|By Mayank Bhardwaj and Jo Winterbottom| A bad monsoon in India is the one that fails to deliver enough rain … most of the time. This year, a lack of rainclouds could be the silver lining that the government needs. India has no place left to store more grain, and can ill afford a hefty payout to farmers for the truckloads of produce that another monsoon could […]
DAMAC Properties has unveiled a luxury serviced hotel apartments project at the heart of the emirate’s proposed Expo 2020 site. Celestia, as it is known, will comprise of studios, one and two bedroom apartments across an eight-floor complex and will be located in Dubai World Central Residential City, near to the new Al Maktoum International Airport. Facilities will include a retail area featuring fine-dining restaurants and designer […]
U.S. regulators are mobilizing to shore up confidence in America’s generic-drug supply as alarm grows over the quality of products made in India, and the head of the largest U.S.-based maker of the medicines predicted more trouble lies ahead. “It’ll get worse before it gets better,” said Mylan (MYL) Inc. Chief Executive Officer Heather Bresch, whose company has half of its more than 20,000 employees in India. […]
Dubai World, one of the emirate’s big state-owned conglomerates, has prepaid $284.5 million to creditors under its $25 billion debt restructuring plan, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. The conglomerate obtained money for the prepayment from asset sales, said the sources, who declined to be named because the matter isn’t public. Under the terms of the restructuring deal, cash raised from asset sales above a […]
Investor sentiment toward Dubai is about the best it has been since before the Persian Gulf emirate skirted default amid the global credit crisis. The cost of insuring its debt against non-payment with credit-default swaps was quoted at 189 basis points at the end of last month, the least since the 187 reached in May, which was the lowest since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., […]
Plans by Malaysia, the world’s largest palm oil producer after Indonesia, to increase consumption in biodiesel may support prices, said Douglas Uggah Embas, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister. Proposals to implement the B7 program next year will result in annual use of 700,000 metric tons of palm methyl ester, said Embas. The B5 version, which involves blending 5 percent of palm methyl ester with 95 percent of […]
Singapore leapt five spots to top a global ranking of the most expensive cities as a stronger currency and price increases made it costlier to live in the island nation, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. The republic beat Paris, Oslo, Zurich and Sydney, while Tokyo moved down to sixth position from first previously after the yen slid, the EIU’s latest Worldwide Cost of Living Survey released […]
| By K Raveendran| Dubai is at such an interesting juncture that it lends itself to analyst opinions that are mutually challenging. There are enough silver lines on the horizon for those who tend to approach issues with a sense of optimism. But for those who are inclined to look the other way, there is an uneasy déjà vu setting in. As the local stock market gets […]
Stocks slid while oil prices shot up on Monday, after Russia bloodlessly seized a part of Ukraine, escalating tensions between Russia and the West to a level not seen since the end of the Cold War. U.S. stock futures fell 0.7 percent from a record high hit on Friday while Japan’s Nikkei average tumbled 1.3 percent. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.6 percent. […]
Gold gained more than 1 percent on Monday on escalating geopolitical tensions as Ukraine mobilised for war after Russia bloodlessly seized Crimea, an isolated Black Sea peninsula where Moscow has a naval base. The Group of Seven major industrialised nations condemned Russia’s intrusion into Ukraine and cancelled preparations for the G8 summit, that includes Russia, scheduled for Sochi in June, the White House said. Cash and U.S. […]
China’s credit-market gauges are triggering alarm bells, as banks grow cautious in lending to each other while investors prefer the safest government bonds. The spread between the two-year sovereign yield and the similar-maturity interest-rate swap, a gauge of financial stress, reached 121 basis points on Feb. 19, the widest in Bloomberg data going back to 2007. Two days later, the cost to lock in the three-month Shanghai […]
The London gold fix, the benchmark used by miners, jewelers and central banks to value the metal, may have been manipulated for a decade by the banks setting it, researchers say. Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be […]
