|By Winfried Weber| German Mittelstand has become a new role model for managers from all over the world. A pilot study of Mannheim Institute of Applied Management Research found that mostly managers from Asia and emerging countries are attracted by the German Mittelstand model and send delegations to learn more about it. They come directly to Germany as the management education programs taught at business schools or […]
President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden Photo: AP Were it any other US president in recent memory, delivering a rousing White House address promising to “vanquish” the bloodthirsty militants of the Islamic State from the face of the earth would be dismissed as the “easy part”. Recall Joe Biden, the vice president with half an eye on a run for the top job in 2016, […]
Verizon plans to launch an “over-the-top” digital video broadcasting service by the middle of 2015, CEO Lowell McAdam said Thursday. Speaking at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia conference, McAdam said the service would deliver video content to wireless devices on an a la carte basis. “No one wants to have 300 channels on your wireless device,” McAdam said, according to a transcript of the talk published on the investment […]
Standard Chartered Plc is in talks with potential corporate sukuk issuers from China and Hong Kong, as the city government debuts its Islamic bonds. The lender, the fourth-largest Shariah-compliant debt arranger this year, sees Hong Kong as a “very unique opportunity as a gateway to China,” Afaq Khan, the Dubai-based chief executive officer at Standard Chartered Saadiq, said in an interview. The city’s entry to the Islamic […]
When Saudi Arabia lowered its oil prices last week, analysts declared that the No. 1 oil producer was more focused on maintaining its share of a well-supplied global market than on keeping prices at $100 a barrel or higher. AFP/Getty Images “It is fair to say that the kingdom is not in a rush to cut production soon,” said London consulting firm Energy Aspects in a note […]
By K Raveendran at CeBIT Eurasia, Istanbul Turkey’s Aktif Bank has no branches. In fact, in 2007, when the bank embarked on its journey, it did not even have a signboard. But today, the bank has one of the country’s fastest growing customer bases and every man on the street is its potential customer. Modelled as a ‘shop in shop’, its products and services are sold by […]
Apple is generating plenty of buzz for its iPhone 6 and Apple Watch models, but behind the scenes it’s the iOS 8 that’s gluing all the innovations together. The tech giant will start rolling out the new version of its mobile operating system on September 17 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users as a free update. Apple is billing iOS 8 as a simpler, faster […]
A new set of figures was published last week. The figures were released without much fanfare, but they are potentially explosive: a rising proportion of premature babies born at 23 weeks are surviving. More accurately, Britain’s best neonatal units are saving them. Freedom of information requests from 25 hospitals revealed that 120 babies born at 23 weeks survived over the past four years (likely to be more […]
Dubai’s boom-and-bust real estate market can land you at the wheel of a Rolls-Royce or behind bars. Kabir Mulchandani should know: he’s experienced both. Five years after spending 140 days in jail facing charges of fraud and embezzlement for which he ultimately was cleared, the chairman of developer SKAI Holdings stands at a building site watching cranes start work on one of the company’s three projects. They […]
An executive holds the Syqe inhaler at the company’s office in a Tel Aviv industrial complex. In the background is an empty floor room being readied to produce the first models. Josh Mitnick for The Wall Street Journal Doctor-prescribed joints might one day become a relic of the past if cannabis technology venture Syqe Medical Ltd. has its way. The government backed start-up, an outgrowth of Israel’s […]
|By TAP Staff| A $32 billion project to make the Al Maktoum International airport at Dubai World Central as the world’s biggest airport has received approval. When completed, the airport targets to handle more than 200 million passengers per year. The first phase of the expansion alone aims to build enough runway and terminal space to handle 120 million passengers a year and 100 mammoth Airbus A380 […]
By Paul Carsten BEIJING Mon Sep 8, 2014 11:12am IST A picture illustration shows a WeChat app icon in Beijing, December 5, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Petar Kujundzic/Files BEIJING (Reuters) – Apple Inc has a lot for which to thank people like Deng. A Beijing-based quality analyst, she gave only her surname as she’s embarrassed by how much money she spends playing mobile games on WeChat, a hugely popular […]
