DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s privatisation drive is likely to result in around 100 new stock market listings in sectors including mining, healthcare and retail, a top HSBC executive said on Monday. Georges Elhedery, HSBC’s chief executive for the Middle East and North Africa, did not give a time frame for the listings but said they were part of ...

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc. named Carmen Haddad as the head of its Saudi Arabia business as the US bank seeks to return to the kingdom after a more than 10-year absence, according to people familiar with the matter. Haddad is currently leading Citigroup’s strategy and business development for the kingdom, which the bank designates as a non-presence country, said the ...

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. fell after reporting first-quarter revenue that missed analysts’ estimates as the lender’s troubled community bank weighed on results. Wells Fargo shares slid 3 percent to $51.53 in New York, the lowest since Nov. 29 and the worst performance in the 65-company S&P 500 Financials Index. The stock has dropped 6.4 percent this year. The ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Al Rajhi Bank, Saudi Arabia’s second-largest lender by assets, reported a 10.1 percent rise in its first-quarter net profit on Monday, beating analysts forecasts. The bank made 2.22 billion riyals ($589.30 million) in the three months to March 31, up from 2.017 billion riyals in the same period a year earlier, it said in a bourse ...

  WASHINGTON / AP How often do students miss school? Are they ready for college? Are they physically fit? Is their school a welcoming place? States are beginning to outline new ways to evaluate their schools, rather than relying just on traditional measures such as test scores. The plans are required under a new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds ...

  Bloomberg Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared victory in a referendum to increase his powers as opposition parties contested the result. With 98 percent of ballots counted, Turks approved the most radical constitutional overhaul since the republic was founded 93 years ago by 51.3 percent to 48.7 percent, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency. Erdogan will have authority ...

  BEIRUT / AP More than 3,000 Syrians are expected to be evacuated on Sunday from four areas as part of a population transfer that was briefly stalled the day before by a deadly blast that killed scores of people, most of them government supporters. The United Nations is not overseeing the transfer deal, which involves residents of the pro-government ...

  AP President Donald Trump asserted on Sunday that China was working with the United States on “the North Korea problem,” and his vice president told American and South Korea service members that the North’s latest “provocation,” a failed missile launch shortly before his arrival in Seoul, laid bare the risks they face. While the North did not conduct a ...

  RIYADH / WAM As governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are prioritising investments in the power sector, the region will need to invest $302 billion in the next five years to feed the rapidly rising demand for electricity, according to estimates by APICORP Energy Research for the period 2017-2021. ‘‘Of this, $179 billion will be needed ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM The total value of margin trading facilities provided by brokerage companies operating at ADX and DFM amounted to AED 36.5 billion during the first quarter of 2017, an increase of 46 percent over the same period in 2016. According to official statistics, the margin trading accounted for 27.8 percent of the total transactions conducted at ...