News

Abu Dhabi / WAM The National Central Cooling Company (Tabreed) on Monday released its audited financial results for 2020. Tabreed reported a 16.5 percent increase in 2020 net income to AED550 million. The results showed that Tabreed added 39.6k Refrigeration Tons (RT) of organic capacity growth and 181.5k RT of inorganic capacity additions, resulting in the delivery of 1,403,819 RT ...

DUBAI / WAM DMCC – the world’s flagship Free Zone, business hub and Government of Dubai Authority on commodities trade and enterprise – announced record-breaking performance in 2020, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Some 2,025 new companies joined the DMCC in 2020, the highest number of registrations in five years. Retention rate remained at an all-time high. This was primarily due ...

SHARJAH / WAM The Emirate of Sharjah has focused on exploring, developing, and implementing leading digital solutions to streamline services to UAE citizens, residents and visitors across Sharjah. Founded in 2018, the Sahab Smart Solutions is today spearheading the digital transformation journey of the emirate as part of the UAE’s wider national economic development and diversification efforts. Sahab Smart Solutions ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) announced that it conducted 162,774 additional Covid-19 tests over the past 24 hours, using state-of-the-art medical testing equipment. In a statement on Monday, the ministry stressed its aim to continue expanding the scope of testing nationwide to facilitate the early detection of coronavirus cases and carry out the necessary ...

Bloomberg More than 10% of the UK workforce is out of a job and struggling to tap government benefits, exposing economic scars set to remain long after the coronavirus fades. About 3.8 million people including actors and musicians in London’s famous theaters don’t qualify for the most lucrative welfare payments, according to the Standard Life Foundation, which campaigns for those ...

Bloomberg Google and Facebook Inc. are nearing agreements to pay domestic media companies for news, in a sign a regulatory standoff may be softening, Australia’s government said Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg held talks with Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Google counterpart Sundar Pichai over the weekend. “We’re very close to some very significant commercial deals,” Frydenberg told the ...

Bloomberg Norway’s economy grew much faster than expected at the end of last year, underpinning bets that its central bank will be the first in the rich world to raise interest rates this year. Mainland gross domestic product, which adjusts for Norway’s offshore industry, expanded 1.9% in the fourth quarter, the statistics office said. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected ...

Bloomberg US consumer sentiment unexpectedly declined to a six-month low in early February as outlook for personal income deteriorated and more Americans anticipated faster inflation in the year ahead. The University of Michigan’s preliminary sentiment index falls to 76.2 from 79 last month, data showed. The median forecast in Bloomberg’s survey of economists called for a modest improvement to 80.9 ...

Bloomberg A year of pandemic prudence is giving way to jumbo dealmaking in Europe for deep-pocketed private equity houses. Buyout firms have announced $29 billion of takeovers involving European companies this year, up 60% year-on-year and the most for this period on record, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s after months in which many large buyers, including Blackstone Group ...

DUBAI / WAM The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) team announced that the Hope Probe, which successfully entered the orbit of Mars last Tuesday, has sent the first image of the Red planet on Sunday. Having travelled more than 493 million kilometers over the past seven months, millions in the UAE, the Arab region and around the world have eagerly awaited ...