Dubai / Emirates Business Capitalising on the upward growth rate of fashion e-commerce, Souq.com, the number one online retail and marketplace platform in the Middle East, has announced remarkable expansion across its fashion portfolio. Forty new fashion brands and a phenomenal 198,000 new products have been added to the assortment making the market leader Souq.com, a one-stop-shop for widely ...

  Dubai / EMIRATES BUSINESS Takaful Emarat (“the Company”), the DFM-listed, Shariah-compliant life and health insurer, recently held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on April 21, 2016, during which shareholders voted for a proposed cash dividend of AED8 million , equating to 5.33 percent of its paid-up capital. The Company’s first ever dividend payout, proposed by the board of directors, ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Dubai welcomed 4.1 million overnight visitors in the first three months of 2016, a 5.1 percent increase over the same period last year, backed by strong double digit growth from its top two proximity markets, the GCC and India, according to figures released by Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism). The GCC ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Zain, Kuwait’s biggest telecommunications operator by subscribers, reported a 9 percent year-on-year fall in first-quarter profit on Sunday, extending an earnings slump as foreign exchange losses increased. The former monopoly, which operates in eight countries in the Middle East and Africa, made a net profit of 37 million dinars ($123 million) in the three months to ...

  ABU DHABI / Reuters Indonesia’s governor to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Monday that oil at $45 a barrel was “not bad” and that there would be no urgency to freeze output if crude remained at that price. Despite failure to reach a deal to curb oil output and support prices at an April 17 ...

  Reuters Commercial Bank of Qatar (CBQ), the Gulf Arab state’s third-largest lender by assets, reported a 36.3 percent fall in net profit attributable to equity holders, below analysts’ forecast. The bank earned a net profit attributable to equity holders of 288.1 million riyals ($79.1 million) in the three months to Mar. 31, it said in a statement. That compares ...

  Bloomberg The pound rose to its strongest level in more than a month versus the dollar amid signs the “remain” camp is pulling ahead in the campaign over Britain’s membership of the European Union. Sterling touched a six-week high against the euro, after posting its longest winning streak in 10 months through Friday, as U.S. President Barack Obama backed ...

  Bloomberg German business confidence unexpectedly deteriorated in the latest sign that Europe’s largest economy is losing some of its pace. The Munich-based Ifo institute’s business climate index fell to 106.6 in April from 106.7 the previous month. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists was for an increase to 107.1. The Bundesbank said last week that it ...

  Bloomberg Norway increased its withdrawals from the nation’s wealth fund again in March, running ahead of estimates made by the central bank just two months ago. The government withdrew 7.4 billion kroner ($898 million), according to monthly data published by Norwegian Government Agency for Financial Management. That’s up from 6.7 billion kroner in each of the first two months ...

  Bloomberg The currency market is becoming more convinced that the Brazilian real’s world-beating rally this year is far from over. Foreign investors have reduced their bearish bets against the currency in the futures market by 33 percent since the end of 2015 to $15 billion, the least since November 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and BM&FBovespa SA, ...