News

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is lucky it owns Instagram. This year, the world’s largest social network will see a decline among teen users in the US, according to a forecast by EMarketer. It’s the first time the research company has predicted a fall in Facebook usage for any age group. EMarketer predicts 14.5 million people from the ages of 12 to ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s non-oil revenue could surge by about 80 billion riyals ($21.3 billion) next year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, boosting the kingdom’s efforts to reduce the economy’s reliance on crude. The increase would be driven by the implementation of value-added taxation, a tax on luxury products and higher fees imposed on expatriates’ dependents, London-based economist Jean-Michel ...

Bloomberg Oil Search Ltd., the Papua New Guinea-focused energy explorer, raised its full-year production target because of record output from the country’s liquefied natural gas project. The company lifted the lower end of its 2017 production guidance to 29 million barrels of oil equivalent from the previous 28.5 million, while leaving the upper end at 30.5 million barrels, citing record ...

Bloomberg Zema, a 94 year-old retailer of toys and appliances in Brazil’s interior, has become an unlikely thorn in the side of state-controlled oil behemoth Petroleo Brasileiro SA. This year Zema, which also runs gas stations, got its first fuel import license and joined a fast-growing group of new players that managed to, at least temporarily, squeeze Petrobras out of ...

Bloomberg North Korea’s saber-rattling is at last being felt in its southern neighbour’s bullet-proof bond market. Foreign investors have started to look for the exits, selling a net $415 million worth of Korean notes last week, only the second weekly outflow since November, according to the nation’s Financial Supervisory Service. That’s a precipitous drop from the $4.3 billion of net ...

Bloomberg Singapore’s government will support technology startups by doing business with them rather than having them rely on grants as the city-state pushes ahead with a plan to become a high-tech hub, a top minister said. The government wants to fuel private-sector innovation, especially among small and medium-sized firms, in a bid to create a digitally integrated economy, Vivian Balakrishnan, ...

Bloomberg China’s money market is bracing for yet another squeeze. A record 2.3 trillion yuan ($340 billion) of negotiable certificates of deposit—a funding lifeline for medium and smaller banks—are set to mature next month, adding to the stress of an official deleveraging drive that has pressured onshore bonds lower in all but two months of this year. The flood of ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM Bank financing provided to the property and construction sector in the UAE increased by AED16.5 billion during H1 2017, a growth of 6.2 percent from the end of 2016, bringing to AED281.2 billion the total bank credit channeled to the sector by the end of June. According to UAE Central Bank statistics, funding provided to the ...

DUBAI / WAM The Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University (HBMSU) hosted a roundtable on the ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ and Islamic Finance Executive Strategy to promote economic cooperation between China and the UAE in the non-oil commercial and production sectors. The event was held with the support of the Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre and provided an opportunity to capitalise ...

WASHINGTON / WAM The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development (AFESD), and the Government of Morocco are to co-host a high-level conference in Marrakesh, on January 29-30, 2018, on promoting higher economic growth, job creation, and inclusiveness in the Arab World. “Opportunities for All: Promoting Growth, Jobs, and Inclusiveness in the ...