ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The strike had entered its second day when construction workers at Labor Camp 42 got word that their bosses from the BK Gulf corporation had come to negotiate. Mohammed Amir Waheed Sirkar, an electrician from Bangladesh, scrambled down the stairs to meet them. But when he got to the courtyard, he saw the truth: It wasn’t the bosses who had come. […]
Dana Gas, an energy company based in the United Arab Emirates, is trying to leverage its government’s financial aid to Egypt to get preferential treatment on payment for its goods there. Dana has operations in the Nile delta, Upper Egypt and the Gulf of Suez that produced the equivalent of 39,100 barrels of oil a day on average during the first quarter. Yet like other foreign energy […]
Ahead of a new global marketing campaign launching later this year, Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing has debuted a new brand for the destination. The new logo, launched last week at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM), features the word ‘Dubai’ written in both the Arabian and Roman alphabets, reflecting the city’s rich multiculturalism. Announced by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister […]
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is keeping a close watch on markets after shares rallied to record highs on speculation that exit polls would show the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies winning a majority in the election, a senior official with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Several traders attributed the gains in Indian shares, which sent the Nifty to record […]
With Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. filing to go public, the biggest winner won’t be founder Jack Ma or his fellow executives or even venture capital backers like Silver Lake Management LLC. It’ll be Japan’s Masayoshi Son. Fourteen years ago, Son’s SoftBank Corp. started with a $20 million bet on a then-unknown Web portal connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. That site evolved into China’s biggest Internet shopping […]
An aerial view shows Dubai international airport, home to the national carrier Emirates Airways. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Dubai International Airport last week became the world’s busiest for international traffic. But the stellar performance in the first quarter is not likely to be repeated in the second as the airport is currently undertaking a major upgrade of its runways. Here, Chris Garton, senior vice president of airport operations […]
Abu Dhabi government-owned General Holding Corporation (Senaat) has shelved plans for a stock market debut, four sources aware of the matter said, as the emirate takes a cautious line on financial commitments in the wake of its bailout of Dubai. Despite enjoying significant hydrocarbon wealth, the largest of the seven United Arab Emirates has been wary of its financial position since providing Dubai with a $20 billion […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Trying to become even bigger — and make more money — Facebook will allow users to reveal a little less. The social network announced on Wednesday that when its 1.3 billion users log in to other websites or mobile apps through their Facebook identities, they will be able to limit what they reveal to the site or app to just their email addresses and public […]
When French wine and cognac bottle maker Saverglass decided to expand three years ago, it chose a relatively remote, less affluent location in the United Arab Emirates for its plant rather than the business hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The company sited its 75 million euro ($105 million) factory, which produces some 400,000 bottles a day, in the desert emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, an hour’s […]
| Joseph Mayton | Wearable technology looks likely to be heading through Google, after Nike announced it would be moving away from wearable tech and more into the software development sector. It comes after repeated rumors that the massive apparel corporation was dropping its Fuelband. It appears that the company isn’t giving up entirely and will be leaving the hardware business behind to focus more on the software […]
Reuters | Jim Finkle – BOSTON, April 27 (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp is rushing to fix a bug in its widely used Internet Explorer web browser after a computer security firm disclosed the flaw over the weekend, saying hackers have already exploited it in attacks on some U.S. companies. PCs running Windows XP will not receive any updates fixing that bug when they are released, however, because Microsoft […]
Oman’s plan to build a $1 billion natural-gas pipeline from Iran is the latest sign that Saudi Arabia is failing to bind its smaller Gulf neighbors into a tighter bloc united in hostility to the Islamic Republic. The accord was signed during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to Oman last month, and marks the first such deal between Iran and a Gulf Cooperation Council state in more […]
