Dubai’s success in bidding to host the 2020 World Expo will trigger billions of dollars of investment in the emirate, but it may risk a repeat of the boom-and-bust cycle which nearly caused financial collapse just a few years ago. After competing against three cities, Dubai was awarded the world’s fair by the Bureau International des Expositions on Wednesday, setting the seal on a dramatic economic recovery. […]
India’s exports of gold jewellery fell by almost a third year-on-year in November as restrictions continued to hit shipments, and industry officials said recovery was unlikely any time soon. India’s government has slapped a record 10 percent import duty on gold, its second-biggest import after oil, as it seeks to curb a swollen current account, and has said 20 percent of all imports must be turned around […]
Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways is examining Alitalia’s books and is expected to decide by Christmas whether to take a stake in the troubled Italian airline, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. Alitalia offers access to Europe’s fourth-largest travel market and flies 25 million passengers a year. But the airline, which loses 700,000 euros a day and has net debt of more than 800 million […]
A bipartisan budget deal announced in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, though modest in its spending cuts, would end three years of impasse and fiscal instability in Washington that culminated in October with a partial government shutdown. While praised by the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the agreement faces a challenge from some House conservatives […]
Julius Baer Group Ltd. took over businesses in Lebanon, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates as Switzerland’s third-largest wealth manager integrates the Merrill Lynch operations acquired last year. “Gaining new footholds in the Middle Eastern markets of Lebanon and Bahrain and strengthening our existing Dubai presence is an important step for us and will enable us to further expand our footprint in this key growth region,” Remy […]
Swiss authorities are urging banks to quash their doubts and enter a U.S. voluntary disclosure program aimed at uncovering American tax evaders. The Swiss financial watchdog Finma requested banks to decide by today whether they will join the first stage of the U.S. Department of Justice program by applying for non-prosecution agreements by the end of 2013. Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf is scheduled today to respond […]
Dubai’s DAMAC said it raised $348 million from its London share offer on Tuesday, a lukewarm response to the first share sale by a Dubai property firm since the emirate’s real estate crash four years ago. The luxury housing firm, which describes its new villa project as the Beverly Hills of Dubai, had hoped to take advantage of a renewed interest in Dubai’s property market aided by […]
Middle East crude for immediate delivery traded at its biggest premium in two years to later shipments last month after Royal Dutch Shell bought an unprecedented number of cargoes. The price gap between the earliest loadings of the benchmark Dubai grade and those for two months later climbed to $2.82 a barrel on Nov. 21, the widest spread since 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The […]
Saudi Arabia seems to have few viable options for pursuing a more independent and forthright foreign policy, despite its deep unease about the West’s tentative rapprochement with Iran. Upset with the United States, senior Saudis have hinted at a range of possibilities, from building strategic relations with other world powers to pushing a tougher line against Iranian allies in the Arab world and, if world powers fail […]
Gold trade between Turkey and Iran will resume, albeit at lower levels than last year, once sanctions on Iran are eased, Iran’s ambassador to Turkey said on Friday. Turkey’s gold trade with Iran boomed in 2012 when Ankara was paying for its natural gas and oil imports with Turkish lira and Iranians were using those deposits held in Turkey’s Halkbank to buy gold. “Certainly the gold trade […]
A police helicopter crashed into the roof of a packed pub in Glasgow on Friday night, trapping revelers in choking dust and debris as they scrambled to flee a concert at the busy drinking hole. There are a number of casualties, police said. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said people should prepare for the likelihood of fatalities while emergency workers labored to free people trapped under rubble […]
Dubai has proposed to the federal government of the United Arab Emirates that the UAE create a sharia-compliant retirement savings scheme for foreign workers, a step which could help to develop the Islamic funds industry. The aim is that the scheme will be nation-wide, though if the federal government does not want to participate, Dubai may implement the plan merely within the emirate, a source at Dubai’s […]
