Dubai / Emirates Business A delegation from Smart Dubai Office (SDO) led by H.E. Dr. Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director General of SDO, is exerting more efforts to form business partnership by showcasing its smart transformation roadmap to the founding strategic partners of the smart city transformation process. The delegation visited Dubai Land Department (DLD) to discuss ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Mergermarket, the world’s leading news and intelligence service for mergers & acquisitions, has released its Global M&A Heat Chart that indicates potential future M&A activity based on companies that may be targeted for mergers or acquisitions. The Heat Chart suggests that the Middle East’s Telecoms, Media & Technology (TMT) sector could see the strongest levels ...

  Reuters Saudi Arabia’s largest lender by assets, National Commercial Bank (NCB), plans to expand overseas, growing its Turkey franchise while exploring new markets including Malaysia, Indonesia and Egypt, its chairman said. The move could break the mould of the kingdom’s banking sector, which hosts a range of large and well-capitalised financial institutions but which have traditionally focused on serving ...

  Bloomberg Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) Banking Group Ltd. is getting rid of about 200 jobs in its Australian unit as lending growth slows in a subdued economy. The reductions will be largely in Melbourne and affect managerial and back-office roles in areas such as marketing and project management, Melbourne-based spokesman Stephen Ries said in an e-mail on Tuesday. ...

  REUTERS BSI SA, the Swiss bank embroiled in global probes into 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (MDB), is investigating employees and their dealings related to the embattled Malaysian state investment fund, according to people familiar with the matter. One of the employees the private bank is investigating in Singapore is Kevin Swampillai, the manager of the first banker to be charged ...

  Cairo / Reuters National Bank of Egypt (NBE), the country’s largest state bank, sold 1.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($169 million) worth of special certificates that were launched in March to attract foreign currency into the banking system, its deputy chairman said. NBE was one of three state banks to launch the certificates on March 14, the day Egypt’s central ...

Milan / AFP Banco Popolare and Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM) said they would shed seven percent of their 25,000 staff as they merge to create Italy’s third-largest bank by assets. The 1,800 jobs are to be cut via voluntary departures, and 800 other employees will be reassigned to other jobs. The number of branches will be cut by 14 percent ...

  Tokyo / AFP As China’s leaders consider ways to improve market oversight and avoid the kind of boom and bust in equities that shook investors around the world last year, the nation’s central bank is already extending its oversight to areas beyond its traditional focus. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) this month expanded its powers to cap cross-border capital ...

  Sidoarjo / AFP Harwati forces a smile as she guides visitors around a bubbling mud volcano in Indonesia, pausing as they snap selfies on the bleak wasteland she once called home. These disaster tourists are a lifeline for the single mother who lost everything when the earth beneath a paddyfield near her village opened up without warning ten years ...

  Wageningen / AFP Establishing a human colony on the Moon and travelling to Mars has been the stuff of dreams since the dawn of the space age.But these visions face many hurdles. How can humans survive for months or years in the ultra-hostile environment of space? What, for instance, will they eat? Agricultural researchers at a Dutch university say ...