The path toward U.S. energy independence, made possible by a boom in shale oil, will be much harder than it seems. Just a few of the roadblocks: Independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back. Shale output drops faster than production from conventional methods. It will take 2,500 new wells a year just to sustain output of 1 million barrels a […]
|TAP Special| Dubai should reorient its economic focus by shifting away from property and concentrate on advanced industries, a report by the Department of Finance proposed. Within the real estate sector itself, the emphasis should be changed from residential to commercial, it further said. The paper says Dubai has learned lessons from the global financial crisis, including the importance of budget discipline and the need to regulate […]
Manhattan Attorney Preet Bharara has sent subpoenas to Mt. Gox, other bitcoin exchanges, and businesses that deal in bitcoin to seek information on how they handled recent cyber attacks, a source familiar with the probe said on Wednesday. In the attacks – known as distributed denial of service attacks – hackers overwhelmed bitcoin exchanges by sending thousands of phantom transactions. At least three exchanges were forced to […]
Gold fell 1 percent on Wednesday, retreating from a four-month high, as a dollar rally and surging U.S. new home sales dented bullion’s safe-haven appeal. The precious metal accelerated losses after the Commerce Department said that sales of new U.S. single-family homes jumped nearly 10 percent to a 5-1/2-year high in January. Prior to Wednesday, gold had posted a four-day winning streak with prices up more than […]
Gold and silver rose to 16-week highs in New York on speculation that weakening U.S. growth and turmoil in Ukraine will boost demand for the precious metals as a haven. Economic activity in the U.S., as measured by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s national index, for January was at minus 0.39, compared with analysts’ median estimate of minus 0.2. A below-zero reading indicates below-trend growth. Ukraine’s […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. says investors should buy record-low yielding sukuk from Dubai-based port operator DP World Ltd. (DPW) and Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority FZE before credit ratings improve. The yield on DP World’s $1.5 billion Islamic bonds due July 2017 slid 61 basis points this year to 2.6 percent at 2:22 p.m. in Dubai, the lowest level since they were sold in 2007. The yield […]
|By Ole Hansen| Commodities showing strong gains for a third week with positive performances seen across all sectors, not least agriculture where coffee and sugar were strong performers followed by precious metals. Growth-dependent commodities such as energy and industrial metals also showed a positive return but were held back by another decline to a seven-month low in Chinese manufacturing confidence. Adverse weather across the Americas continues to […]
Heavy morning fog and zero visibility driver alerts notwithstanding, hundreds of investors descended at Emaar Properties’ Downtown sales office early on Saturday to buy townhouses in Mira Oasis in the Reem master development. But as the numbers swelled, Dubai’s largest developer cancelled the first-come first-served approach and adopted an “online registration”system in order to manage the crowd. “There was a huge rush at the Emaar sales office… […]
For years, Abu Dhabi’s real estate market has paled next to its more dynamic, glamorous rival in neighbouring Dubai. But that may be changing as Abu Dhabi engineers a market recovery that could attract billions of dollars of fresh foreign investment. Real estate prices in Dubai jumped over 20 percent last year, analysts estimate, as the emirate rebounded from a crash in 2008-2010 which slashed prices by […]
DUBAI is poised to roll over a vital $10 billion debt facility with the central bank of the United Arab Emirates at a lower rate of interest, UK’s Telegraph newspaper revealed. Rolling over the debt, which is due at the end of this week, will soothe lingering concerns over the emirate’s ability to service its immediate debts as it prepares to embark on another burst of infrastructure […]
Global stocks erased their losses for the year as growing confidence in the U.S. economy and a rally in emerging markets restored $3 trillion of value. The MSCI All-Country World Index advanced for a ninth straight day yesterday, lifting the value of world equities to $62.1 trillion from this year’s low of about $59 trillion on Feb. 4, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The gauge of developed […]
The two most-accurate gold forecasters are holding to their bearish forecasts for 2014 even after the metal posted its best start to a year since 1983. Futures rose 9.7 percent in 2014 through Feb. 14, rebounding from the biggest annual drop in three decades, and reached a three-month high. Holdings in exchange-traded products backed by bullion increased by 3.2 metric tons last week, the most since December […]
