DUBAI: Kuwaiti logistics firm Agility will continue to provide services to a US defense agency until August 2011 after winning a six-month contract extension, with estimated revenues of $19 million.
JEDDAH: Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maaden) said on Sunday its diammonium phosphate (DAP) joint venture with Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) plans to export its first shipment of ammonia in March.
JEDDAH/DUBAI: Middle East markets slid on Sunday due to protests in some countries. Kuwait’s index slumped to a seven-month low, Qatar fell to its lowest close since early December and the Oman, Abu Dhabi and Dubai benchmarks made their largest declines in three weeks, the latter falling 3.7 percent. Saudi Arabia slid to a three-week low, Reuters said.
DUBAI: Aujan Industries, one of the Gulf region’s largest private drinks company, said it was on track to meet its 2012 $1 billion group sales target, the firm said in a statement.
RIYADH: A 33-member Saudi trade delegation will leave for India on Monday to take part in the Saudi-Indo Joint Business Council meeting to be held in New Delhi from Tuesday.
RIYADH: ANB Invest, the investment arm of Arab National Bank, announced the launch of its new real-estate fund “Al-Mubarak Diyar Jeddah Real-Estate Fund”, a Shariah-compliant closed-end real-estate fund licensed and regulated by the Saudi Arabian Capital Market Authority in a public offering from Feb. 19 to April 3.
DUBAI: Dubai’s economy grew 2.5 percent in the first nine months of 2010, compared with the same period of the previous year, as trade and retail picked up, the head of the emirate’s statistics office said.
DUBAI: A wave of mega-mergers between the world’s major stock exchanges might persuade policymakers in the UAE to push ahead with consolidation of the UAE’s bourses.
JEDDAH: Dubai-based Epoc Messe Frankfurt, a major trade fair and conference organizer, is exploring opportunities for a foray into Saudi Arabia, the GCC’s largest market.
MANAMA: Bahrain-based Arcapita and Dalkia have been awarded a joint venture for the Middle East district cooling project on Saadiyat by the Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC) to build the region’s largest district cooling plant in Abu Dhabi.
JEDDAH: BAE Systems is poised to change plans to assemble the bulk of Saudi Arabia’s 72-aircraft order in Warton, northwest England, instead of in the Kingdom. The announcement came with the release of the company’s 2010 earnings figures on Feb. 17. BAE said that the program would probably be changed at the request of the Saudi government.
JEDDAH: Saudi shares declined for the fifth day on Saturday as turmoil spread in the Middle East. The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) dropped 1.59 percent to 6,383.88, the lowest level since Feb. 1.
JEDDAH: MACHINEX arabia, Saudi Arabia's premier international machinery and equipment exhibition, opens at the Jeddah Centre for Forums & Events at 5 p.m. on Sunday (today) , with the support of Tawfiq bin Fawzan Alrabiah, director general of Saudi Industrial Property Authority.
The St Regis Saadiyat Resort site in Abu Dhabi. (AN photo)
Metamorphosis remains an essential ingredient of human life. No one disagrees. And the crude world is no exception. The world will not remain as crude centered as it is today, most agree. And indeed there are reasons for that — from concerns related to supply security to technological advancements and indeed to the issue of peak oil. All this is playing an important role in changing the very face of the global energy mix.
LOS ANGELES: Intel plans to build a $5 billion, cutting-edge microchip factory in Arizona by 2013, sharply ramping up its US manufacturing capacity as part of a major global expansion.
NEW YORK: Citigroup Inc, recovering after a series of government bailouts, will pay some top executives millions of dollars of cash bonuses if its core operations earn at least $12 billion before taxes over the next two years.
WASHINGTON: US banking authorities closed four banks on Friday, bringing the total number shuttered in 2011 to 22.
WASHINGTON: The World Trade Organization on Friday issued a confidential preliminary ruling in a landmark case against China's export restrictions on raw materials used to manufacture steel, aluminum and chemical products.
DUBAI/KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait's Zain, which is trying to sell its Saudi operations worth $750 million as part of a proposed buyout to Etisalat, rejected all three offers for Zain Saudi on Saturday, a source told Reuters.
