SHARJAH / WAM Dana Gas on Sunday announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31. Net profit was up by 41 percent in Q1 2021 reaching AED88 million as compared to AED62 million in Q1 2020. The increase in net profit was the result of improved revenues from higher production in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), …

Bloomberg Toronto’s housing market last month posted the sharpest drop since the early weeks of the Covid-19 crisis, as buyers and sellers took a breather from a frenetic pace amid surging infections and renewed lockdown measures. The number of properties changing hands in Canada’s largest city declined 20% in April on an annualized basis from the month before, while the …

Bloomberg A rally in one of Asia’s best-performing stock markets is stalling amid rising virus cases at home and a rethink of the global reflation trade. Second only to Taiwan among Asia’s major benchmarks this year, Singapore’s Straits Times Index has slipped about 1% so far in May, paring 2021’s gains to around 13%. The reintroduction of social distancing rules …

Bloomberg Asia’s high-dividend-yield stocks have emerged as winners among regional equities this year as expectations grew for the economy to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. While stocks that pay relatively large dividends are rising globally, for the most part the gains are happening in-line with the wider market. Not so in Asia though, where MSCI Inc.’s key gauge for this …

Bloomberg The European Union (EU) and India are set to resume long-stalled talks on a free trade deal in an effort to strengthen their economic cooperation in the face of an increasingly assertive China. EU leaders will hold a virtual summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to launch a fresh round of negotiations that aim to reboot relations and …

JEDDAH / WAM Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have underscored the importance of expanding and intensifying aspects of bilateral cooperation and coordination and enhancing them in various fields. This came during a meeting between His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, and Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, …

Bloomberg Oil posted a gain this week as expectations for growing economic activity in nations from the US to Europe fueled optimism around stronger summer demand. Futures in New York advanced 2.1% this week in the first back-to-back weekly increase since early March. Fuel sales in the UK rise to the highest since the pandemic again, and in the US, …

Bloomberg Global central banks are starting to wind down the trillion-dollar money printing machines set in motion to rescue their economies in 2020. Getting ahead of them is becoming this year’s biggest currency trade. Early changes to bond-buying programs from Canada and Britain have been rewarding for foreign-exchange players. Meanwhile, Norway, which hasn’t needed to deploy more unconventional policy such …

Bloomberg Housing Development Finance Corp (HDFC) plans to raise as much as $17 billion in bonds after India’s largest mortgage financier posted a better-than-expected rise in fourth-quarter profit. The Mumbai-based shadow lender’s fourth-quarter net income rises 43% to 31.8 billion rupees ($432 million) as it set aside fewer provisions for bad loans, it said in a statement. That beat an …

Bloomberg Credit Agricole SA’s profits jumped in the first quarter, as the bank joined European peers in posting a strong trading performance and lower-than-anticipated charges to cover potential loan losses. Net income rises 64% from a year ago to 1.05 billion euros ($1.27 billion), after Credit Agricole provided 384 million euros against the possibility of souring loans, below the 564.5 …