Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) has announced it will provide a AED735 million ($200 million) grant to help fund the expansion of King Hussein Medical City in Jordan. The contribution is in line with the 2013 UAE government grant contribution of AED4.6 billion to the Gulf Development Fund, a five-year grant programme to finance development projects in Jordan. The grant will fund the first phase of […]
Nielsen Music has released its annual report of music industry sales figures, and the news is good thanks to the growth of streaming. Music sales experienced an uptick of 3 percent compared to those in 2015, despite a plunge in the sale of digital downloads and physical units. Streaming Shows Huge Growth 2016 was the year that streaming really came into its own, and with major streaming […]
Top US lawmakers are challenging Wells Fargo to explain a recent rise in overdraft charges, signalling a new regulatory battle for the bank still reeling from a fake accounts scandal. On Wednesday a group of Democrats on the Senate banking committee wrote a letter to Tim Sloan, the bank’s chairman and chief executive, asking him to explain whether the bank’s recent surge in income from overdraft charges […]
By Emily Chow | SUNGKAI, Malaysia SUNGKAI, Malaysia The Malaysian plantation district of Sungkai has become an initial – and unlikely – battleground for an election that embattled Prime Minister Najib Razak is expected to call this year. Sungkai is home to ethnic Malays who work for the national palm plantation operator, Federal Land Development Authority (Felda). Known as “Felda settlers”, they have long been among the […]
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to take control of all levers of power and a mounting terrorist threat has begun to alarm investors, sending the Turkish lira down 4 per cent to an all-time low on Wednesday. The lira traded at 3.93 to the dollar, down 12 per cent since the beginning of January, clocking its worst performance since a failed coup in July which prompted […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Although smartphone sales growth rate is slowing down worldwide, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is witnessing an increase in sales. Smartphone shipment to the MENA region reached 171.2 million in 2016, up from 157.5 million, according to Statista.com – a global portal of statistics that collects information from 18,000 sources. This also means that the Middle East mobile market is […]
Staff costs are rising faster than beer prices and its market faces intense competition. Still, Hong Kong investors sent Bar Pacific soaring as much as 1,600 per cent on its debut for the best-ever opening day by a pub group anywhere in the world. The group, which specialises in local neighbourhood bars rather than the glitzy city centre offerings more usually associated with Hong Kong, raised HK$45.2m […]
On Wall Street, Donald Trump’s election win spelt pain for the dollar and stock markets right up until the moment he began his acceptance speech in the early hours of November 9 at the New York Hilton. Then the dollar began a trough-to-peak surge that would leave it up almost 3 per cent, a performance only bettered in 2016 on the day after the Brexit vote. S&P […]
The energy service provider has successfully completed retrofit projects for 2,178 buildings 11 January 2017 Dubai, United Arab Emirates Etihad ESCO’s retrofit projects have successfully saved 54GHW of energy in 2016, through five major projects, implemented for DEWA, JAFZA, Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and Mohammed Bin Rashid Housing Establishment (MRHE), which equates to AED 34 Million in monetary terms. The energy service provider said that it […]
Sonos has promoted former BlackBerry manager Patrick Spence to take over as chief executive from founder John MacFarlane, after the rise of streaming music services propelled the wireless speaker maker to further growth last year. The change comes as 15-year-old Sonos repositions itself to take advantage of a new wave of voice-controlled “virtual assistants” such as Amazon’s Alexa and connected-home technologies. Mr Spence joined the California-based company […]
Alibaba wants to transform the retail sector with a US$2.6 billion buyout that it says will break down the barriers between offline and online. The Chinese e-commerce giant said its investment unit was working with Intime Retail’s founder, Shen Guo Jun, to take the department store chain private with a projected HK$19.8 billion (US$2.6 billion). The funds would be raised through internal cash and external debt financing. […]
Bjarni Benediktsson, leader of the conservative Independence Party, is Iceland’s new prime minister. (Halldor Kolbeins/Agence France-Presse) The Panama Papers — a huge leak of documents detailing the alleged secret offshore holdings of a global elite — were released in April 2016. The leak made headlines all over the world, but its impact was probably most keenly felt in Iceland. Just two days after the leak appeared, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson […]
