DUBAI / WAM Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower) reported that the number of its online transactions is continuously growing. The company recorded a total of 250,000 transactions performed through its e-services system from January to July 2018. Empower aims to increase the number of e-services subscribers to achieve 100 percent online transactions. The e-services allow customers to pay bills …

DUBAI / Emirates Business Emirates has launched one of its biggest sales yet with special fares to over 70 global destinations within its network. Passengers can still plan a short getaway before the summer season ends to destinations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and the Far East. The offer applies to bookings made on Sunday until August 20 for …

Bloomberg US inflation in July, excluding noisy food and energy prices, was the highest since 2008 at 2.4 percent. A closer look suggests there probably isn’t much cause for concern at the Federal Reserve. Excluding shelter costs, US services inflation edged down last month. Central bankers pay close attention to services inflation because it correlates more closely with domestic labour …

Bloomberg The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed a decision on whether to allow the listing of an exchange-traded fund backed by Bitcoin. The agency now has until September 30 to “approve or disapprove, or institute proceedings to determine whether to disapprove” a proposed rule changefrom Cboe Global Markets Inc. that would allow the fund from VanEck Associates …

Bloomberg General Electric Co. is working with bankers on a possible sale of its power-conversion business, people familiar with the matter said, as the fallen manufacturer attempts to regain its footing by slimming down. The unit formerly known as Converteam could fetch about $1.5 billion, below the $3.2 billion GE paid for the assets in 2011, said the people, who …

Bloomberg State-owned Indian Oil Corp. posted a 50 percent jump in quarterly profit as the margin for converting crude into fuels more than doubled. Net income climbed to 68.3 billion rupees ($992 million) in the quarter ended on June 30, from 45.5 billion rupees a year earlier, the company said in a stock-exchange filing. That compares with the 53.3 billion-rupee …

Cairo / Emirates Business The Emirates NBD Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for Egypt, sponsored by Emirates NBD and produced by IHS Markit, contains original data collected from a monthly survey of business conditions in the Egyptian private sector. Commenting on the Egypt PMI survey, Daniel Richards, MENA Economist at Emirates NBD, says, “The positive PMI reading for the first month …

Bloomberg Barclays Plc, one of Europe’s biggest investment banks, hired a team of equity analysts from rival Societe Generale SA as Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley seeks to make more money from trading stocks. Warren Ackerman has joined from the French bank as head of European consumer equity research along with Michael Sanderson, who will be Barclays’s co-head of diversified …

Bloomberg The coming week may prove to be a crucial one for the Indonesian rupiah. As Wednesday’s policy decision approaches, Bank Indonesia finds itself under pressure to raise the benchmark rate again even after increasing it by a combined 100 basis points since mid-May to stem a slide in the currency. Rupiah headwinds have steadily increased in recent weeks and …

Bloomberg The outsize growth of a country’s banks is a sign that credit expansion is faster there than in other nations. In 1988, 9 of the 10 largest banks in the world were Japanese. Three years later the country’s financial system, along with its lenders, collapsed, sending Japan into its infamous lost decade (or three, considering the country is still …