Financial professionals arriving at their desks on Monday morning will have no shortage of views to digest on what the shock election of Donald Trump means for global markets. Having had a few days to consider the implications, economists, market strategists and analysts have penned thousands of words for clients in recent days that attempt to set out what the future holds. As Jan Loeys and his […]
Even as global markets churned in the wake of Donald Trump’s stunning election win, the US Federal Reserve appeared to be sticking to its guns on monetary policy on Friday as one of its top officials laid the ground for a second increase in short-term interest rates. Stanley Fischer, vice-chair of the Federal Reserve Board, said in a speech that the case for gradually removing some more […]
SAO PAULO The Brazilian unit of Ford Motor Co (F.N) plans to resume 24-hour production at its Camaçari, Bahia, plant, in a sign of optimism with Brazil’s economic recovery, O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper said on Saturday. About 400 workers who have been suspended since March, when Ford paralyzed the unit’s third shift, will return to the production lines, Estado said. Lyle Watters, Ford’s chief executive […]
The International Monetary Fund approved a $12 billion loan program for Egypt to restore investor confidence and help revive an economy battered by years of political turmoil. The Washington-based lender’s executive board approved the three-year loan on Friday. Approval of the IMF loan program, the largest of its kind on record in the Middle East, comes a week after Egypt floated its currency to end a crippling […]
|By Matein Khalid| The fall in oil prices since 2014 has triggered a liquidity crunch and higher funding costs in the UAE banking system. EIBOR is almost double the London interbank rate LIBOR. Non-performing loan (NPL) have begun to rise as property prices have fallen 20% from their peak and corporate/SME borrowers are hit by a sharp downturn in the business cycle. DIB shares reflect these macro […]
|By Matein Khalid| The Algiers pact was a game changer in the international oil markets. Crude oil prices have risen to three month highs above $50 Brent after OPEC agreed to cut output to the 32.5 – 33 MBD range, with the symbolic Saudi-Iranian deal reinforced by a sharp drop in US inventories and Hurricane Matthew’s havoc in the Caribbean. Unfortunately for OPEC, the US land rig […]
UAE. Dubai’s residential and hospitality markets have rebalanced towards a “new normal” in the first six months of 2016, according to Deloitte’s new report “Deloitte Real Estate Predictions 2016 – H1 Review.” The report predicts that residential sale prices will decline further in Dubai for the balance of 2016, but that this rate of decline will slow, as value and affordability returns to the market. “Our real […]
|By Matein Khalid| The Federal Reserve did not disappoint the financial markets after Janet Yellen’s FOMC conference on Wednesday. The US central bank did not raise the overnight borrowing (or Fed Funds rate) to 0.5% on the eve of the November election. This triggered a wild rally in the US stock market with the Dow Jones up 163 points, gold up to $1342 and oil to $46 […]
/Klaus Wille/Bloomberg/Singapore-based hedge funds outperformed Asian rivals during the first seven months of the year thanks to a greater focus on India and global markets, according to data provider Eurekahedge Pte. Funds headquartered in Singapore returned 2 percent through July, while Hong Kong-based funds declined an average 2.3 percent, Eurekahedge said in a report Tuesday. Funds based in Australia rose 1.9 percent, while Japan-based funds declined 2.5 […]
|By Matein Khalid| When Ben Bernanke uttered the word “taper” in May 2013, he triggered a bloodbath in emerging markets and a free fall in “fragile five” currencies that included the Indian rupee and the Indonesian rupiah. However, Asian equities markets, while not immune to a Fed rate hike, are far better positioned for higher US dollar interest rates than in 2013, let alone 2007 or 1998. […]
|By Matein Khalid|I had written a column two weeks ago outlining my view that US equities faced a dangerous autumn and the S&P 500 index was set for a fall of 150 points. However, even I did not expect the S&P500 index to fall 52 points on Friday (the Dow dropped 394 points and NASDAQ 133 points), its worst performance since the Brexit shock. It was even […]
UAE. Change is the new normal for the global health care sector, according to Deloitte’s recent report entitled “2016 Global health care sector outlook – Battling costs while improving care”. As providers, payers, governments, and other stakeholders strive to deliver effective, efficient, and equitable care, they do so in an ecosystem that is undergoing a dramatic and fundamental shift in business, clinical, and operating models. This shift is […]
