News

‘Pearls imports’ hint at capital flight from India

Bloomberg Runaway jewellers have become somewhat of a staple of news headlines out of India. But reading the small print of trade numbers may tell a new story — flight of capital. A spurt in imports of precious stones and pearls, at a time when gold imports have moderated, has raised the red flag for analysts at Credit Suisse AG, ...

Read More »

‘China’s Hawaii’ offers visa-free access to 33 more nations

Bloomberg China has extended visa-free access to Hainan for another 33 — mostly European and South American — countries, as President Xi Jinping seeks to boost the tropical province’s popularity among foreign tourists. New regulations expanding the travel privileges to 59 nations come into effect in May, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the State Immigration Administration. Tourists from ...

Read More »

IBM turnaround questioned on slow growth of new businesses

Bloomberg IBM’s one-quarter growth streak is already in doubt. Shares of the technology company fell in early trading after it reported narrower profit margins and no revenue growth, excluding help from a weak US dollar. That cast a shadow over an effort to sell more-profitable cloud-based software to revive growth after five years of revenue declines. Though heading in the ...

Read More »

AT&T may have an edge over US govt in court battle for Time Warner

Bloomberg AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc. may have gained an edge in the biggest merger trial in decades as the companies have exposed weaknesses in the Trump administration’s antitrust lawsuit to block their $85 billion merger, according to lawyers and economists following the battle. As the US rested its case in the fifth week of the trial, AT&T and ...

Read More »

Facebook to start complying with EU privacy rules

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is starting to comply with new privacy rules in Europe. And then, to get ahead of scrutiny everywhere else, the company said it will provide the same protections to the rest of its 2 billion users. Users in Europe this week will get notifications about some of the information they’re sharing, like their religion and political views, ...

Read More »

UK inflation at one-year low

Bloomberg UK inflation slowed to the weakest in a year in March, raising questions about how quickly the Bank of England will increase interest rates. Consumer prices rose 2.5 percent from a year earlier, down from 2.7 percent in February, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. That’s less than economists estimated and below the BOE’s most recent forecast ...

Read More »

Internet sales tax ruling divides US supreme court justices

Bloomberg US Supreme Court justices signalled they are divided about whether to let states start collecting billions of dollars in sales taxes from internet retailers that don’t currently charge tax to their customers. Hearing arguments in Washington in a South Dakota case, the justices considered overturning their 1992 ruling that made much of the inte-rnet a tax-free zone by exempting ...

Read More »

Aldar to invest in new projects, acquisitions

ABU DHABI / Reuters Abu Dhabi-based developer Aldar Properties plans more acquisitions as it sees opportunities in a slowing property market, its chief executive said on Tuesday. Late last year, Aldar bought an office tower in the emirate for AED658 million ($179 million). “We are seeing ample opportunities of new acquisitions in these market conditions in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere,” ...

Read More »

Emirates NBD launches region’s first private cloud in banking sector

DUBAI / WAM Emirates NBD announced that it has launched its own private cloud platform. It is the first bank in the region to implement a private cloud platform that leverages similar technologies to cloud-native companies, marking a major milestone in the Emirates NBD Group’s ongoing AED1 billion IT transformation. Through its new private cloud technology, the bank’s IT platforms ...

Read More »

UAE needs to invest $33bn to meet power demand

DAMMAM / WAM The UAE needs to invest at least $33bn to meet its expected additional 16GW capacity requirement over the medium term, the Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (Apicorp) forecasted in its latest research report, published on Tuesday. The country is pushing strongly to diversify its energy sources in the power mix, and Apicorp estimates that nearly 10GW of capacity ...

Read More »
Send this to a friend