Regional News

  Reuters Telecommunications operator Zain Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday it would save 175 million riyals ($46.7 million) by using a Chinese bank to refinance a 2.25 billion riyal loan that it had secured just two months ago. The new, $600 million loan was signed with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China; it has a two-year maturity with an option ...

  Bloomberg Libya’s government appointed a steering committee to head the country’s $60 billion sovereign wealth fund, where rifts have hindered efforts to unite financial institutions in the fractured North African oil exporter. The Libyan Investment Authority’s temporary five-member committee will be headed by one of the fund’s former directors, Ali Mohamed Hassan, according to a statement issued by the ...

  Bloomberg Israel’s faltering industry of tech startups is facing another hurdle amid mounting questions regarding government commitments to funding young companies. A senior official in the technology industry said the chief scientist’s office didn’t receive a 240-million-shekel ($63.5 million) round of additional funding to finish the year as had occurred in the past. Without this sum, which is 15 ...

  Bloomberg The rally in Qatar’s stock market may have been too strong for its own good. The QE Index’s world-beating 2.2 percent advance left it about 7 percent above the average of analysts’ price targets, the most among more than 70 gauges tracked by Bloomberg. The measure’s 14-day relative strength index was at 79 points, above the level of ...

  Bloomberg India’s preparing to tender 10 gigawatts of wind power by 2019 in auctions intended to help meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious clean-energy targets. The first 1-gigawatt tender is planned for October, Varsha Joshi said in an interview with Bloomberg News. She’s joint secretary at India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Power, the agency tasked with realizing Modi’s ...

  Bloomberg Santos Ltd. will take a $1.05 billion writedown on its Gladstone LNG project due to rising prices for third-party gas supplies and slower-than-expected ramp up of its own equity output to feed the export project. The non-cash charge on the liquefied natural gas development in Queensland, which is $1.5 billion before taxes, will be recorded in its half-year ...

  Bloomberg Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, is being asked to consider a wheat storage program offered by a U.S. company before Algeria gets a chance to grab the $250 million investment. Blumberg Grain expects to reach an agreement with Egypt in the next two weeks to expand its wheat storage network, according to a company statement issued Sunday. ...

  Reuters Qatar’s central bank is offering 3 billion riyals ($825 million) of government bonds in its first domestic bond sale this year, suggesting liquidity conditions are easing in a banking system pressured by low oil and gas prices. A central bank official said results of the offer would be known on Tuesday. If it succeeds, it would be the ...

  DHIBAN / AP Sabri Mashaaleh feels misled and angry: The 29-year-old studied counseling expecting to find a civil service job, in line with what used to be a typical life path for college-educated Jordanians. Four years later, he’s still unemployed. His last hopes were crushed earlier this summer when troops tore down the tent in his small, remote hometown ...

  Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund is stepping up lending in a region where economic reformers haven’t exactly had the most success. Hoping to restore the confidence of foreign investors, Egypt announced an initial agreement on Thursday to borrow $12 billion over three years from the IMF, joining Iraq, Tunisia and Jordan in taking money from the Washington-based fund. Egypt’s ...