DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s stock market rose on Wednesday on the eve of the government’s release of its 2017 budget, and Egypt’s extended a bull run fuelled by for- eign money and last month’s float of the Egyptian pound. The Saudi stock index climbed 0.4 percent, though trading volume shrank to its lowest level in two months as ...

    Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s long-awaited drive to free up more oil revenue by shifting to solar power generation is expected to pick up speed next quarter, according to local developers eyeing contracts. “I’m fully expecting within the first quarter 500 megawatts to come out in tenders and then it’ll ramp up,” said Paddy Padmanathan, the chief executive officer of ...

  Riyadh / AFP Crowds are jamming the aisles of a Riyadh coffee and chocolate exhibition this week, as Saudis indulge the country’s sweet tooth and craze for caffeine. The International Coffee and Chocolate Exhibition, which opened on Tuesday and will run to Friday, is billed as the largest of its kind in the Middle East. In its third year, ...

    Bloomberg The man overseeing energy policy in western Europe’s biggest oil- producing nation says the worst downturn in the history of Norway’s offshore industry appears to have bottomed out as this month’s historic OPEC deal continues to reverberate across the globe. Terje Soviknes, who was named as Norway’s next petroleum and energy minister on Tuesday, replacing Tord Lien, ...

  TRIPOLI / Reuters Operations at Libya’s southwestern Sharara oilfield were gradually resuming on Wednesday after the lifting of a two-year blockade on a pipeline leading from the field, a senior official said on Wednesday. “We started running the wells and then gradually we will start pumping to the Zawiya refinery,” the official, who works at the field, told Reuters ...

  Bloomberg Oil extended its advance as industry data showed US crude stockpiles declined last week, trimming an inventory overhang. February futures rose as much as 0.9 percent in New York after climbing 0.5 percent on Tuesday. Crude inventories dropped by 4.15 million barrels, the American Petroleum Institute was said to report. That compares with a forecast 2.5 million-barrel decrease ...

  Bloomberg Offshore hedge fund managers and priced-out young Australians have long argued the pace of house price growth in the nation’s biggest cities is unsustainable. They may finally be right. After two years of double-digit growth, the Sydney house price index gained just 3.2 percent in the year to September, the weakest increase since 2012, according to the latest ...

  Bloomberg Japan Display Inc., a struggling Japanese maker of smartphone screens, agreed to a 75 billion yen ($637 million) injection of cash from a government-backed fund. The supplier to Apple Inc. will issue 45 billion yen of convertible debt to Innovation Network Corp. of Japan, already its largest shareholder, Japan Display said in a statement in Tokyo on Wednesday. ...

  Mumbai / AFP Indian internet and telecoms company Reliance Communications said on Wednesday it had agreed to sell its mobile phone tower business to Canadian asset management giant Brookfield for $1.6 billion. Reliance Communications said the deal represented the largest investment by a foreign investor in Indian infrastructure and comes as Brookfield seeks to capitalise on liquidity constraints at ...

  Bloomberg Cyrus Mistry, the ousted chairman of Tata Sons Ltd., wants an Indian court to restrain the family scion from attending board meetings, according to a filing made by the executive against his abrupt dismissal from the post. Mistry also asked the National Company Law Tribunal to appoint an administrator to manage Tata Sons, according to the filing seen ...