How do big data people go about making end-of-year reviews and predictions? Using data is the obvious answer, but there’s a few issues with that approach: there is no synthesis in data alone — you have to find the story behind data, pick an angle and seek meaning. In addition, that approach does not account for subtle hints, industry knowledge, and big ideas. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, […]
On October 17, every employee at Dentsu — Japan’s biggest advertising agency and arguably the country’s most influential company — received the same, catastrophic-sounding message from the company’s president, Tadashi Ishii. “The approved way of working at our company cannot be accepted by stakeholders, including the authorities,” said the memo, according to media reports. Coming a month after Dentsu was caught overbilling hundreds of clients, and just […]
Principal Investment Arm of the Government of Dubai Grows its Portfolio to AED 736.8 Billion Dubai 28 December 2016 Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD) announced its consolidated financial results for the six-month period ended 30 June 2016 showing Revenues of AED 82.5 Billion and a Net Profit of AED 10.3 Billion. These results are achieved against a backdrop of lower oil and commodity prices, a strong US […]
Chinese technology giant Tencent, along with Beijing-based mapping company NavInfo and Singapore state-owned investment firm GIC, announced this week the trio intended to jointly take up a 10 percent share of mapping company Here, with current owners Audi, BMW, and Daimler reducing their indirect holding by the same amount. As well as the share purchase, the companies announced the creation of a 50/50 joint venture between Here […]
Arguably the biggest newspaper business story of 2016 was Gannett’s failed (for now) bid to take over Tronc. What the broken deal says about the industry, however, is more than a little ambiguous. For starters, consider that 2016 was a particularly hard year financially, with advertising revenue losses that started bad and got even worse in the fall. Both Gannett and Tronc are profitable on a cash […]
By Thomas Wilson and Saeed Azhar | TOKYO/SINGAPORE TOKYO/SINGAPORE Japan Inc may become a more important force in dealmaking next year as its cashed-up companies seek to buy growth prospects elsewhere in the world and as Beijing’s crackdown on capital outflows prevents some Chinese companies from making foreign acquisitions, bankers and lawyers said. Facing tepid prospects at home after decades of stagnation amid a shrinking population, Japanese […]
Russian sports officials had vehemently denied the doping operation’s existence despite a detailed confession by the nation’s former antidoping lab chief, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, in a New York Times article last May that was subsequently confirmed by global antidoping regulators. Continue reading the main story An investigator appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, Richard McLaren, published more extensive evidence this month that prompted the International Olympic Committee […]
In order to meet this demand for fresh content — a demand created by the process that supplies it — Jukin scales idle browsing to industrial proportions. A researcher, on average, watches 200 clips daily. That’s a thousand videos each week, or 50,000 per year, give or take. The company’s research is aided by proprietary software called Riff, which generates feeds based on niche viral keywords. Maybe […]
I am retiring from the Poynter Institute on New Year’s Eve. As my wife and I watch the ball in Times Square slide down to 2017, our fervent smooch will not just mark a new beginning. It will be the first celebration of almost 40 years well-spent. When my retirement was announced — along with the news that I would continue to work on some important projects […]
Toshiba warned the market that it could book an impairment loss of “several billion dollars” at its troubled US nuclear division and reconsider its presence in that industry as accounting issues returned to blight one of Japan’s biggest industrial names. With Toshiba’s financial position becoming more clouded by the announcement, its chief executive, Satoshi Tsunakawa, told a press conference on Tuesday night in Tokyo that the company […]
TOKYO Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) is gauging demand for its first bond offering since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear calamity, with some market participants expecting a sale as early as February, people familiar with the plans said. Once-sceptical investors are now more comfortable with the utility’s outlook after government moves to reassess decommissioning and compensation costs, bankers and investors who asked not to be identified told Thomson Reuters […]
Chinese retail investors may be able to dream of Picasso while hanging share certificates on their walls. A Singapore-based Chinese billionaire investor, who this year acquired stakes in peer-to-peer group Lending Club, Legg Mason, the fund manager and Sotheby’s, has proposed “securitising” the artist’s work to create fractional ownership and tap a wider market in Asia. Chen Tianqiao and his wife Chrissy Luo, co-founders of investment group […]