Jan. 10, 2017 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates– (BUSINESS WIRE/ME NewsWire) GMO GlobalSign K.K., a leading provider of trusted identity and security solutions and one of the longest established Certificate Authorities in the world, today announced the inauguration of its new office in Dubai. The local entity, GMO GlobalSign FZ-LLC, based in Dubai Internet City, is strategically located to cater to further strengthen GlobalSign’s presence in Asia, particularly […]
Economic growth will slow in Bahrain throughout 2017 and the government will continue to post large deficits as social instability limits opportunities for effective spending cuts, according to new research. In two separate reports this week, BMI Research warns that domestic instability in Bahrain will cause revenues to remain low by historical standards, even as oil prices start to recover. BMI forecasts Bahrain’s budget deficit to come […]
The Middle East has given McLaren Automotive, the British manufacturer of luxury sports and supercars, good reason to get revved up with sales soaring last year. Its Middle East, Africa and central and South America region grew by an impressive 69 per cent last year, as the company posted another record year of sales growth. From offices in Dubai, McLaren has expanded into Abu Dhabi. “We continue […]
Dubai-based air services provider dnata has revealed that December 23 was its busiest day in 2016 with 18,529 staff handling 281,388 passengers and 329,341 bags in the UAE. The company, a subsidiary of Emirates, said it dealt with one aircraft movement every 73 seconds on that day and closed the year with 419,133 tonnes of cargo at Dubai International Airport, up eight percent from the previous year. […]
Tuesday, January 10th 2017 DUBAI, UAE: Major infrastructure projects in the Middle East and across Sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly becoming a key investment target for Islamic investors, according to Project & Infrastructure Partner at Jones Day, Nadim Khan. Billions of US dollars’ worth of project capital from the growing Islamic economy is a potential source of investment for the type of mega infrastructure that underpins economic and […]
Since the start of the 21st century the South American nation of Suriname, population 540,000, has been riding a commodity boom that yielded major benefits for a country rich in bauxite, gold, oil and bananas. From 2000 to 2014, annual per capita income more than quintupled to almost $10,000. Child mortality fell by a third. A child born there today can expect to live to 70, up […]
The FTSE 100 notched up its longest run of record highs on Tuesday as another low for sterling helped the UK’s blue-chip index outperform European peers. The main London benchmark added 0.5 per cent, up 37.7 points to 7,275.47. It was the FTSE’s ninth consecutive record-high close as well as its 11th consecutive gain, a winning streak it has only equalled three times — in 1997, 2004 […]
The UAE will spend AED600 billion ($163.3 billion) over the next three decades in developing the country’s energy market, with a plan for clean energy to power 50 percent of the sector by 2050. The first unified energy strategy for the UAE has been announced which aims to balance economic needs and environmental goals. In a series of tweets on the official Dubai Media Office feed, it […]
Rolls-Royce’s Dubai dealership, AGMC, has overtaken Abu Dhabi to become the brand’s most successful and highest selling dealership in the world during 2016. The region also remained to be the brand’s third largest market despite challenging economic conditions and political uncertainty. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars announced a 6 percent rise in global sales in 2016 compared to 2015, marking the marque’s second highest ever annual sales result and […]
The debate about “fake news” has gripped politics since the election of Donald Trump in November and has entered markets as investors spar over a “great rotation” from bonds into stocks. Long predicted by some analysts, expectations of a pronounced rotation out of low-yielding bonds and defensive share sectors into areas of the equity market that prosper from faster economic growth have been heightened by the prospect […]
For more evidence that central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market is increasingly becoming an exercise in futility – look no further than Mexico. The peso briefly sank to a fresh all time low against the dollar on Tuesday, dropping by as much as 1.1 per cent to MXN 21.6227, as concerns continue to mount over incoming US president Donald Trump’s trade rhetoric towards Mexico, report […]
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – 10 January 2017, ELABELZ.com, GCC’s newest trendy fashion mall is welcoming the New Year by unveiling an expansion of its operations and facilities by 200% in the wake of demand growth and wider ecommerce market penetration in the MENA region as a whole and the GCC in particular. ELABELZ state-of-the-art operations base and warehousing facilities is being tripled to accommodate the increase […]