Valérie Trierweiler, the high-heeled hellcat whose memoir of their time together has plunged the surreally unpopular president into the biggest crisis anyone at the Elysée Palace can recall Photo: REX FEATURES Beneath the twinkling chandeliers of Cardiff Castle’s banqueting hall last week, François Hollande wore the pale, sweaty look of a man in big trouble. Back home, the economy was collapsing, the public was in revolt, the government […]
Tory strategists: George Osborne and Lynton Crosby (right) Photo: REX FEATURES The Scottish opinion polls were looking bad for the “No” campaign. Their ratings were sliding downhill faster than a fat man on a skeleton bob. A new report had claimed that there was £300 billion’s worth of oil waiting to be fracked off the coast of Scotland. And all they could offer to stem the Nationalist surge were […]
To me, visiting old churches makes more sense as a fundraiser than a bucket of cold water thrown over my head She hasn’t got the heaves, but if Miss Opsimath’s cough isn’t better by next Saturday, I’d better take my bike. So my cousin told me, when the possibility of my borrowing the mare was discussed. I’ll probably be more comfortable on the bike, because, although this […]
By Casey Sullivan Sat Sep 6, 2014 6:33am IST People walk at the headquarters of Alibaba in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Chance Chan/Files Alibaba Group Holding Ltd disclosed on Friday that it would pay $15.8 million in legal fees to law firm Simpson Thacher and other attorneys who advised the Chinese e-commerce giant on its upcoming IPO, six times what Facebook paid its […]
By Surojit Mahalanobis Coal mining issues are getting murkier increasingly in the country. Like the previous Congress led-government, the incumbent NDA too seems groping into holed-up challenges and cannot find much light beyond the tunnel. The opportunity is unique this time in the NDA government as the main party BJP is now armed with the single largest mandate, enough to institute its bold decisions, albeit through […]
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. . . more could be done to improve the productivity of each police officer, says Tom Winsor Photo: Alamy At first, when her south London flat was broken into last winter, Zena Ambrose couldn’t have been more impressed with the response from the police. The communications consultant returned home from work late at night to find a burglar had stolen her MacBook, driving licence and designer clothes […]
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahri on Wednesday announced the formation of an Indian branch of his militant group he said would spread Islamic rule and “raise the flag of jihad” across the subcontinent. In a 55-minute video posted online, Zawahri also renewed a longstanding vow of loyalty to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, in an apparent snub to the Islamic State armed group challenging al Qaeda […]
By Nivedita Bhattacharjee MUMBAI Wed Sep 3, 2014 11:01am IST Android mascots are lined up in the demonstration area at the Google I/O Developers Conference in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, May 10, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Beck Diefenbach/Files MUMBAI (Reuters) – Google Inc’s (GOOGL.O) partnership with three Indian phone makers is set to rev up fast-growing demand for lower priced smartphones, and spell more trouble for […]
Islamic debt could become a source of funding for U.K. infrastructure projects from wind turbines to high-speed trains and airports as Britain cements its position as the first sukuk market in a non-Muslim nation. Investors including Bank of London and the Middle East see scope for the U.K. to issue Shariah-compliant bonds with varying maturities after the Debt Management Office attracted bids for more than 10 times […]
Militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking aim at captured Iraqi soldiers Photo: AP As Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria butcher thousands of “infidels” and carry off their women and children into slavery, many in the West are inclined to see this as an unique outcrop of Islamic fundamentalism. Yet after overrunning a Bosnian town on 11th July 1995, Bosnian […]
Secretary-General Hassan Al-Thawadi (3rd L) of Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, the nation’s 2022 World Cup organising committee, speaks during a news conference to announce the start of work on the Al-Khor Stadium in Al-Khor in June. Reuters Investors in Qatar are likely to hold their breath, and cash, this month: Well, at least until FIFA reports on its investigation of the bidding process for […]
Meraas Holding, a state-owned property firm that is developing some of Dubai’s most ambitious real estate projects, is in talks with banks to raise up to $4 billion, sources aware of the matter said on Monday. Dubai has bounced back rapidly from a debt crisis in 2008, when property prices fell by more than half, and state-linked property companies have started work on several major projects in […]