| By K Raveendran| There has been a considerable media buzz over the recent Saudi announcement that work to build the a kilometre tall Kingdom Tower in Jeddah is set to start within a few days. The regional media, in particular, is celebrating the prospect of the new tower deposing Dubai’s iconic Burj Khalifa, currently the world’s tallest skyscraper. According to the project consultants, the Saudi tower […]
Hedge funds lowered bullish bets on gold for a fourth week, the longest streak this year. The net-long position contracted to the lowest since mid-February as speculators sold bullion on signs of accelerating U.S. economic growth. The investors more than doubled bets on lower prices in the past month while reducing wagers on a rally in six of the past seven weeks. Prices fell 7.6 percent since […]
The masterplan for the $1.6bn Bluewaters Island project off the coast of Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Residences is to undergo a redesign. The island, which is being developed by government-owned developer Meraas, is currently split into three zones. One contains the Dubai Eye – the world’s tallest, 210m-high Ferris Wheel – and is surrounded by other retail and leisure units. A second zone, facing out onto the Arabian […]
Dubai — long champion of all things biggest, longest and most expensive — will soon have some competition from neighboring Saudi Arabia. Dubai’s iconic Burj Khalifa — the world’s tallest building — could be stripped of its Guinness title if Saudi Arabia succeeds in its plans to construct the even larger Kingdom Tower in Jeddah — a prospect looking more likely as work begins next week, according […]
For decades the Cleveland Clinic has provided healthcare to the upper echelons of Middle Eastern society who fly halfway across the world for treatment at the Ohio-based private medical center. Soon, they can skip the trip. Early next year the Cleveland Clinic plans to open an ultra-modern, 364-bed specialty hospital on Al Maryah Island in Abu Dhabi, one of the most ambitious forays into the oil-rich country […]
With a youthful, well-educated population, strong relationships with both neighbours and world powers, and a strategic location on the Gulf, major oil producer Kuwait should be as dynamic a hub for the region as Dubai or Doha. But while others in the Gulf have powered ahead, attracting foreign investment and developing infrastructure, Kuwait has stagnated, frustrating the people of a country once seen as a Middle East […]
A year after Citigroup Inc. declared the decade-long run of commodity gains over, wacky weather, dead piglets and Vladimir Putin have gotten in the way. While Citigroup rang “death bells” in April 2013 for the synchronized super cycle fueled by economic growth in China, extreme weather and supply squeezes led to surprise rallies in 2014’s first three months. Coffee hit a two-year high, cattle and hogs rose […]
Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) from family members and associates of retired domestic security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who is at the center of China’s biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades, two sources said. More than 300 of Zhou’s relatives, political allies, proteges and staff have also been taken into custody or questioned in the past four months, […]
Within 18 months of leaving his trading job to open a lunchtime eatery at the Dubai financial center in 2011, Nabil Al Rantisi was back: selling stocks and rebuilding one of the city’s largest brokerages. “I saw my window of opportunity,” Rantisi, managing director of Mena Corp Financial Services LLC, said in a March 9 telephone interview from Dubai. “Things started picking up in September 2012. By […]
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sued 16 of the world’s largest banks on Friday, accusing them of colluding to suppress interest rates. The lawsuit, filed in the federal district court in New York, was the latest to accuse financial institutions of conspiring to manipulate Libor, or the London Interbank Offered Rate. The FDIC said the defendants’ conduct caused substantial losses to 38 banks that the U.S. regulator […]
The use of stolen passports by two passengers to board a Malaysian airliner that vanished over the South China Sea raises concerns that terrorists may have caused the jet’s apparent crash, say former U.S. security officials who specialize in transportation safety. Use of stolen passports is a tactic of terrorists trying to avoid detection, while groups including al-Qaeda have sought to crash airplanes into oceans to cover […]
BuzzFeed has come a long way from cat lists. This month one of its journalists was on the ground in Kiev reporting on the crisis in Ukraine, and last December it published an in-depth article on a Chinese dissident living in Harlem, New York. The kittens haven’t disappeared, but these days there is serious journalism as well. When Facebook Inc tweaked its News Feed filters in December […]
