Emirates Business Preferred Hotels & Resorts, the world’s largest global provider of sales, marketing and distribution services to independent luxury hotels, continues to expand its Middle East portfolio with the addition of two new five-star hotels in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and another five-star hotel in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The three additions consist of a duo of …

  Jakarta / AFP Apple is battling to gain a foothold in Indonesia after nationalistic regulations hit the US tech giant’s efforts to compete in the booming emerging market against Samsung and other rivals. The iPhone 6S and 7 are yet to be released in Southeast Asia’s top economy as Apple struggles to fulfil requirements that phone makers must have …

  Beijing / AFP Asian lenders are spending millions of dollars developing applications using blockchain, a technology that promises to slash transaction costs, expedite cross-border payments and reduce the risk of fraud. Banks active in the region from Standard Chartered Plc to National Australia Bank Ltd. have in recent months started developing and testing systems utilizing the distributed-ledger technology in …