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Dubai / Emirates Business Emirates NBD, a leading bank in the region, has been named Best Local Private Bank in the Middle East at the 2016 Private Banker International (PBI) Middle East Awards. The bank was presented with the award at a gala dinner that was held in conjunction with the Private Banking Middle East Conference at the Ritz Carlton ...

Dubai / Emirates Business As a proactive step to enhance the contributions of the business sector to overall development, the Dubai Airport Freezone Authority (DAFZA) recently developed a new and unique model of corporate governance based primarily on spreading the concept of ‘Corporate National Responsibility’ (CNR), a more comprehensive version of the ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) paradigm. The new model ...

Bloomberg While two years of crashing prices for oil, natural gas, and coal triggered dramatic downsizing in those industries, renewables have been thriving. Clean energy investment broke new records in 2015 and is now seeing twice as much global funding as fossil fuels. One reason is that renewable energy is becoming ever cheaper to produce. Recent solar and wind auctions ...

BEIJING / AP China has banned most imports of North Korean coal and iron ore, the country’s main exports, in a significant increase in pressure on the North under UN sanctions against its nuclear and missile tests. China buys an estimated two-thirds of impoverished North Korea’s exports, making Beijing’s cooperation essential for trade penalties approved by the UN Security Council ...

Tokyo / DPA Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry is set to strengthen its efforts to develop its own technology for genome editing, by allocating 8.6 billion yen (US$77 million) over five years from fiscal 2016 to 2020. The technology enables cut-and-paste work in gene modifications as desired. The government intends to efficiently mass-produce medicinal products or fragrance elements by ...

KUALA LUMPUR / AP The chief executive of Malaysia Airlines said on Wednesday that the carrier recorded a profit in February, its first positive monthly result in years, and is on track to return to the black by 2018. In an interview, CEO Christoph Mueller described the airline as a “ship that has many leaks,” but said the monthly profit ...

Sydney / AFP Australia’s largest resources project will stop production for up to 60 days owing to mechanical issues, US energy giant Chevron said on Wednesday, in the latest setback to hit the US$54 billion plant. Chevron’s Gorgon liquefied natural gas (LNG) project off Australia’s northwest coast — one of the world’s biggest — started production in early March and ...

MUMBAI / Reuters Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is regaining smartphone share in India with a revamped line-up packed with special features including a safety mode for motorcyclists, as rival Apple Inc readies a renewed push into the world’s fastest-growing market. Long the leader in price-conscious India, the South Korean giant had been losing ground to local rivals such as Micromax ...

Bloomberg Poland’s central bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged for a 13th month as its revamped policy council defies expectations for deeper monetary easing in the face of the longest bout of deflation in 60 years. The 10-member panel on Wednesday left the seven-day reference rate at a record-low 1.5 percent, matching the predictions of all 34 economists surveyed ...

Bloomberg Germany’s two-year note sale on Wednesday provided more evidence that an increasingly gloomy economic outlook in the euro zone keeps driving investors to buy negative-yielding securities in return for their safety — and potential capital gains. The country’s bonds, which have returned 4.4 percent percent this year, were mostly little changed as Europe’s largest economy allotted €3.24 billion of ...