/By Matien Khalid/I have been bullish on emerging market debt as an asset class since last autumn. Even though the Chinese yuan devaluation was toxic, this asset class is up 12% in 2016, thanks to almost $5 billion in cash inflows. The tax amnesty in Indonesia, the political changes in Brazil after President Dilma’s impeachment, the election of a center-right pro-business government and $16 billion sovereign debt […]
INTERNATIONAL. A KPMG report finds that the global Political Risk and Crisis Management insurance market looks set to exceed $10bn by 2018 A KPMG report, out today, finds that the that the global Political Risk and Crisis Management insurance market looks set to exceed $10bn by 2018, an anticipated $2bn of growth. The challenging macroeconomic environment, recent terrorist attacks, growing cyber threats and global political uncertainties are […]
New discoveries about spider silk could inspire novel materials to manipulate sound and heat in the same way semiconducting circuits manipulate electrons, according to scientists at Rice University, in Europe and in Singapore. A paper in Nature Materials today looks at the microscopic structure of spider silk and reveals unique characteristics in the way it transmits phonons, quasiparticles of sound. The research shows for the first time […]
INTERNATIONAL. Following the vote to leave the EU, the UK economy is expected to face challenges in the short term, with high levels of uncertainty leading to a slowdown in business investment and lower GDP growth. UK: In light of this, PwC has revised down its main scenario real GDP growth projection for the UK to 1.6% and 0.6% per annum in 2016 and 2017 respectively, down […]
|By Matein Khalid|Brexit will have a profound impact on international banking. It was no coincidence that the shares of UK, German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish and other banks fell 20-25% in a single trading session on news of Brexit. Even American money center banks and investment banks with a large footprint in the City of London fell 8 – 10% on Friday, June 24, 2016. As Deutsche Bank […]
A new hypothesis on the extinction of dinosaurs and ammonites at the end of the Cretaceous Period has been proposed by a research team from Tohoku University and the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Meteorological Research Institute. The researchers believe that massive amounts of stratospheric soot ejected from rocks following the famous Chicxulub asteroid impact, caused global cooling, drought and limited cessation of photosynthesis in oceans. This, they say, […]
|By Matein Khalid| The merger of Abu Dhabi banks First Gulf Bank and NBAD creates the largest bank in the Middle East, a regional colossus with $170 billion in assets, competitive funding cost in the global interbank/capital markets and a market value greater than Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) and Deutsche Bank. This is the biggest game changer event in UAE banking and finance since the […]
|By Matein Khalid| David Cameron, Wall Street’s elite, Mutti Merkel, Obama, the Eurocrats of Brussels, the great and the good of the City and the IMF’s Lady Christine all got it so horribly wrong. I slept Thursday night with sterling at 1.50 on New York and awoke to see it trade at 1.34 on Friday, a 30 year low before the Plaza Accords. Britain has voted to […]
|By Matein Khalid| Sterling sell off in the world currency markets and the sheer populist appeal of Boris Johnson suggests the world should not rule out a geopolitical shock that will unnerve financial markets and lead to the mother of all rate cuts at the Bank of England. If Britain votes to leave the EU, the only currency I want to own is the Swiss franc and gold, […]
At its Tech World event in San Francisco yesterday, Lenovo unveiled a prototype of a phone that can bend around your wrist, as well as a concept tablet that can fold to act as a regular smartphone. The devices, not yet ready for market but rather “a sign of things to come,” add Lenovo to the small but growing list of companies, led by LG and Samsung, […]
|By Matein Khalid|Dr. Mervyn King broke with tradition by publishing his book “The End of Alchemy: money, banking and the future of the global economy”. After all, retired governors of the Bank of England do not, as a rule, do not write/publish books, let alone write books that lambast the City of London’s culture of greed and hubris. It is no coincidence that Dr. King quotes T.S. […]
|By Matein Khalid| In retrospect, 2016 will go down in German political and economic history as a significant game changer, on the scale of 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall), 1990 (reunification) and 1999 (the Euro), even 1945 (launch of Deutschemark), 1945 (Third Reich surrenders), 1943 (Stalingrad) and 1933 (Hitler elected). Chancellor Merkel, renamed Mutti Multi kulti, allowed a million migrants to settle in Germany. The far right […]
