MANAMA / Emirates Business Ithmaar Bank, a Bahrain-based Islamic retail bank, was honoured at a ceremony attended by senior bankers from across the Middle East after it was named Best Islamic Retail Bank in Bahrain. Ithmaar Bank was presented the prestigious award following a comprehensive selection and review process conducted by a committee of high-level economists and banking professionals, as ...

Bloomberg Adrian Orr will oversee the biggest overhaul of New Zealand’s central bank since it pioneered inflation targeting in the early 1990s. Orr, 54, will begin a five-year term as governor of the Reserve Bank on March 27, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in Wellington. A former deputy governor and chief economist at the RBNZ, Orr currently heads the New ...

Bloomberg The next governor of the Bank of Japan faces a “job from hell.” That’s according to Takeshi Fujimaki, a banker-turned-lawmaker who sees any attempt by Japan’s central bank to exit its prog- ram of unprecedented easing as triggering a Greek-like debt crisis. “This is the calm before the battle,” Fujimaki, an opposition Japan Innovation Party politician who once served ...

Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings Plc pilots in the airline’s home base of Dublin defied a management threat and voted in favour of labour action, throwing their weight behind a European organising campaign seeking better working conditions. Of the cockpit staff who voted, 95 percent said they’d rather strike than accept management proposals to improve employment terms, people familiar with the matter ...

Bloomberg Inditex SA, the world’s biggest clothing retailer, is seeking a buyer for 16 Zara stores in Iberia as online purchasing takes off in Spain. Inditex, owned and founded by Amancio Ortega, the world’s fourth-richest man, is seeking $472 million for the stores in a 20-year sale-and-leaseback agreement that would give the buyer the right to vacate the properties after ...

Bloomberg Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Asda unit has appointed a former Amazon.com Inc. finance director to help it turn around its struggling UK business, according to people familiar with the matter. Rob McWilliam will rejoin Asda as a part-time strategic adviser to new Chief Executive Officer Roger Burnley, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information is ...

Bloomberg Imran Ameer booked tickets to spend 10 days on the beaches of Lombok, near Bali, with his pregnant wife and 17-month-old daughter. Then Mount Agung in eastern Bali erupted, forcing the 28-year-old from Melbourne to scrap that plan. He’s not alone. With a possibility of the volcano erupting again any time, scores of hotel rooms and flights to Bali ...

Bloomberg Joyalukkas, world’s favourite jeweller, has launched its new showroom in the bustling metropolis of South Extension, Delhi. The new showroom was inaugurated by Sri. Vijay Prakash Jain, Secretary General, Bhartiya Udyog Vyapar Mandal, last week, which was an exciting affair attended by local dignitaries, VIPs and chief executives of the Joyalukkas Group. Set at the heart of the exciting ...

Dubai / Reuters The United Arab Emirates economy is expected to recover gradually next year without suffering a significant blow to growth from the introduction of a 5 percent value-added tax in January, a senior International Monetary Fund official said. Natalia Tamirisa, IMF mission chief to the Ara b world’s second biggest economy, said Dubai’s spending on preparations to host ...

ABU DHABI / Reuters Abu Dhabi state investor Mubadala has made 15 to 16 investments in technology firms as part of a partnership with SoftBank Group of Japan, deputy group chief executive Waleed al-Muhairi told a conference in Abu Dhabi on Monday. Mubadala has committed $15 billion to SoftBank’s $93 billion private equity fund, the SoftBank Vision Fund, which has ...