Dubai tapped capital markets for the first time in more than a year with the sale of $750 million of 15-year Islamic bonds as the emirate seeks to pay debt and finance its budget amid a property-market recovery. The Dubai government’s securities will price to yield 5 percent, according to a person with knowledge of the offering, who asked not to be identified because the details are […]
Hedge funds lowered bullish bets on gold for a fourth week, the longest streak this year. The net-long position contracted to the lowest since mid-February as speculators sold bullion on signs of accelerating U.S. economic growth. The investors more than doubled bets on lower prices in the past month while reducing wagers on a rally in six of the past seven weeks. Prices fell 7.6 percent since […]
Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi state-owned investment fund with a mandate to develop the emirate’s economy, said on Thursday its 2013 net profit tripled as soaring stock markets boosted the value of its financial investments. Mubadala, which has stakes in General Electric and private equity firm Carlyle, said it earned 1.45 billion dirhams ($395 million), up from 470 million dirhams in 2012. Financial investments swung from a loss […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is gaining ground in the debt markets of Gulf Cooperation Council states after the biggest U.S. bank helped manage this month’s Islamic bond sale by Saudi Arabia’s utility. JPMorgan is the biggest bond underwriter after HSBC Holdings in the six-nation GCC in 2014, its best start to a year since 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The New York-based lender advised on […]
An island in the Venice lagoon, a 15th century bastion against the Ottoman Turks and a former monastery on the southern coast are among prime properties Italy has put on an online auction for buyers from around the world. Searching for funds to cuts its public debt and comply with European Union budget guidelines, the cash-strapped country has cut through red tape to ensure buyers can quickly […]
|TAP Special| The Mayor of Oakland, California, caused a stir last week claiming that Dubai crown prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum has partnered with the developers of a sports and entertainment centre at Oakland Coliseum complex. According to a report in Oakland Tribune, Mayor Jean Quan, however, retracted her claim a day later. The Mayor’s spokesman said one of the developers did have connections with […]
Warburg Pincus, the private-equity firm managing about $37 billion in assets, is considering investments in Africa and the Middle East as capital starts to flow back into emerging markets. “We are looking beyond the core euro-zone markets into the rapidly growing emerging markets around Europe for investment opportunities,” Joseph Schull, head of Warburg Pincus in Europe, said in an interview yesterday. “Africa is the next big frontier […]
The central bank of the United Arab Emirates will introduce on April 15 a mechanism allowing the country’s banks to borrow funds from it overnight, to help their liquidity management. The Interim Marginal Lending Facility (IMLF) will let lenders use certain assets as collateral to obtain one-day loans, according to a letter to banks which was published on the central bank’s website on Tuesday. Such mechanisms, common […]
Gold ticked higher on Tuesday to within a whisker of the $1,300-an-ounce level, regaining ground from overnight losses as weaker equities increased its safe-haven appeal. * Spot gold rose 0.2 percent to $1,298.11 an ounce by 0026 GMT. It fell 0.5 percent in the previous session as a short-covering rally after U.S. jobs data fizzed out. * Holdings of the world’s largest platinum-backed exchange-traded fund, Johannesburg’s NewPlat […]
Fears that high-speed traders have been rigging the U.S. stock market went mainstream last week thanks to allegations in a book by financial author Michael Lewis, but there may be a more serious threat to investors: the increasing amount of trading that happens outside of exchanges. Some former regulators and academics say so much trading is now happening away from exchanges that publicly quoted prices for stocks […]
Dubai told international bankers on Monday that it was gearing up for another boom and did not regret the pro-growth policies which brought it to the brink of default five years ago. It appeared to win the endorsement of many of the bankers. Over a dozen top Dubai officials and executives met about 100 representatives of financial powerhouses including Deutsche Bank, Nomura Holdings and Fidelity Investments for […]
After pouring billions of dollars into cities including London, New York and Sydney, individual investors and developers in China are expanding into Dubai. About a thousand individual Chinese investors spent 1.3 billion U.A.E dirhams ($353 million) on land, residential units and office real estate in Dubai last year, according to data from the Dubai Land Department. That is a nearly threefold increase from the 486 million dirhams […]
Dubai World, the conglomerate at the centre of the emirate’s debt crisis, has the means to make its first big repayment on time next year and expects to pay off more of its debt ahead of schedule, a top executive said. Mohammed al-Shaibani, chief executive of sovereign wealth fund Investment Corp of Dubai and a key figure in negotiating the emirate’s debt restructurings in recent years, said […]
As investors dump emerging-market equities at an unprecedented clip, they’re turning more and more to frontier markets in search of the next growth story. No exchange-traded fund focused on developing nations has grown faster in the past year than BlackRock Inc. (BLK)’s iShares MSCI Frontier 100 fund, whose biggest holdings are in Kuwait and Qatar. Assets under management surged nine-fold to $594 million, fueled by $465 million […]
Middle East fund managers are willing to buy most of the region’s main equity markets on dips, believing corporate earnings and balance sheets will continue improving this year, a monthly Reuters survey shows. Markets retreated early this month as retail investors rushed to take profits during the worst of the geopolitical uncertainty over Ukraine. Dubai’s bourse fell 6.7 percent from its peak close to its trough. Qatar’s […]
Citigroup Inc.’s capital plan was among five that failed Federal Reserve stress tests, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. passed only after reducing their requests for buybacks and dividends. Citigroup, as well as U.S. units of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc and Banco Santander SA, failed because of qualitative concerns about their processes, the Fed said today in a […]
Hanco, a Saudi Arabian auto rental company, said it acquired U.A.E.-based Byrne Investments from a private-equity group previously owned by HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) for 600 million dirhams ($163 million). Hanco, majority-owned by closely-held Bin Sulaiman Holdings, is buying Byrne’s equipment rental operations and modular building services business from Dubai-based Havenvest Private Equity Middle East Partnership, it said today in a statement. Persian Gulf companies are stepping […]
Abu Dhabi National Energy Co (TAQA) posted a net loss of 2.52 billion dirhams ($687 million) for 2013 because of a non-cash impairment related to the value of its oil and gas holdings in North America, the company said on Tuesday. TAQA swung from a profit after minority interests of 649 million dirhams in 2012. As a result, it said its board had recommended no dividend for […]
Investors seeking a hedge against a waning U.S. economic recovery and escalating conflict in Ukraine made twice as much money buying gold-mining shares rather than the metal the companies produce. The Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF climbed 25 percent this year, more than double the 12 percent advance for the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest exchange-traded product backed by bullion. This is the first quarter the company […]
Wall Street leaders including Lloyd Blankfein and James Gorman, who have courted business in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, are facing a dilemma as tensions over Ukraine escalate. Their scheduled attendance at Putin’s annual investor showcase in St. Petersburg in May is in doubt as sanctions imposed by the U.S. in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea — and retaliatory moves by Putin — threaten the ties between Russia’s […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and HSBC Holdings are among banks planning to compete for a role in the largest Saudi Arabian share sale in at least 12 years, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. The banks will vie with local lenders including Banque Saudi Fransi (BSFR) and Gulf International Bank to be appointed as financial adviser on the sale of a 15 percent stake […]
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 […]
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sued 16 of the world’s largest banks on Friday, accusing them of colluding to suppress interest rates. The lawsuit, filed in the federal district court in New York, was the latest to accuse financial institutions of conspiring to manipulate Libor, or the London Interbank Offered Rate. The FDIC said the defendants’ conduct caused substantial losses to 38 banks that the U.S. regulator […]
