Arabtec Holding Co, the United Arab Emirates’s biggest listed construction company, is in talks to buy a large European company and may tap the bond market to pay for the deal, Chief Executive Officer Hasan Ismaik said. Arabtec may announce a transaction in the second half, the CEO said in an interview at the Cityscape Abu Dhabi conference today. The contractor is trying to purchase companies with […]
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 […]
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 […]
Saudi Arabia’s main share index rose the most in a month to reach a fresh six-year high on Sunday as investors shook off a slight dip in quarterly profit from the bourse’s biggest stock. Speculation in mid-cap stocks helped Dubai gain. The Saudi measure advanced 1.1 percent to its highest close since June 2008, up 12.9 percent so far in 2014. This came despite Saudi Basic Industries […]
Three former brokers at ICAP, the world’s largest interdealer broker, appeared in a London court on Tuesday charged with running a four-year scheme to manipulate Libor benchmark interest rates. The men, who spoke only to confirm personal details such as addresses, bring to nine the number of people facing criminal charges in Britain over allegations they rigged the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), which is used to […]
A drop in OPEC production came just as refineries began looking for supply, helping boost bullish speculative bets on crude last week by the most since July. The group, which pumps about 40 percent of the world’s oil, reduced output to the lowest for March since 2011 as a standoff between the Libyan government and rebels kept exports near the lowest level since Muammar Qaddafi was driven […]
The Nasdaq suffered its biggest drop in two-and-a-half years on Thursday after another sharp selloff in biotech and momentum names, including Gilead Sciences and TripAdvisor, increasing investor anxiety about a broader pullback. The Nasdaq biotechnology index .NBI shed 5.6 percent, its biggest one-day drop since August 2011, adding to recent losses since a large drop in Gilead more than two weeks ago triggered a wider selloff for […]
Commodity futures trading volumes in India fell 40.49 percent in the year to March 2014, its second straight year of decline, the market regulator said on Tuesday. In value terms, futures trading at commodity exchanges fell to 101.44 trillion rupees in the first twelve months from April 2013 from 170.46 trillion rupees a year ago, the Forward Markets Commission said in a statement on its website. Trading […]
Fears that high-speed traders have been rigging the U.S. stock market went mainstream last week thanks to allegations in a book by financial author Michael Lewis, but there may be a more serious threat to investors: the increasing amount of trading that happens outside of exchanges. Some former regulators and academics say so much trading is now happening away from exchanges that publicly quoted prices for stocks […]
Dubai’s gold trading centre said it would tighten supervision of how the metal is sourced after reports in the British media alleging it ignored international guidelines designed to prevent human rights abuses and underground trade by African warlords. In February, Britain’s Guardian newspaper and the BBC said the Dubai-based Kaloti Group, a major gold refiner and jeweller, had failed to examine suspicious deals, accepting for example 2.4 […]
When Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi gave a speech on the virtues of smaller government and privatization on April 8 last year, supporters called him an ideological heir to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died that day. Modi, favorite to form India’s next government after elections starting on Monday, has yet to unveil any detailed economic plans but it is clear that some of his […]
Shareholders of Dubai property developer Deyaar have approved a plan to allocate 25 percent of its share capital to foreigners, the company said on Saturday. At present, investors in Gulf Cooperation Council countries can own up to 49 percent of Deyaar’s shares; they currently hold 3.7 percent, bourse data shows, while those from outside the GCC have not been allowed to own any stake. The company said […]
U.S. stocks fell, with the Nasdaq Composite Index sliding the most in two months, after large technology stocks from Google Inc. to Yahoo Inc. plunged as investors sold the bull market’s biggest winners. Google Class A shares sank 4.6 percent in the biggest drop since October 2012. Facebook Inc. lost 4.6 percent, bringing its two-day slide to 9.5 percent. Yahoo Inc. declined 4.2 percent to the lowest […]
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating high-speed trading for possible insider trading, Attorney General Eric Holder told lawmakers on Friday. The disclosure comes the same week that regulators and the FBI also confirmed they are looking into potential wrongdoing by high-frequency stock traders. Regulators have been examining whether ordinary investors are at an unfair disadvantage to high-speed traders, who use computer algorithms to rapidly dart in and […]
Abu Dhabi’s largest oil refinery is preparing to boost production of the industry’s lowest-sulfur diesel within three months as standards for the fuel rise, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The emirate’s 400,000 barrel-a-day plant at Ruwais will only produce diesel with 10 parts per million of sulfur by July, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak […]
Dubai will compete with London for a share of Islamic banks’ liquidity management business by offering a new platform for murabaha trading. Many Islamic banks around the world manage their short-term funds with murabaha, in which one bank acquires merchandise and another agrees to buy it at a mark-up. Traditionally, banks from the Gulf and as far afield as southeast Asia use commodities traded on the London […]
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 […]
The U.S. stock market is rigged in favor of high-speed electronic trading firms, which use their advantages to extract billions from investors, according to Michael Lewis, author of a new book on the topic, “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt.” High-frequency trading (HFT) is a practice carried out by many banks and proprietary trading firms using sophisticated computer programs to send gobs of orders into the market, […]
Swiss and British regulators stepped up their scrutiny of alleged manipulation of foreign exchange markets on Monday, as watchdogs take a closer look at whether banks have a tight enough grip on the behavior of their traders. Switzerland’s competition commission WEKO said it opened an investigation into several Swiss, British and U.S. banks over potential collusion to manipulate currency rates. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), meanwhile, […]
Gold traded below $1,300 an ounce on Monday, near a six-week low, and could face more pressure from weak physical demand in Asia and growing optimism about the U.S. economy. Spot gold was up slightly by 0.1 percent to $1,295.20 an ounce by 0018 GMT, but remained not far from a six-week low of $1,285.34 hit on Friday. Physical demand in top bullion buyer Asia has been […]
India’s two main political parties both broke laws barring foreign donations by accepting cash from local companies owned by London-listed mining group Vedanta Resources Plc between 2004 and 2012, the Delhi High Court said on Friday. The judgment was handed down 10 days before India holds a general election, in which the ruling Congress party and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will go head to head […]
A federal judge in Manhattan has ruled that a group of international banks must face complaints that they violated the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act by manipulating yen-denominated interest rate benchmarks between 2006 and 2010. In a ruling on Friday, U.S. District Judge George Daniels also granted the banks’ motion to dismiss related claims against them for antitrust violations and unjust enrichment. The banks, which included Mizuho Bank […]
The rupee rose above 60 to the dollar on Friday, marking its strongest in eight months, as hopes for continued foreign investor inflows send domestic shares to a string of record highs. The partially convertible rupee was trading at 60.04/05 per dollar at 9.27 a.m., after earlier hitting 59.99, its strongest since July 30. The rupee closed at 60.31/32 on Thursday. The BSE Sensex rose 0.4 percent, […]
SpiceJet Ltd., the Indian budget carrier headed for its third straight annual loss, said it sees little chance of luring investment soon amid elevated debt and intensifying competition. Although the airline’s owners have injected more than 5 billion rupees ($83 million) in equity in recent quarters, that “has not been adequate” to reduce the carrier’s dependence on debt, S.L. Narayanan, the chief financial officer of SpiceJet’s parent […]
