Reuters Most major Middle Eastern stock markets fell on Thursday after the US central bank raised interest rates but buying by local retail investors lifted Saudi Arabia. The central banks of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar followed the Fed with their own 0.25 percentage point rate hikes and Oman, which has been raising its …

  Bloomberg There’s a transformation happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity. There have been isolated projects in the past where this happened: An especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But …

    Reuters State oil giant Saudi Aramco signed deals with several foreign companies as part of a drive to expand the kingdom’s industrial base and manufacture a bigger share of products domestically. Deals include setting up joint ventures with US-listed firms Rowan Companies and Nabors Industries to own, manage, and operate drilling rigs in Saudi Arabia. Aramco also signed …