As the UK stumbles towards leaving the European Union, domestic investors are becoming increasingly gloomy about the outlook for the nation’s stocks. With a no-deal Brexit looking increasingly likely, their growing pessimism is justified. Investment manager Hargreaves Lansdown Plc just published its latest survey of UK retail investors. Sentiment toward domestic stocks is even worse than it was during the ...

Italy’s new populist leaders appear to be sticking to the program that brought them to power: In their budget plans, they’re charting a course that could ultimately put the entire European project at risk. One can only hope that they will see reason. Since forming a government last spring, the coalition of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and right-wing League ...

Even for Chinese authorities, who have long tried to limit the influence of foreign media and ideas, last week marked an escalation. In the span of a few days, authorities blocked access to Twitch, the video-game live-streaming platform owned by Amazon.com Inc.; ordered a purge of foreign content from school textbooks; and proposed restricting foreign programming — especially current-events shows ...

A boon for Hong Kong’s banks could turn into an opportunity for the city’s hard-pressed savers. HSBC Holdings Plc, the biggest of Hong Kong’s banks, and its subsidiary Hang Seng Bank Ltd., raised their prime rate – the best lending rate on which most loans, including mortgages are based – by 12 basis points. Standard Chartered Plc quickly followed suit, ...

It’s been a bad year for Facebook Inc. OK, a truly terrible year. It just got even worse. The founders of Instagram, the photo-and-video app that Facebook agreed to buy shortly before its 2012 IPO, are leaving the company. Bloomberg News reported that the founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, grew frustrated as Facebook impinged on their autonomy. It’s not ...

GENEVA / WAM The Arab Federation for Human Rights studied the report by a group of experts on Yemen and considered it highly politicised and not in compliance with the fundamental standards and principles of international human rights reporting. The federation added the report aims to cover up crimes committed by Houthi militias and targets the Arab Coalition, instead of ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Adnoc LNG, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), on Wednesday signed the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract for the second phase of the Integrated Gas Development Expansion (IGD-E) project with a consortium of Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas and Abu Dhabi’s Target Engineering Construction Company. The contract is valued at AED3.16 billion ($860 ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI), the UAE Federal export credit company, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit (ICIEC), a member of the Islamic Development Bank Group, to boost export trade through the promotion of Shariah-compliant export credit and investment insurance instruments. With the aim of establishing ...

DUBAI / WAM In another first, investors globally will now be able to start their business in Dubai without having to be in the UAE, following an agreement between the Dubai Investment Development Agency (Dubai FDI), an agency of the Department of Economic Development (DED), in Dubai, and the US-based Alliance Business Centres Network (ABCN). The partnership will enable investors ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Aldar Properties on Wednesday announced that its 100% owned subsidiary Aldar Investments has successfully issued its debut fixed rate US dollar denominated sukuk, with a tenor of 7 years, raising a total of $500 million. Aldar Investments is the region’s largest diversified real estate investment company. The new issuance demonstrates Aldar Investments’ ability to raise efficient ...