BRUSSELS: The European Union (EU) has threatened to impose tariffs against PET from Saudi Arabia and Oman, saying EU producers may be victims of subsidies and price undercutting, as per Bloomberg. The EU opened probes into whether the Kingdom and Omani makers of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) get trade-distorting government aid and sell in the 3 billion euros ($4.1 billion) European market below cost, a practice known as dumping. The inquiries will determine whether EU producers of PET have suffered "injury" as a result of any unfair Saudi and Omani competition, the European Commission, the 27 nation EU's trade authority in Brussels, said on Saturday in the Official Journal of the European Union.
OSLO/LONDON: Saudi Arabia is a special case in need of climate aid if the world shifts to clean energy, the world's top oil exporter told the United Nations ahead of a Monday deadline for proposals about slowing global warming.
PARIS: China rejected plans to use real exchange rates and currency reserves to measure global economic imbalances, casting doubt on the ability of Group of 20 major economic powers to reach agreement at a meeting on Friday.
JEDDAH: Abeer Salamah, member of the National Committee for Contractors in the Saudi Council of Chambers of Commerce, said a comprehensive directory on contracting, including a database of Saudi and non-Saudi contractors in Saudi Arabia, is currently being prepared.
AMMAN: Arab stock markets plummeted last week amid deepening investor concerns over a possible dive after the re-opening of the Egyptian stock market, which remained closed for the third week in a row, financial analysts said Friday.
JEDDAH: Saudi engineers and contractors will gather at the Jeddah Hilton hotel on Saturday in the first ever forum of its kind in the Kingdom.
ABU DHABI: Global arms manufacturers will vie for deals worth billions of dollars at the Middle East's largest military expo as unrest sweeping across the region pushes countries to beef up security.
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast: Ivory Coast’s incumbent leader, who refuses to cede power, has seized four major international banks that had shut down operations this week in the West African country, a government spokesman said.
NEW DELHI: Research In Motion (RIM) said on Friday that the Indian government had assured the Canadian smartphone maker that it would not be singled out when it came to security concerns for encrypted emails.
SAN FRANCISCO: Casting about for innovative job-creation ideas, President Barack Obama is naming one of his critics to an advisory council responsible for finding new ways to promote economic growth and bring jobs to the US.
LONDON: BAE Systems said it expected sales to fall in 2011 as the impact of defence cuts in the UK and US begin to hit home, sending its shares lower.
SINGAPORE: Oil prices fell slightly to near $86 a barrel Friday in Asia as violent protests in the Middle East keep investors on edge about possible crude supply disruptions.
LONDON: A leading credit rating agency warned Bahrain that it might lower the country’s debt rating as the kingdom tackles political unrest.
LONDON: Iran’s biggest crude oil tanker operator NITC said on Friday its ship insurers had declined to renew policy cover for the coming year due to the impact of tightening sanctions in the European Union.
PEORIA, Illinois: Caterpillar says worldwide demand for its heavy construction and mining equipment continues to be strong, with sales growing 49 percent in January.
AMSTERDAM: Royal Dutch Shell and Essar Energy say they have entered into a $1.3 billion agreement for the sale of Shell’s Stanlow refinery in Britain and for its inventory of crude oil and refined products.
TOKYO: Sony is doing booming business in India, dominating in flat-panel TVs and digital cameras, and is in good shape to keep growing in coming years, a top executive said on Friday.
JEDDAH: The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has formally launched instant remittance service from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan in collaboration with Tahweel Al-Rajhi of Al-Rajhi Bank. The new service “NBP foree cash” (instant cash) was officially opened to public at a function held in Madinah in the presence of NBP and Tahweel Al-Rajhi officials this week. Al-Kher Abdullah Al-Talib, Tahweel Al-Rajhi chief of Madinah region, also attended the event.
BRUSSELS/VIENNA: European Union officials are pushing for a merger of two strategic gas pipeline projects to help secure supplies from Central Asia to the world's second-biggest gas market, industry sources say.
LONDON: Macro-economic mismanagement which has led to endemic high unemployment, rising cost of living, lack of transparency and accountability and a lack of affordable housing is the bane of most Arab economies. This is the clarion call from the youth in Tunis, Tahrir Square, Pearl Square, Aden, Algiers and Benghazi.
WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday urged Middle East countries to target government subsidies at the poorest households after a wave of social unrest toppled rulers in Egypt and Tunisia.
WASHINGTON: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the central bank is working closely with other regulators to implement the biggest overhaul of the US financial rules since the 1930s. The law enacted last year aims to protect the country from another financial crisis.
17 February 2011
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast: French bank Societe Generale says it is suspending its activities in Ivory Coast and closing all 47 of its branches due to the country’s deepening political crisis.
BERLIN: Daimler AG is launching a new truck brand for the fast-growing Indian market.
The German car and truck maker unveiled the BharatBenz brand on Thursday and said that production at Oragadam, near Chennai, is to start next year.
CAIRO: The closure of Egypt's banks for two of the past three weeks has added strain on an economy already reeling from the evaporation of tourism and a prolonged stock market closure caused by the political upheaval that ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.
DUBAI: Qatar's index slumped to a 2011 low on Thursday as a fourth day of unrest in neighboring Bahrain and uncertainty over when Cairo's bourse will re-open in post-Mubarak Egypt weighed on equities.
PARIS: G20 countries will have made major progress this weekend if they clinch a preliminary accord on what measures they will use to benchmark and address mismatches in the world economy, France's economy minister said on Thursday.
MANAMA: Bahrain’s business community warned on Thursday that ongoing protests could have a major impact on the country’s economy.
TOKYO: US real estate investor LaSalle Investment Management is prepared to spend as much as 100 billion to 150 billion yen ($1.2-1.8 billion) in Japan’s property market this year, where it plans to buy or develop shopping malls, hotels and office buildings, the head of its Japan arm said.
MUMBAI: India’s gold demand outlook is positive after a near 30 percent jump in imports last quarter, although the government could decide to raise import duty in its Feb. 28 budget, a World Gold Council (WGC) director said.
BEIJING: China’s foreign direct investment jumped 23.4 percent in January, rebounding from weakness in December, the Commerce Ministry announced on Thursday.
SYDNEY: Qantas Airways posted a fourfold increase in first-half net profit on Thursday, as travelers returned to the sky amid improving economic conditions.
NEW YORK: A group of oil companies led by Exxon says it has built a system that can stop an undersea oil spill within weeks, a critical step in the effort to resume drilling in the deepest parts of the Gulf of Mexico.
LONDON: British government estimates say cyber crime costs Britain more than 27 billion pounds ($44 billion) a year.
PARIS: BNP Paribas says its net profit rose 13.6 percent in the fourth quarter on strong growth in its corporate investment banking and international retail banking arms.
VEVEY, Switzerland: Swiss food and drinks giant Nestle SA boasted a full-year net profit of 34.23 billion Swiss francs ($35.8 billion) on Thursday, inflated by the sale of its stake in eye care company Alcon that added 24.5 billion francs net to its balance sheet.
BEIJING: Chinese personal computer maker Lenovo said on Thursday its quarterly profit rose 25 percent on double-digit sales growth in developing markets.
ZURICH/PARIS: Swiss engineering company ABB and French peer Schneider Electric forecast more emerging market demand for power infrastructure in 2011, with the latter looking less vulnerable to competition in Asia.
BERLIN: Daimler AG is launching a new truck brand for the fast-growing Indian market.
The German car and truck maker unveiled the BharatBenz brand on Thursday and said that production at Oragadam, near Chennai, is to start next year.
Education reform and job creation in Saudi Arabia and across Arab countries could come under the glare of publicity in the coming months as successful popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia renew the urgency to address these most-pressing social dilemmas. For years, improving the quality of education in a bid to engage youth in the Kingdom's expanding economy has been a top state priority.
SEOUL: Hyundai Motor has been a success story with ever-rising profits, but the South Korean carmaker’s dominance on its home turf is under threat from imports and nimble local rivals.
SEOUL: South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction Company said it has won a $650.3 million deal to build a power plant in the UAE as part of a South Korean-Japanese consortium.
DHAHRAN: Retired Saudi Aramco senior executive Sadad I. Al-Husseini was surprised recently to be thrust into the international spotlight when newspapers picked up a story about a WikiLeaks release of a US State Department cable that attributed comments to him purporting to dispute Saudi Arabia's oil reserves.
