Reuters Most major Middle Eastern stock markets fell on Thursday after the US central bank raised interest rates but buying by local retail investors lifted Saudi Arabia. The central banks of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar followed the Fed with their own 0.25 percentage point rate hikes and Oman, which has been raising its ...

  Bloomberg There’s a transformation happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity. There have been isolated projects in the past where this happened: An especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But ...

    Reuters State oil giant Saudi Aramco signed deals with several foreign companies as part of a drive to expand the kingdom’s industrial base and manufacture a bigger share of products domestically. Deals include setting up joint ventures with US-listed firms Rowan Companies and Nabors Industries to own, manage, and operate drilling rigs in Saudi Arabia. Aramco also signed ...

  Kuwait City / AFP Kuwait’s new oil minister said on Thursday he expects crude prices to climb to $60 a barrel as output cuts agreed by OPEC and non-OPEC producers take hold next year. Essam al-Marzouk gave no timeframe for his projection, saying only that he was optimistic producers would comply with the agreed cuts and end a longstanding ...

  Bloomberg Russia’s finance minister is counting himself among the skeptics of OPEC’s agreement to cut production, if only to beat back efforts to raid a windfall as oil rallies. “Improvements in oil prices, in our view, aren’t structural in character,” Anton Siluanov told reporters in Moscow. “Rather, it’s a reaction to the limits on oil output adopted by OPEC ...

  Bloomberg Libya is preparing this week to reopen two of its biggest oil fields and ship the first cargo from its largest export terminal in two years, as the war-torn OPEC state pursues plans to almost double crude output in 2017. Repsol SA-operated Sharara, Libya’s largest oil field, and the El Feel, or Elephant, deposit run by Eni SpA ...

  Bloomberg Tata Motors Ltd., the $22 billion producer of Jaguar sports cars and Land Rover sport utility vehicles, is shaping up as a key battleground in the fight for control of India’s biggest conglomerate. Tata Group is facing opposition to its plan to remove Cyrus Mistry from the automaker’s board after Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s property developers are fast falling out of favor among investors as surging mortgage costs and punitive taxes threaten to choke home sales. A gauge of real estate companies traded on the city’s stock market has tumbled 13 percent this quarter, with developers accounting for half of the biggest losers on the benchmark Hang Seng Index, which ...

  Bloomberg Australia’s economy recorded its biggest monthly jobs gain this year, led by full-time employment, while a higher participation rate also signaled a healthier labor market. Employment jumped 39,100 from October, more than double economists’ forecast for a 17,500 gain. October jobs gain was upwardly revised to 15,200 from 9,800. Jobless rate rose to 5.7 percent from 5.6 percent. ...

  Bloomberg General Motors Co.’s joint venture in China with SAIC Motor Corp. is being investigated by the government for possible anti-trust violations, according to people familiar with the matter. Any action by the National Development and Reform Commission, which is conducting the probe, may be subject to changes, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the ...