Wednesday 12:45 GMT Overview US equity futures suggest Wall Street will dip from record levels that were reached amid a positive outlook for economic growth. Political concerns leave the euro carrying the wooden spoon in the forex markets, while the rush for supposed havens pushes short term German bond yields to their lowest ever. Hot topic The FTSE All-World equity index is at another record, up 0.1 […]
Paul Polman thought it was just going to be an informal catch-up. But it quickly became clear that Alexandre Behring, chairman of Kraft Heinz, had something very specific on his mind when he visited Unilever’s art deco headquarters in London last month. Had Mr Polman, chief executive of Unilever since 2009, ever considered a collaboration with Kraft Heinz, Mr Behring wanted to know. Mr Polman took this […]
Despite suggestions to the contrary, the demand for luxury products and services was continuously rising in the UAE in 2016, albeit at a slower pace. This proves that there is a growth of wealthy and ultra-rich consumers; key potential customers of the luxury segment, which is a contributing factor in the growth of the luxury market. Not only that but demand for luxury is steadily increasing here […]
Vocus Communications has announced its financial results for the first half of FY17, revealing a net profit of AU$47.2 million, up from AU$24.2 million a year previous due to its acquisitions of M2 and Nextgen. Statutory earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) were AU$168.3 million, up from AU$60.7 million a year previous, while underlying EBITDA — excluding acquisition, integration, and other costs — was AU$187.2 […]
22 Feb 2017, Doha, Qatar The Commercial Bank (P.S.Q.C.) (“the Bank”), its subsidiaries and associates (“Group”) announced today its financial results for the full year ended 31 December 2016. The Group reported a net profit of QAR 501.4 million as compared to QAR 1,434 million for the same period in 2015, a decrease of 65%. The Bank reported a net profit of QAR 683 million (2015- QAR […]
Evan Spiegel and other top executives at Snap, the owner of messaging app Snapchat, on Tuesday pitched the company to hundreds of investors in New York and faced questions about user growth, costs and the development of the platform. The ballroom at the Mandarin Oriental in midtown Manhattan was the second stop on a roadshow for the company’s listing, after it kicked off its marketing blitz in […]
Manama, Bahrain (21 February 2017) Seef Properties, the leading integrated development company in the Kingdom of Bahrain, announced its financial results for the year ended on 31 December 2016 with a net profit totaling BD11.04 Million. The results were announced during a meeting held on February 21st 2017, headed by Chairman Mr Essa Najibi. The Board of Directors also decided to recommend to the General Assembly to […]
The International Monetary Fund’s description of Greek debt as potentially explosive has left negotiators in Brussels struggling to bridge the differences between Athens and its creditors before time runs out to avert default. With creditors unwilling to release the next tranche of bailout money needed to keep the country afloat, Greece is facing €7bn of debt redemptions in July that it cannot afford. Investors appear to have […]
My taxi driver in San Diego had a plan. He was moving to Laredo to get back into long-distance trucking. He’d work hard for 10 years, save a couple of hundred grand, and retire to Mexico. I did the math: that put him around 2028. He might just make it before all the trucking jobs go away. At Qualcomm last week, Cristiano Amon, president of […]
Ecuador will have to wait until later this week for the result of Sunday’s presidential election after the country’s electoral council deemed the vote too close to call following a knife-edge poll. It was the first time in recent memory that the winner has not been declared on election night. Lenín Boltaire Moreno, the leftwing protégé of President Rafael Correa, is in touching distance of the 40 […]
At least 180 Chinese listed companies will be forced to cancel or scale back planned rights offerings worth $97bn in response to regulations that target excessive fundraising used for dubious acquisitions and financial speculation. The rules come as Chinese regulators are increasingly concerned about the trend of “exit the real, enter the fake” — a phrase used to denote companies abandoning real economic activity in favour of […]
By Sumeet Chatterjee and Lawrence White | HONG KONG/LONDON HONG KONG/LONDON HSBC Holdings (HSBA.L) reported a 62 percent slump in annual pre-tax profit that fell way short of analysts’ estimates as the British bank took hefty writedowns from restructuring and pointed to brakes on revenue growth. HSBC shares slid more than 6 percent after the company reported revenues fell by a fifth from 2015, underscoring the challenge […]
