|By Matein Khalid| I had written an article titled “six reasons to be bullish Saudi equities in 2018, published in the KT on January 28. Yet I was surprised to see Saudi Arabian equities become the world’s second best performing stock market in 2018 after Egypt. The Saudi equity index fund (KSA) I recommended in my column is up 18% at a time when the MSCI emerging markets […]
By James M. Dorsey A Saudi Moroccan soccer spat speaks volumes about the depth of change in the Arab world. The spat over Saudi Arabia’s refusal to support a Moroccan bid for the hosting rights of the 2026 World Cup tells the tale of the rise of individual country nationalism at the expense of Arab solidarity, Saudi determination to safeguard its alliance with the United States at whatever cost, […]
By Matein Khalid A dismal legacy of civil war, sanctions, insurgency, foreign invasion and terrorism has had a catastrophic impact on the Iraqi economy. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told the assembled global elite at Davos 2018 that Iraq needed $100 billion in postwar construction. Yet money alone will not solve Iraq’s problems of systemic corruption, a society divided by sectarian cleavages, poverty, the displacement of 2 million […]
By James M. Dorsey Twin attacks earlier this week on Pakistani security forces in the troubled province of Balochistan cast a light on a sustained and violent campaign against police and paramilitary units as well as Shiite and Christian minorities. The attacks by groups, some of which have had links to Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence apparatus as well as Saudi Arabia, spotlight the Pakistani state’s inability to […]
/By Daniel Markuson/The Tor browser is a powerful free tool for browsing the internet anonymously that also unlocks a portion of the deep web in the form of .onion addresses. If you own or are looking to create a website, you may want to learn how to create a .onion site to protect yourself and your visitors. What is a .onion domain and how does it work […]
By James M. Dorsey Bangladesh, in a twist of irony, is looking to Saudi Arabia to fund a $ 1 billion plan to build hundreds of mosques and religious centres to counter militant Islam that for much of the past decade traced its roots to ultra-conservative strands of the faith promoted by a multi-billion dollar Saudi campaign. The Bangladeshi plan constitutes the first effort by a Muslim country to enlist […]
By James M. Dorsey There’s a cutting-off-the-nose-to-spite-the face aspect to a Saudi plan to turn Qatar into an island by digging a 60-kilometre ocean channel through the two countries’ land border that would accommodate a nuclear waste heap as well as a military base. If implemented, the channel would signal the kingdom’s belief that relations between the world’s only two Wahhabi states will not any time soon return to […]
By James M. Dorsey Iranian leaders are struggling, three months after anti-government protests swept the Islamic republic, to ensure that environmental issues that helped sparked a popular uprising in Syria in 2011 leading to a brutal civil war don’t threaten the clergy’s grip on power. Like Syria, Iran has been confronting a drought that has affected much of the country for more than a decade with precipitation dropping to its lowest […]
By James M. Dorsey In his effort to improve Saudi Arabia’s badly tarnished image and project the kingdom as embracing an unidentified form of moderate Islam, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has hinted that he envisions a conservative rather than an ultra-conservative society, but not one in which citizens are fully free to make personal, let alone political choices of their own. Prince Mohammed’s vision, although […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saal, an innovative technology company based in Abu Dhabi, has launched saal.ai – a revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) framework, an enabler, ready to transcend and redefine current practices across industries and fuel economic and social growth. Capable of cognitive tasks such as reasoning, inference and retrieval, using data collected from multi-modal sensor inputs, saal.ai uses advanced computing and machine learning techniques to perform actions in the AI […]
By James M Dorsey The Middle East has a knack for sucking external powers into its conflicts. China’s ventures into the region have shown how difficult it is to maintain its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. China’s abandonment of non-interference is manifested by its (largely ineffective) efforts to mediate conflicts in South Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan as well as between Israel and Palestine and even between Saudi […]
|By Anand Vardhan|Shaikha Hind Al Qassimi, member of the royal family of Sharjah, is a multifaceted personality with an enviable record as a painter, publisher and fashion designer. She has set up a number of businesses that reflect her interests, among them a fashion house that showcases exquisitely designed abayas, which combine luxurious functionality and style. Her signature brand, ‘House Of Hend’ retails in several countries in […]