DUBAI: Credit Suisse cut its share price target on Saudi-based Dar Al-Arkan Real Estate Development Company (DAAR) by 32 percent citing an anticipated further drop in land sales and rising funding concerns.
DUBAI: Fitch Ratings has downgraded Dubai Holding Commercial Operations Group LLC’s (DHCOG) long-term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) and senior unsecured rating to “B” from “B+”, removed all ratings from rating watch negative (RWN) and assigned to the long-term IDR a negative outlook.
KUALA LUMPUR: Kuwait-based Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC) has sold 600 million ringgit ($196 million) of five-year Islamic bonds in Malaysia. GIC sold the bonds at a yield of 5.25 percent.
JEDDAH: German conglomerate Siemens said it would invest hundred of millions of dollars to build a factory in the Eastern Province.
When the markets rise and fall based on computerized trades, where are the checks and balances for price discovery and fair market value? This current trend takes us away from free market principles and it leads us toward centralized or politicized markets. The politicians and their special interest constituency are funneling subsidies at projects (for example: The green agenda) with no natural market demand; thus, creating artificial demand in the market place. Then they attempt to resell the project to investment bankers in the financial markets, who are in turn relying on automated computer programs, as opposed to convincing real investors. The machines are trading with at least 40 times their principle investment, while retail investors trade on only 2 times margin. The sheer volume of the leveraged machine can literally wash out the human investor. This is automated socialism as opposed to free market capitalism.
JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia's stock market had its largest decline in two weeks on Wednesday with unrest in Bahrain spurring investors to sell shares. Other regional markets also drifted lower.
WASHINGTON: Home construction in the US rose at the fastest rate in 20 months, pushed up by a spike in apartment building. But construction of single-family homes declined, a sign that demand for housing remains weak.
PARIS: French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis SA has agreed to buy Genzyme in a sweetened all-cash deal that values the US biotechnology company at $20.1 billion, ending months of corporate haggling.
PARIS: Finance ministers of the world's major economies reached a fudged accord on Saturday on how to measure global economic imbalances after China prevented the use of exchange rates and currency reserves as indicators.
PARIS/NEW YORK: Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf said Riyadh was committed to its moderate policy that supports a stable oil market.
HELSINKI: Prices of smartphones using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software platform will fall fast, Nokia’s chief executive Stephen Elop said. Nokia said last week it would adopt Microsoft’s software across its smartphones, raising fears the firm would miss out during the transition on surging demand for cheaper smartphone models.
CAIRO: Electrician Hassan Ibrahim, a father of three, hopes Egypt’s revolution will speed the day he no longer lives in fear that his family will go hungry.
KUALA LUMPUR: India and Malaysia signed a free trade agreement on Friday, the second this week for Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy as it seeks to deepen its economic ties in the region.
NEW YORK: Jack Griffin has been ousted as chairman and CEO of Time Warner’s magazine division after just five months on the job, because his leadership style apparently didn’t suit his boss.
Khalid Bin Shaheen, senior executive vice president and group chief of NBP, second from right, with Al-Kher Abdullah Al-Talib, Madinah region chief of Tahweel Al-Rajhi, third from right, and other bank executives at the launch of NBP's instant remittance service from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, in Madinah. (AN photo)
SAN FRANCISCO: Google wants to become the hub of online travel, promising better bargains and more convenience by melding the Internet search leader’s wizardry with the Web’s top airline-fare tracker, ITA Software.
CAIRO: Egyptian manufacturers have cut output because banks are closed while labor unions have taken the country’s revolution as a cue to stop work and demand better pay and conditions, industry managers said on Wednesday. The military-backed government has slashed its forecast for economic growth and the army urged Egyptians on Monday not to strike, appealing to their sense of national duty. Military officials say stoppages would be disastrous for the economy. But unions, emboldened by the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak last week, are still pressing their demands. More than 12,000 workers at state-owned Misr Spinning and Weaving went on strike on Wednesday.
JEDDAH: Saudi businessmen will establish a development bank in Egypt with a capital of 1 billion Egyptian pounds to finance investment projects in the country, Saleh Kamel, a prominent businessman and chairman of the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry announced on Wednesday.
