Dubai / WAM The Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (Menasa) region’s e-commerce sector is growing aggressively at 24.6 percent CAGR through to 2020, according to a newly launched report by Dubai CommerCity. The report, ‘Menasa e-commerce landscape’, assists global companies and start-ups in evaluating the opportunities within the regional e-commerce market and highlights the high growth in the …

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund will develop the bulk of the kingdom’s proposed renewable power projects, turning it into one of the region’s biggest utility investors. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) will be responsible for developing 70 percent of the kingdom’s renewable power capacity, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said in a speech in Abu Dhabi. The rest will …

Bloomberg Opec and its allies plan to hold a meeting in March to assess their oil-production accord in Azerbaijan, and then ministers will gather to set policy in April, according to the organisation’s top official. The body that reviews the implementation of Opec’s supply cuts, the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, will convene in the Azeri capital of Baku on March …

Bloomberg India will not share the limited supply of Iranian crude allowed under a US waiver from sanctions with private refiners, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That is a departure from the earlier practice of splitting exempted volumes. The government has asked four state refiners led by Indian Oil to share the entire 9 million barrels of …

Bloomberg US stocks gained amid signs of a better-than-expected start to the earnings season. The pound was little changed against the dollar before a vote on the UK’s government. The S&P 500 rose to within a whisker of its average price over the past 50 days, a level it hasn’t breached since early December. Financials buoyed major indexes as Goldman …

Bloomberg Big investors who’ve soured on cryptocurrencies because of the industry’s billion-dollar theft problem will soon have a new way to trade that’s touted as a safer solution. By the end of the month, BitGo Inc’s customers will be able to buy or sell Bitcoin, Ether and other digital assets without the coins ever leaving cold storage — in other …

Bloomberg Home sales in the US slumped in December, while prices inched up slightly, marking the smallest annual increase since the end of the last housing crash in 2012, according to data from brokerage Redfin. The median home price rose to $289,800 in December, a gain of 1.2 percent, the slowest monthly pace since March 2012. Sales dropped by almost …

Bloomberg China’s smaller banks, among the hardest hit by President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on risky financing, are set for a tougher 2019 as authorities force them to shut business lines that once powered profit growth. Authorities have ordered the nation’s provincial lenders to limit business to the region they’re based in, or wind down by the end of this year, …

Bloomberg The euro-area economy isn’t headed for a recession, even though softening momentum underscores the need for European Central Bank stimulus, according to President Mario Draghi. “The question we should ask is: Is this a sag or heading towards a recession?” Draghi told members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. “The answer we give is: No, it’s a slowdown, which …

Bloomberg Banco Santander SA reversed course on installing Andrea Orcel as its next chief executive officer after a standoff over tens of millions of dollars in deferred pay. UBS Group AG held a hard line that Orcel, who led its investment bank until a few months ago, was defecting to a rival and wouldn’t receive bonuses he was owed from …