winterbottom| A bad monsoon in India is the one that fails to deliver enough rain … most of the time. This year, a lack of rainclouds could be the silver lining that the government needs. India has no place left to store more grain, and can ill afford a hefty payout to farmers for the truckloads of produce that another monsoon could […]
Drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd has recalled more than 64,000 bottles of the generic versions of its cholesterol-lowering drug in the United States due to reports of a dose mix-up, U.S. regulators said. Ranbaxy recalled tablets of atorvastatin calcium, the generic name for Lipitor’s active ingredient, after a pharmacist found a 20-milligram tablet in a sealed bottle marked for 10-milligram tablets, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration […]
|By TAP Staff| The UAE Banks Federation proposes to soon issue a charter for customer rights, which will incorporate certain minimum standards in banking services and provide for remedial actions open for them in case of failures by the banks. The CEOs Advisory Committee of the Federation has examined the framework and content of the charter at its first meeting this year. The meeting reviewed the Federation’s […]
Among the hundreds of soft drinks and beverages that were displayed at the Gulfood 2014, a unique cola brand attracted visitors. Dubai Cola is a carbonated soft drink mixed with pure Arabian dates and honey. “It is a revolution in the world of soft drinks,” claims the producer, who is expanding into other markets. It is now available in the UAE at various Emarat petrol stations and […]
Increase in number of seats in flights between India and Dubai will allow for multiple choice of travel and cheap connections for Indian passengers, sectoral experts said. “Enhancement of seat quotas with Dubai is a good thing for both countries. It will help enhance supply of seats, increase competition and help bring down fares,” said Amber Dubey, partner and India head of aerospace and defense at global […]
The path toward U.S. energy independence, made possible by a boom in shale oil, will be much harder than it seems. Just a few of the roadblocks: Independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back. Shale output drops faster than production from conventional methods. It will take 2,500 new wells a year just to sustain output of 1 million barrels a […]
India has decided to block investigations by the United States into its trade policies and patent laws and prepare for a battle at the World Trade Organization (WTO), a move that could escalate already-strained tension between the two countries. New Delhi is furious about a threat of trade sanctions made by the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) office over its protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), preference for […]
India’s best-performing equity fund in the past five years is buying consumer companies, lured by revenue growth more than three times faster than the broader market even as rival money managers sell the stocks. R. Srinivasan, who runs the $200 million SBI Magnum Emerging Businesses Fund (MAGEMBG), owns shares of Page Industries Ltd. (PAG), which sells Jockey International Inc.’s undergarments, Redington (India) Ltd., a distributor of Apple […]
Indian central bank Governor Raghuram Rajan warned that inflation remained the biggest threat to growth, diverging from the nation’s finance chief, who highlighted diminishing price pressures. A developing economy like India that is seeking higher growth rates can tolerate higher inflation than advanced nations, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in an interview in Sydney, where he was attending the Group of 20 meetings with Rajan. Chidambaram, who […]
BuzzFeed has come a long way from cat lists. This month one of its journalists was on the ground in Kiev reporting on the crisis in Ukraine, and last December it published an in-depth article on a Chinese dissident living in Harlem, New York. The kittens haven’t disappeared, but these days there is serious journalism as well. When Facebook Inc tweaked its News Feed filters in December […]
|By Ole Hansen| Commodities showing strong gains for a third week with positive performances seen across all sectors, not least agriculture where coffee and sugar were strong performers followed by precious metals. Growth-dependent commodities such as energy and industrial metals also showed a positive return but were held back by another decline to a seven-month low in Chinese manufacturing confidence. Adverse weather across the Americas continues to […]
Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock in a landmark deal that places the world’s largest social network closer to the heart of mobile communications and may bring younger users into the fold. The transaction involves $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in stock and $3 billion in restricted stock that vests over several years. The WhatsApp deal is […]
Du, the United Arab Emirates’ second biggest telecoms operator, expects further growth in the business due to a buoyant local economy, its chief executive said after reporting a rise in revenue and a better than expected fourth-quarter profit on Tuesday. Du expanded rapidly after ending Etisalat’s domestic monopoly in 2007 to claim 46.4 percent of mobile subscribers as of Sept. 30, the most recently available data. However, […]
A widening probe of the foreign-exchange market is roiling an industry already under pressure to reduce costs as computer platforms displace human traders. Electronic dealing, which accounted for 66 percent of all currency transactions in 2013 and 20 percent in 2001, will increase to 76 percent within five years, according to Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm that reviewed Bank for International Settlements data. About 81 […]
|By Steen Jakobsen|The negative start to this year came as a surprise to most investors as we came into the new year with the usual euphoria and expectations of a stock market ending 2014 up 10-15% and a Europe and US in continued recovery but January soon became all about a potential EM crisis which ended up hurting even developed markets return in this year first month. […]
The Real Estate Regulatory Agency (Rera), the legal arm of the Dubai Land Department (DLD), is encouraging people to register complaints against real estate agencies making cold calls. Complaints have been received against three companies engaged in making unsolicited calls to potential clients and property owners. “A new regulatory article has been introduced by us that covers telemarketing. “We encourage anyone who has a complaint in this […]
West Texas Intermediate crude rose for the first time in three days as an improved U.S. economy bolstered the demand outlook in the world’s biggest oil consumer. Futures climbed as much as 0.7 percent in New York, extending a fifth weekly gain. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer confidence held at 81.2 this month, topping the median estimate of 80.2 in a Bloomberg News […]
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the world’s most profitable lender, said it will consider acquisitions in the Middle East as part of plans to boost earnings from the region by 50 percent this year. “We’re looking to see if there are acquisition opportunities,” Zhou Xiaodong, chief executive officer for the Middle East, said in an interview from the lender’s Dubai offices. “It’s a good strategy. […]