Horizon Zero Dawn opens to a protracted introduction of its post-apocalyptic machine-festered world. It’s tedious, as regarded by one reviewer, but it’s essential, because the game’s open world, like all open worlds, is massive. The game is Guerrilla Games’s latest handiwork after Killzone Shadow Fall, the flagship Killzone title released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3. Even before release, it has already garnered acclaim, netting Best Original […]
DUBAI// Enoc will open 10 new petrol stations this year and will add 54 stations by 2020. The expansion began with the opening of the Warsan station on the Dubai-Hatta Road in the eastern region of the emirate. The new stations will be located in Sheikh Zayed Road, Al Barsha South, Hessa Street, Sheikh Rashid Road, Bab Al Shams, Hatta, Jumeirah Village, Al Lehbab Road, and Academic […]
By Michael O’Boyle and Ana Isabel Martinez | MEXICO CITY MEXICO CITY Mexico’s central bank faces difficult decisions as it balances a spike in inflation against an expected economic slowdown, Deputy Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon said on Monday. “We are in an especially complex environment,” Diaz de Leon told Reuters in an interview. Diaz de Leon pointed to the heightened risk of inflation from a weak […]
One-off costs and multibillion-dollar writedowns have dragged down HSBC’s full-year profit 62 per cent year-on-year to $7.1bn, as the London-headquartered lender extended its share buyback programme by an additional $1bn. The British bank blamed slowing economic growth in its main markets of Hong Kong and the UK for the profit slide, as well as a $3.2bn impairment of goodwill to its private banking unit in Europe, and […]
With US stocks in record territory and the S&P 500 index the most richly valued in more than a decade, some investors see dark clouds gathering on the horizon. The S&P 500, a broad measure of the stock prices of America’s largest companies, ended last week at a record high and has risen almost 10 per cent since the election of Donald Trump as president in November. […]
Doha, 20 February 2017 Al Khalij Commercial Bank (al khaliji) Q.S.C. held its Annual General Assembly (AGA) and its Extraordinary General Assembly (EGA) meetings on Monday 20 February 2017. At the Annual General Assembly meeting, the shareholders endorsed the financial statements for the fiscal year ended at 31 December 2016 which reflect a Net Profit after Tax of QAR 427 million. His Excellency Sheikh Hamad Bin Faisal […]
Travis Kalanick has it all worked out. Just ask him. He sees the future, and what it looks like is pretty different from what most people experience every day. Not surprisingly, it all starts with Uber. With a ride-sharing system, says the 40-year-old bachelor and CEO of the transportation company that has gained global notoriety, one car can be shared by 30 people. “The cost of that […]
By Simon Jessop and Sophie Sassard | LONDON LONDON Snap Inc, owner of popular messaging app Snapchat, kicked off its first investor roadshow on Monday, looking to persuade London money managers to back its initial public offering in the face of concerns about its growth prospects, valuation and corporate governance. The U.S. company, which has yet to make a profit, aims to raise between $19.5 billion and […]
ABU DHABI // Abu Dhabi will increase protected habitats by thousands of square kilometres and rehabilitate dozens of endangered species in a plan to tackle the most pressing environmental issues. By 2020, more than 15 per cent of the emirate’s land and 13 per cent of its water will be legally protected natural reserves. The Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, or Ead, plans to triple rehabilitation and breeding […]
The quaint cobblestone streets of the historic Gastown district of Vancouver belie its status as a fast-growing technology hub. Drawing on links with nearby Seattle, and San Francisco further south, a tech boom in Canada’s third-largest city has pulled in tens of thousands of skilled workers and start-up entrepreneurs in recent years, sparking a fierce fight for the limited supply of office space. Now the commercial centre […]
So what can schools near roads do about their air quality? Closing a school’s doors and windows won’t keep traffic pollutants out (though that helps). Heavy-duty air filters — higher quality than the typical filters in schools — can substantially reduce what gets into the air the kids and teachers are breathing inside. Filters rated MERV 16, characterized as surgery-grade, have been installed in dozens of Southern […]
Lenín Boltaire Moreno is in the lead after Sunday’s nail-biting presidential election in Ecuador. The anointed candidate of leftwing President Rafael Correa was close to the margin needed to avoid a second round against Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker, in a test for Latin America’s battered left. After a campaign that underlined the divisive legacy of Mr Correa, the US-trained economist who has been in power […]