Stacie Overton Johnson and Adam Workman pick their favourite restaurants of the year, based on great decor and ambience as well as fabulous food. • Reviewed meals are paid for by The National and conducted incognito. Contact the restaurants as prices may have changed since our original reviews newslide Abu Dhabi Butcher & Still Very few of us will ever be cool enough to recreate the Al […]
Over the past year, technology and ‘sharing economy’ start-ups have continued their disruption of traditional industries — from Uber and other ride hailers’ shake-up of the taxi market to Airbnb’s myriad alternatives to conventional hotel stays. But which will be the next businesses to be challenged by further digitisation and automation? FT correspondents have looked ahead five to 10 years to identify those industry sectors and companies […]
Dubai’s Shuaa Capital bought 14 percent of Bahrain’s Khaleeji Commercial Bank on Sunday for 9.6 million dinars ($25 million) and said it would use the stake to support the bank’s expansion. The Dubai-listed investment bank purchased the stake from Alimtiaz Investment Group for 0.065 dinar per share, acquiring 147.1 million shares in a special auction, the Bahraini bourse said. KHCB is an Islamic retail bank with assets […]
By Jake Spring | NINGDE, China NINGDE, China A dusty village on the outskirts of Ningde, a third-tier city in China’s southeast, seems an unlikely place for the headquarters of a potential global leader in future automotive technology. Yet China’s top-down industrial policy diktats – move up the value chain, clean up polluted urban skies, and shift to plug-in cars – have Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) […]
In February, Anis Amri, a Tunisian refugee with a criminal past, was officially classified by the German authorities as a potential terrorist. For six months this year he was under near constant police surveillance. None of that helped. Amri went to ground and only resurfaced three days ago as the man investigators believe rammed a truck into a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 12 people. The […]
Qatar’s Nebras Power said on Sunday its subsidiary Nebras Power Netherland BV had completed the acquisition of a 35.5 percent stake in Indonesia’s largest independent power producer, PT Paiton Energy. PT Paiton Energy owns a 2,045 MW thermal power plant. Nebras announced the acquisition in a bourse statement. In October, Nebras’ chief executive Khalid Jolo told Reuters the company planned to acquire the stake from France’s Engie […]
Morning people should avoid working late at night since insufficient sleeping hours paired with virtual increase in the total time spent awake in a day, can unfavorably affect the functioning of the human brain, says study. The Brain Experiment On Continual Sleeplessness And Visual Concentration The study published in journal Experimental Brain Research, was conducted by researchers from National Research University Higher School of Economics and Oxford University, […]
Dubai, UAE, 25 December 2016HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), has received HE Mattar Al Tayer, Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), at DEWA’s Main Office. HE Mattar Al Tayer was accompanied by a high-level delegation from RTA comprising Maitha bin Udai, CEO of the Traffic and Roads […]
As I was scrolling through my Instagram for the fifth time before I slept I saw a meme that was all too familiar. The meme was of an interviewer saying: “We are looking for someone between the ages of 22 and 26 with 30 years experience.” It made me laugh as it brought back memories of job rejections after graduating from university due to my lack of […]
A man wearing a Santa Claus costume walks atop Jerusalem’s Old City walls on December 23, 2016 An online Santa tracker run by a Canadian and American defense agency mapped the jolly old gift-giver’s path around the globe Saturday, in what has become a Yuletide tradition. Every Christmas Eve since 1955, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking Saint Nicholas’s annual voyage to deliver […]
Mohammed Ahli: Our airports are gearing up to serve up to 146 million passengers by 2025 Via Dubai Security Supplement features Angela Gittens of ACI and Michael Herrero of IATA Dubai, December 22, 2016: Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) and Chairman of Dubai Airports, said Dubai has successfully transformed innovation into a working culture in the government […]
A round up of some of 2016’s most significant corporate events and news stories. Smartphone sales © EPA A bright start to the year for Samsung Electronicswent up in smoke, after it took the unprecedented decision to axe its Galaxy Note 7 line, following a spate of safety issues that saw the smartphone banned from aircraft, writes Nic Fildes. The 2016 Galaxy Note iteration won substantial praise […]