Dubai’s success in bidding to host the 2020 World Expo will trigger billions of dollars of investment in the emirate, but it may risk a repeat of the boom-and-bust cycle which nearly caused financial collapse just a few years ago. After competing against three cities, Dubai was awarded the world’s fair by the Bureau International des Expositions on Wednesday, setting the seal on a dramatic economic recovery. […]
The RAK Hospital marathon diabetes campaign targeting to screen at least 2,000 people as part of its World Diabetes Day programmes started off with overwhelming public response. The three-day campaign is the biggest such event in the Northern Emirates. The campaign that began on Thursday would screen children as well as adults to detect both type 1 and type 2diabetes. The screenings are held at the RAK […]
Emerging Asian currencies took a battering and regional shares tumbled to six-week lows on Wednesday as mixed signals from Federal Reserve officials raised fresh concerns about an imminent rollback of the U.S. central bank’s asset-buying stimulus. The dour mood looked set to carry over into Europe, where financial spread betters predicted Britain’s FTSE 100 to fall as much as 0.7 percent, Germany’s DAX off 0.4 percent and […]
The 2013 Dubai Airshow is expected to be one of the most popular in the show’s history, with more than 1,000 exhibitors and 60,000 visitors already registered.The five-day show, which kicks off November 17 this year, will be held for the first time at the city’s new $32 million Al-Maktoum International Airport — set to be the world’s largest on its 2027 completion. “The days where air […]
Now that the foundation of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s statue – to be the world’s tallest – has been laid, a small rocky island in the middle of the Narmada riverbed and facing Gujarat’s Sardar Sarovar Dam is seeing a lot of activity. The first phase of the project, for which bids have already been invited, is estimated to cost around Rs 2,063 crore. This phase will involve […]
A row has flared up between leading planemakers over the width of tourist-class seats on long-distance flights, setting the tone for a bitter confrontation at this month’s Dubai Airshow. The dispute focuses on the width of seats provided on long-haul flights for economy passengers – not always the ones most courted by airlines, but whose allocated space holds the key to efficiency claims for the latest jets […]
Pakistani Taliban fighters secretly buried their leader on Saturday after he was killed by a U.S. drone aircraft and quickly moved to replace him while vowing a wave of revenge suicide bombings. The Pakistani government denounced the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud as a U.S. bid to derail planned peace talks and summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest. Some lawmakers demanded the blocking of U.S. supply lines into […]
Du, the United Arab Emirates’ second-biggest telecoms operator, remains at odds with rival Etisalat over the terms of a network sharing deal to open up fixed-line services in the country. Du’s CEO Osman Sultan voiced frustration at the impasse more than four years after talks between the companies began. Both are majority-owned by state-linked institutions. Du ended Etisalat’s domestic monopoly in 2007 and both offer fixed-line broadband […]
Doubts are growing over the viability of Dubai’s recently announced plan to build a new oil refinery in the emirate with China Sonangol. The region’s top financial hub last month signed a memorandum of understanding with China Sonangol International, a joint venture between Angola’s state-owned oil company, Sonangol and Hong Kong-based New Bright International Development, to build what will be its second oil refinery. The hope is […]
Asian oil refiners are facing slumping profits as China is expected to ramp up exports of diesel and gasoline this quarter. The margin from refining diesel in Asia has fallen almost 10 percent in the last 10 trading days, although it would have to drop another 13 percent to plumb the levels reached just after the first quarter, when the Chinese were last major exporters. While Chinese […]
A U.S. judge on Friday narrowed Mashreq PSC’s claims in a lawsuit that alleged ING Groep NV lost more than $40 million of the Dubai bank’s money by investing it in “toxic” securities. U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield denied ING’s bid to dismiss the complaint in its entirety, ruling that Mashreq’s breach of contract claim should stand. However, she dismissed the bank’s breach of fiduciary duty and […]
Mehmood Patel still wakes up early, just as he did when he was a popular heart specialist seeing patients who waited hours for minutes of his time. Instead of surgical scrubs, he climbs into the khaki drabs of the Federal Correctional Complex in Oakdale, Louisiana. He leads health-conscious inmates on a morning walk, then cracks open one of the medical journals on his prison-approved reading list. Counseling […]