By James M. Dorsey Saudi Arabia, in an indication that it is serious about shaving off the sharp edges of its Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism, has agreed to surrender control of the Great Mosque in Brussels. The decision follows mounting Belgian criticism of alleged intolerance and supremacism that was being propagated by the mosque’s Saudi administrators as well as social reforms in the kingdom introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, including […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Overall sentiment in the GCC’s construction sector has improved over the last two years by approximately 7 per cent (from 32 per cent to 39 per cent), according to recent findings from Pinsent Masons’ GCC Construction Survey. The findings show that the UAE remains the number one market expected to deliver growth in 2018, with 38 per cent of respondents expecting the country […]
|By Manish Rai| The recent protests in Iran rang a warning bell for the ruling theocracy in Tehran. What started in Iran’s second largest and holy city of Mashhad over rising prices, transfigured into widespread, unprecedented protests against the theocratic regime in towns and cities across the country. The earlier protests mainly emerged from capital Tehran and some major cities. But the latest ones touch a vast panoply […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) is planning to significantly expand its use of Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS) technology to meet a six-fold increase in the utilization of CO2, for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), over the next 10 years. The volume of the greenhouse gas safely locked away underground will be equivalent to the CO2 emitted by more than one million motor […]
|Mark Ackerman| Automation has the ability to transform society for the better. Every day I see the powerful impact it can have, revolutionising the way business and everyday tasks are done, saving time, money and delivering game-changing economics. It will increase productivity, which is essential for future growth and prosperity. It will also see the end of employees spending time on mundane, repetitive tasks, instead freeing up […]
|By Matein Khalid| When I first started on a Treasury bond futures trading desk in New York fresh out of Wharton, a senior mentor once advised to keep track of the four heartbeats of gold finance in real time. The price of money (interest rates), the price of currency (the US dollar), the price of oil and the price of gold. The price of money can be […]
|By Matein Khalid| Dubai based Gulf Islamic Investments (GII) acquired a one million square foot Amazon logistics center in Dortmund, Germany for $144 million. This deal is a testament to the boutique global merchant bank created in Dubai by GII’s co-founder/CEO Pankaj Gupta, who I am honored to call a friend. I consciously model my own firm Asas Capial on the strategic path laid out by GII and […]
By Manish Rai Last year in June Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a land, sea, and air blockade on Qatar for its alleged support to terror outfits and being too close to Iran. The Arab neighbours thought that by imposing this blockade they can pressurise Qatar to set aside its own ambitious foreign policy and toe the line of its bigger neighbours. But during […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| : The UAE once again captivated the world this New Year’s Eve with a dazzling spectacle to usher in 2018. Emaar’s ‘Light Up 2018’ Downtown Dubai celebration hosted more than a million visitors from across the world and reached an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide through live television broadcast and social media live streams. The mesmerising laser, light and musical fountain show not only […]
When you go out with a client or your boss for dinner, it’s not just the food that’s going to get scrutinised. The way you conduct yourself during a business dinner could leave a lasting impression on whoever you’re meeting, and you want to make sure that impression is a good one. In order to avoid any dining faux-pas, check out our top tips for business dinners. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The UAE budget, which was passed by the Federal National Council on Tuesday, allocates Dh10.4 billion to general and higher education, totalling 20 per cent of the budget. Dh26.3 billion or 51 per cent of the overall budget is dedicated to social development programmes and Dh4.2 billion or 8 per cent to the health sector. Some Dh22.1 billion or 43 per cent of the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Rhetoric casting the future of the Middle East as an existential battle between the two regional powers has soared – particularly on the Saudi side – over the past year. However, a direct military confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia remains unlikely, Control Risks, the specialist global risk consultancy, has warned that businesses in its Middle East risk map for 2018. Iran and Saudi […]