LONDON: New Bank of England forecasts opened the door on Wednesday for interest rates to rise but Governor Mervyn King warned markets not to jump to conclusions about the timing or speed of any moves. The Bank’s quarterly inflation report suggested expectations it will start hiking rates soon from a record low 0.5 percent were not far off the mark, given that inflation is double its 2 percent target and likely to climb further. However, there are big divisions on the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee and King, striking a distinctly more dovish tone, said the outlook for the economy and inflation was highly uncertain and insisted no decisions had been made.
NEW YORK: Oil prices climbed on Wednesday as labor protests continued in Egypt and anti-government demonstrations broke out in Libya. Traders are worried that spreading unrest in the Middle East will disrupt oil production and shipments in the region.
JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia's corporate world entrants, both men and women, are like unpolished gemstones. So, providing career opportunities for fresh graduates of national universities is crucial not just for their bright future, but also for the continued economic development of the Kingdom, according to Faysal Alaquil, director of business development & administration affairs at Construction Products Holding Co.(CPC).
CAIRO: Egypt’s transitional government — struggling to restore normalcy after three weeks of turmoil — faces no less formidable a challenge trying to right an economy reeling from the combined impact of shutdowns and strikes, as well as higher inflation and capital flight. A survey of forecasters taken by The Media Line before unrest broke out saw Egypt’s gross domestic product on track to expand 5.7 percent in 2011. But David Cowan, economist at Citigroup Global Markets in London, said the combined effect of lost output and higher inflation eating into people’s income will likely trim growth this year to 1.5 percent. “That’s a significant falloff,” Cowan said.
17 February 2011.
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for reforming the gigantic government pension and healthcare programs, as well as simplifying the US tax code — steps that would go far beyond the $3.7 trillion budget he proposed this week.
TOKYO: The Bank of Japan raised its assessment of the economy on Tuesday to say it is gradually emerging from a slowdown, further signalling that no imminent monetary easing is on the horizon.
WASHINGTON: World Bank President Robert Zoellick says global food prices have hit “dangerous levels” that could contribute to political instability, push millions of people into poverty.
BEIJING: Chinese inflation hit a lower-than-forecast 4.9 percent in January, but price pressures excluding food were their strongest in at least a decade and will force the central bank to keep tightening monetary policy.
BARCELONA: Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, will release its PlayBook tablet computer on two more high-speed network standards in the second half of 2011, the company said.
BARCELONA: Now that it has hooked up with Nokia Corp. phones, Microsoft Corp. hopes to connect its phone software to the Xbox this year too. It’s also planning other improvements that include a faster Web browser and quicker switching between phone applications.
HOUSTON: Exxon Mobil said its oil and gas reserve additions last year were double its production, marking the biggest jump in more than a decade, with gains fueled partly by the oil company’s purchase of XTO Energy.
NEW YORK: Apple is launching a long-awaited subscription service for magazines, newspapers, videos and music — a move that could dent the fortunes of successful services such as Netflix and Hulu.
BARCELONA: HTC, which has made Windows-powered smart phones for nine years, says that the decision by Nokia to adopt Microsoft software is good news for them.
BARCELONA, Spain: Smart phone maker HTC Corp. is showing off a tablet computer that can be used either with a finger or with a battery-powered “pen” for drawing and note-taking.
FRANKFURT/NEW YORK: Deutsche Boerse will take over NYSE Euronext to create the world’s largest exchange operator in a deal worth $10.2 billion, but the exchanges dodged key questions that could threaten the accord.
BARCELONA: Reports that Google has held takeover talks with Twitter that value the microblogging site at as much as $10 billion are “just a rumor,” Chief Executive Dick Costolo said.
SEOUL: LG Electronics said on Tuesday it was targeting a 30 percent annual rise in 2011 handset sales to 150 million units and would launch 20 smart phone models, as it seeks to turn its loss-making mobile division profitable.
CAIRO: The wind-swept pyramids of Giza were virtually deserted on Sunday, symbols not just of the might and culture of the pharaohs but also the damage that Egypt’s upheaval has inflicted on tourism, a pillar of the economy.
