When we think about productivity, we often have a bias towards physical goods — things we can touch and feel, like iPhones or suits. But over the past century, as the economic historian Stephen Broadberry has shown, services, not manufacturing, have been key to explaining which countries are moving up or down the international productivity league table. And yet advanced ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank said debt-sustainability concerns have risen in the past six months amid a potential increase in yields and political uncertainty in some countries. “Risks to financial stability stemming from financial markets remain significant,” the Frankfurt-based institution said in its Financial Stability Review. An abrupt bond-market repricing could “materialize via spillovers from higher yields in advanced economies, ...

SARAJEVO / Reuters The Islamic Development Bank (IDB), the largest development organisation in the Muslim world, plans to revamp its operations, including a shift away from small-scale capital interventions to more sustainable, grassroot-level support. The non-profit group has extended $86.1 billion in financing in the last ten years for energy, transportation, water and sanitation projects. Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt are ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sued two former vice presidents in the bank’s private wealth management unit in Chicago, claiming they poached clients for their own new investment advisory business. The two men, Jeffrey Friedstein and Joseph Page, gave notice on Friday they were quitting, Goldman Sachs said in a complaint filed Monday in New York state court. The bank ...

Emirates Business Saxo Bank announces the release of its new developer portal on Wednesday. The portal provides technical documentation, reference guides, sample code and interactive tools for many of the technologies which in combination underpin Saxo’s Open Banking initiative. Saxo’s Open Banking strategy is built on the premise that going forward an increasingly broader range of partnerships and collaborations will ...

Bloomberg As Singapore Airlines Ltd. considers broadening its debt sources amid plans to spend S$30.1 billion ($22 billion), some analysts are pointing to the likelihood of a shift to US-dollar bonds and the higher borrowing costs that may entail. Chief Financial Officer Stephen Barnes said on May 19 that the carrier is looking to raise funds in different currency bonds. ...

Emirates Business CEB will fly the last of its four-times-a-week service from Manila to Kuwait on June 13, and its Kuwait-Manila flight on June 14. The thrice-weekly Manila-Doha-Manila route will have its last flight on July 1. The airline’s last flight from Manila to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia will depart on July 2, while the Riyadh-Manila flight will leave on July ...

Dubai / Emirates Business L’Oréal Africa Middle East has won the Retail Supply Chain Management of the Year award at the Logistics Middle East Awards 2017 during a ceremony held at Grosvenor House Hotel in Dubai Marina. The Retail Supply Chain Management category of the Logistics Middle East Awards considers brands and service providers that are innovating new methods to ...

Bloomberg Target Corp. agreed to pay $18.5 million to settle investigations by dozens of states over a 2013 hack of its database in which the personal information of millions of customers was stolen. It’s the largest multistate accord ever reached over a data breach, according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The hack, which occurred during the busy holiday ...

Emirates Business The newly re-branded award winning Dubai based consultancy and design agency ODG (previously Open D Group, Retail Access and Sparkle), has been appointed by Oman Sales and Services (OSS) (A joint venture between Oman Air and Aer Rianta International Middle East) to design and project manage the entire duty free at the New Muscat International Airport. OSS successfully ...