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DUBAi / Emirates Business The international home furnishing brand, IKEA, has unveiled its new redesigned living room section at its store at Yas Island, Abu Dhabi. The global brand has chosen Abu Dhabi as one of three stores worldwide to pilot this new store solution. The ‘Make Room for Life’ project aims at creating a more realistic and inspiring shopping ...

Sharjah / Emirates Business Gulftainer, the world’s largest privately-owned, independent port operator based in the UAE, recorded a strong performance in 2015 with an overall growth of four percent across its global portfolio. Gulftainer’s operations in the UAE currently include the Khorfakkan Container Terminal (KCT) and the Sharjah Container Terminal (SCT) at Port Khalid and the Sharjah Inland Container Depot ...

Bloomberg While the world focuses on Russia’s oil-freeze talks with OPEC, there are discussions behind closed doors in the Kremlin that will have a much more significant impact on the nation’s energy industry. The petrodollars that underpin Russia’s national budget are evaporating. When crude prices were high, increasing revenue simply meant encouraging companies like Rosneft OJSC and Lukoil PJSC to ...

Bloomberg The pound advanced against most of its major peers after manufacturing activity in the U.K. expanded at a faster rate than expected in January and a rally in commodities and stocks boosted investor sentiment. Manufacturing production grew 0.7 percent against the 0.2 percent forecast in a survey of Bloomberg economists. Industrial production expanded by 0.3 percent, lower than forecast ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is edging towards tax incentives for electric cars after months of bickering over how to boost sales of the vehicles in Europe’s biggest economy, according to a person familiar with the matter. With Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble opposed to plans by Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel to offer consumers a cash rebate of as much ...

Bloomberg Mario Draghi is having no success convincing stock investors that the European Central Bank has the firepower to reignite growth. While all economists in a Bloomberg survey expect the central bank to cut interest rates when policy makers meet on Thursday, and 73 percent project them to boost the amount of money put into the financial system through bond ...

Bloomberg Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, hasn’t been part of a global selloff in stocks this quarter, according to its chief executive officer, Yngve Slyngstad. “We have not been participating in the selling, and we don’t foresee” that a change of strategy will be necessary, Slyngstad said at a presentation of the fund’s 2015 results on Wednesday. The ...

Seoul / AFP North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country has successfully miniaturised a thermo-nuclear warhead, as Pyongyang on Wednesday continued to talk up its nuclear strike capabilities amid rising military tensions on the Korean peninsula. While the North has boasted of mastering miniaturisation before, this is the first time Kim has directly claimed the breakthrough that experts see ...

Beirut / EMIRATES BUSINESS Real estate developers in Lebanon are making a high return on their investments, dismissing the need to reduce prices, said an industry expert. “Developers are making around 10 percent to 15 percent yearly profits on their projects which is higher than the interest rate offered by banks on deposits in Lebanese pounds,” Raja Makarem, founding and ...

Bloomberg Jonathan Baker is the first to admit he shouldn’t be complaining about foreign investors driving up prices in Vancouver’s red-hot housing market. They helped the retired lawyer pocket millions. Baker and his wife sold their five-bedroom home for C$3 million ($2.2 million) in December, a 100-fold gain from their purchase price in 1970. The house went for C$300,000 over ...