Bloomberg Claire’s Stores, known for tween jewellery and ear piercing, has become the latest victim of the retail apocalypse. The company filed for bankruptcy on March 19 and said it reached an agreement with creditors including its private-equity backer, Apollo Global Management LLC, to restructure around $1.9 billion in debt. Its plan to survive rests on its reputation for trendy ...

Emirates Business Airbus and Heathrow airport are celebrating the 10th anniversary of A380 operations at the airport. They began on March 18, 2008 with the arrival of the first A380, a Singapore Airlines flight SQ308 from Singapore Changi airport making Heathrow one of the first to welcome Airbus’ iconic double decker. Heathrow is now the world’s busiest A380 airport by ...

DUBAI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, broke ground on the 700MW fourth phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the biggest Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) project in the world. The start of the new project advances the UAE’s global leadership ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has issued a Federal Law on linking the general budget of the Federation and the budgets of the autonomous state institutions for the fiscal year 2018. According to the Law, published in the Federal Official Gazette, both the expenditures and the revenues in the Federation’s general budget ...

DUBAI / WAM Dubai’s non-oil foreign trade in 2017 grew AED26 billion to reach AED1.302 trillion compared to AED1.276 trillion in 2016, enhancing Dubai’s position as global hub for trade despite the challenges faced by the global economy. Dubai’s re-exports grew nine percent in 2017 to AED360 billion, while Dubai’s imports reached AED798 billion and exports totalled AED144 billion. Dubai’s ...

LONDON / WAM UAE-based Petrofac, a leading service provider to the oil and gas production and processing industry, on Monday announced that it has signed a binding letter of intent, for a contract worth around $580 million (AED2.13 billion) with a GCC National Oil Company for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of a major project. Specific details in relation ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The 2017 cash dividends paid out by 62 companies listed on the Abu Dhabi and Dubai bourses amounted to AED33.161 billion, according to latest official figures. The banking sector continued to have the lion’s share of cash distributions, after 13 out of 18 listed banks pad out around AED18 billion in cash, accounting for 54.3% of ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The Department of Finance (DoF) has announced that the percentage of all local government entities who have implemented the ‘Abu Dhabi ERP System’ amounted to 93% by the end of January 2018. DoF has also integrated the VAT scheme onto the system, to unify VAT processes across federal entities. As part of the announcement, DoF revealed ...

DUBAI / Emirates Business Startup funding worth more than $1 billion is likely to be raised in the UAE this year, according to Arabnet, an online hub for digital professionals and entrepreneurs to connect and learn, which could push up the start-up sector that gears up for the region’s largest mega start-up event — the three-day AIM Startup that takes ...

Dubai / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, said that the UAE has transformed happiness, positivity and quality of life to a practice in every sector, as well as a culture of society. His Highness said during the graduation ceremony of second batch of ‘Chief Happiness ...