ABU DHABI // Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed met the Egyptian president in Cairo on Thursday to take stock of regional and global issues. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Abdel Fattah El Sisi discussed regional challenges, especially interference from foreign parties, the crises in Arab countries and risks to the region posed by terrorist organisations. They also considered […]
UAE. In the GCC, healthcare, industrials & materials and financial services have recorded the largest fluctuations in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity, despite the gradual decline witnessed by the industry since 2014. According to research published today in The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) 2016 M&A Report, Masters of the Corporate Portfolio, companies that regularly acquire and divest businesses as part of their corporate strategy consistently outperform less […]
UAE. Middle East businesses embracing digital transformations in order to gain business advantage and drive innovation are being warned to place digital trust and cyber security at the heart of such change. The advice has been issued by two new senior experts in IT, digital transformation and cyber security appointed by PA Consulting Group Middle East and North Africa as part of an aggressive recruitment phase to […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Bank of America-Merrill Lynch has made moderate downward adjustments to its near-term growth forecasts in the light of the election of Trump as the next US President. “Given the high level of uncertainty about the exact policy changes at this stage, we are assuming that trade tensions and fiscal stimulus have offsetting impacts on growth in the medium term,” it said. While a wide […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Donald Trump’s election as American President is expected to further complicate OPEC’s efforts to strike a deal for output freeze. OPEC was already struggling to finalize a deal and with Trump, it has become all the more difficult. In fact, Trump’s surprise victory threatens to deepen a market sell-off, according to UBS Group AG. Yet the uncertainty arising from the President-Elect’s policies — from […]
Gone are the days when Google let malware sites off the hook with a stern warning and a solemn promise not to revert to their harmful ways. The search engine has instituted a new policy — effective immediately — for sites it deems to be repeat offenders of its “Malware, Unwanted Software, Phishing, and Social Engineering” policies. Under the terms of the new policy, Google will slap […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The gold price breached US$1,300/oz in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory, up from US$1,275/oz before the vote counting began. Gold price has increased, outperforming other assets, including other safe havens. The market is expeting short term volatility in the wake of the election result as it signals a major political and economic change. Gold trading volumes have risen sharply in Asia. Western markets, which […]
I took this video while on what often felt like a surreal bus ride through war-torn Syria. The video begins on the edge of the city of Aleppo, its western, government-held half. The area we drove through is all government held but has been intensely fought over, again and again, and has changed hands several times. The route we took connects the city to a key supply […]
UAE. Low natural gas and electricity prices have created a tough competitive environment for renewable energy, but this has remarkably had little impact on the momentum of alternative energy growth, finds a new Deloitte report entitled, “Alternative Thinking 2016: Five game-changers that are powering the future of renewable energy.” The report identifies the important trends and opportunities in the renewable energy industry. It also presents “what if” […]
The reality today is that most enterprise applications are well on their way to being cloud based. We’ve seen it with simple workloads such as HR and payroll, travel and expense management, and in the last decade we’ve seen the cloud as the new normal for customer relationship management (CRM) deployments. In fact, a recent Gartner report predicts that the public cloud services market in the Mena […]
Samsung discontinued its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, which was prone to catching fire, last month. But the company’s safety problems have not ended: The manufacturer and a product safety regulator on Friday announced a recall for 2.8 million washing machines in the United States. The number of washing machines recalled, which includes 34 models of Samsung’s top-loading washers, exceeds the 1.9 million Galaxy Note smartphones that Samsung […]
By Naomi Tajitsu and Chang-Ran Kim | TOKYO TOKYO Toyota Motor Corp is looking at mass-producing long-range electric vehicles (EVs) that would hit the market around 2020, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Monday, in what would be a dramatic reversal of strategy for the world’s top-selling automaker. Even as rivals such as Nissan Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Tesla Motors have touted pure electric cars as the […]
International oil companies will probably cut investment spending about $370 billion this year and next, according to Wood MacKenzie Ltd., just as the United Arab Emirates warned that the “massive” number of projects being delayed because of the drop in crude prices could create a future shortage. Further investment cuts will mean a 3 percent reduction this year in oil and natural gas production, equivalent to 5 […]
|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 Arabian Post Staff| US$51.6 billion of Dubai’s debt will come due for repayment in 2016-18, with US$27.4 billion due in 2018, IMF has estimated. Over US$28.9 billion of Abu Dhabi’s debt will also come due during this period. According to IMF, these imply short-term rollover risks for both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but for a larger extent in the case of Dubai. The Fund feels that […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Signs of friction over OPEC’s production freeze plan are already emerging, with more members questioning the proposed numbers. Iraq and Venezuela had already expressed doubts over data compiled by OPEC for this purpose on the ground that the data has been compiled from secondary sources. And now Iran has joined the protest. Output estimates compiled by OPEC’s Vienna-based secretariat are “not acceptable,” Bloomberg […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| A high level panel will examine the effects and ramifications of de-risking for Middle East banks, under which correspondent banking relationships are constrained or blocked by international regulators protecting their banks from perceived risk such as money laundering or financing terrorism. The panel will discuss how banks manage de-risking, how it affects their small and medium sized corporate clients in the Middle East […]
|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 […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia said it was holding investor meetings in London, Los Angeles, Boston and New York from Wednesday to sell benchmark bonds maturing in five, 10 and 30 years. The issue is expected to be at least $10 billion. “It’s very good timing,” Bloomberg quoted Angelo Rossetto, a trader at GMSA Investments Ltd. in London, as saying. “I wouldn’t say now or never as […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Despite external debt remaining at tight spreads due to still-high leverage and refinancing challenges, Dubai will muddle through the current crisis in terms of debt rollovers, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch said in its latest research. Although the investment bank expects the local bid on the shorter end to weaken due to low oil prices, it sees chances of less supply risk for Dubai […]
The Interpreter By AMANDA TAUB It is a truth universally acknowledged by every war correspondent, humanitarian aid worker and Western diplomat: Some wars, like Syria’s, receive tremendous public attention, which can translate into pressure for resolution. But many others, like Yemen’s still raging but much ignored conflict, do not. Some of the reasons are obvious; the scale of Syria’s war is catastrophic and much worse than Yemen’s. […]
When I went to Las Vegas last week I didn’t go to visit clubs, gamble or even take in a show. Those were activities for another trip. This time I attended the Automotive IQ System Safety conference. I met engineers, auto executives, and computer programmers who shared the same concern about autonomous vehicles: how safe is safe enough? Companies like Uber and Tesla are rolling out autonomous technology faster […]
Reports of unruly passengers disrupting airline flights have soared almost 17 per cent worldwide in 2015, with incidents such as passengers being verbally abusive or refusing to obey cabin crew occurring on one out of every 1,205 flights, the international trade association for airlines said on Wednesday. Some 10,854 plane rage incidents were reported to the International Air Transport Association by airlines last year, up from 9,316 […]
