(Reuters) – Bahrain has deported a U.S. nursery school teacher it says wrote articles on social media sites linked to radical groups and for violating the terms of her work permit as the kingdom intensifies its crackdown on dissent. The Ministry of State for Communications did not identify the woman but said she wrote under a pen name and had broken the law by working as an […]
By Asa Fitch As Dubai’s economy rebounds, the number of commercial disputes in one of its main courts appears to be waning, too. Perhaps taking a cue from rising real estate prices and an influx of tourists, lawyers say many people are trying to settle their differences and move on. The courts of the Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai’s main financial free zone, have seen just nine […]
BEIJING/MOSCOW (Reuters) – China’s biggest energy firm PetroChina will join Exxon Mobil in developing Iraq’s giant West Qurna oilfield and is in talks with Lukoil to buy into a second project at the field, industry sources said on Friday. China is already the top foreign player in Iraq’s southern oilfields and a deal at West Qurna would boost its dominance and could make PetroChina the biggest single […]
Dubai: Emirates, Etihad Airways and Gulf Air experienced delays on Tuesday morning after their passenger check-in and reservation system crashed. The passenger check-in and reservation system, designed by Sabre, experienced a worldwide outage at around 8am local time and lasted for two hours. Sabre software is used by more than 300 airlines around the world and some 100 airports worldwide were affected by the outage. Sabre is […]
Dubai’s business community are more upbeat on the emirate’s economy than they were a year ago, according to the latest business confidence survey released by Department of Economic Development (DED). The department’s latest quarterly Business Confidence Index (BCI) reached 120.7 points for the second quarter of 2013 – up 14.6 per cent points on the same period last year. The index has also risen by 6.7 points […]
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Etihad Airways, which has aggressively expanded its global reach through codeshares and minority stake investments, expects to build alliances in China and the Americas as the Abu Dhabi-based carrier targets more double-digit growth in the years ahead. “We will continue to work with other airlines to broaden our network,” said Etihad CEO James Hogan on the sidelines of the Australia Pacific Aviation Summit in […]
Aug 9 (Reuters) – North America’s shale boom is insulating the world from steep oil price spikes as several OPEC members struggle to maintain production due to unrest and infrastructure problems, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday. The agency, consulting developed nations on energy policies, said key among those disruptions were Libya and Iraq where violence has already steeply curtailed output. Upcoming work on key […]
Aug 8 (Reuters) – Looking beyond the problems of a region beset by regime change in Egypt, a security crisis in Yemen and civil war in Syria, international investors are seeking out well-run businesses in Middle Eastern and even some North African stock markets. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is a diverse investment universe which includes both energy importers and exporters, and surplus and […]
Riyadh (Reuters): The Saudi Arabian government awarded $22.5 billion (Dh82.6 billion) in contracts to three foreign-led consortia on Sunday for the design and construction of the first metro rail system in the capital, Riyadh. The project, which will involve six rail lines extending 176 kilometres and carrying electric, driverless trains, is the world’s largest public transport system currently under development, Saudi officials said. US construction giant Bechtel […]
Mubadala Development Co., the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, is fighting to avoid losses on its $2 billion investment in Eike Batista’s companies as the former billionaire seeks to save his commodity empire from collapse. The fund is owed $1.5 billion after converting a preferred equity investment in Batista’s EBX Group Co. into debt, three people with knowledge of the matter said last month. That amount is […]
By Gerald Al Fil While the comeback of stock market rallies investment banking, the Shari’ah-compliant industry faces its toughest test since it entered its boom phase a decade ago. I got puzzled when I received a tweet from @Worldmuslimnews on May 11 saying “Islamic finance is out”. Are issuances of Islamic bonds (sukuk) not going through the roof as we can read day by day? Could first […]
Siemens said it will supply the key components for a major combined-cycle power plant in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The power station is designed to deliver electricity to the Jazan Industrial city area in the southwest of the country and to the refinery of Jazan, which will additionally be supplied with process steam. The plant will be fueled with gasified refinery residues, which contributes greatly to […]
New York Times Co. (NYT), adding technology experience to its board to help with its shift to the Internet, named the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Joichi Ito and venture capitalist Brian McAndrews as directors. Ito, director of the media lab at MIT, and McAndrews, a partner with Madrona Venture Group, brings the board to 13 members, the New York-based company said today in a statement. Times Co. […]
(Reuters) – Lebanon needs to spend at least $20 billion to improve its basic infrastructure otherwise the high growth the country has been witnessing will “dwindle and vanish,” the economy and trade minister said on Wednesday. Lebanon is famous for its robust service-oriented sectors, but many investors are discouraged from setting up businesses in a country where power cuts are frequent, road networks beyond the capital are […]
NEW YORK (AP) — With new public stock offerings for guitar maker Fender and travel booking website Kayak on deck next week, there are signs demand is starting to grow for IPOs after a five-week freeze triggered by a steep decline in financial markets and exacerbated by Facebook’s rocky May 18 debut. Five companies are scheduled to go public next week alone, including Fender, Kayak and Palo […]
For today’s marketers, online channels present a vast array of new opportunity – as well as the potential for costly distraction. New and emerging platforms — such as social and mobile channels — continue to evolve the online landscape of consumer engagement. As a result, success metrics and economics can change quarterly depending upon customer adoption curves. Marketers can, and should, choose from a broad menu of […]
Even people who are relatively happy at work go through periods when they hate their jobs—for days, weeks or even months at a time. Just read between the lines of the recent obituaries of CBS newsman Mike Wallace, who died on April 7 at the age of 93. As The New York Times reported, Wallace suffered a nervous breakdown when his documentary on deception by the American […]
Social media platforms allow customer networks to be bigger, faster and better organized. They increase the downside of getting service wrong and the upside of getting it right. The effects are both direct and indirect. Zappos generates so much buzz with its fantastic service experience that the company can spend significantly less on marketing than its rivals. This virtuous service cycle spins faster because we get to […]
PARIS—Investors abandoned Peugeot SA in droves Friday, driving its share price to its lowest level in over a quarter century, as a potential credit downgrade and a worsening outlook for the European car market overshadowed the company’s plans to shed 8% of its French workforce. Moody’s Investors Service Inc. warned Friday that it will study a possible lowering of Peugeot’s debt rating because of the worsening cash […]
Visa Inc. (V), MasterCard Inc. and some of the biggest U.S. banks agreed to a settlement of at least $6.05 billion in a price-fixing case brought by retailers over credit-card swipe fees. The total value of the settlement is $7.25 billion to a class of about 7 million merchants in the U.S. that accept Visa and MasterCard credit cards and debit cards, a law firm for the […]
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Russell Wasendorf Sr was arrested on Friday after allegedly stealing more than $100 million from clients of his now-bankrupt brokerage PFGBest, using little more than a rented P.O. Box, Photoshop and inkjet printers to dupe regulators for decades. In the dramatic conclusion to a week-long drama that has shaken trader confidence in the trillion-dollar U.S. futures markets, FBI agents arrested Wasendorf, 64, at the […]
