May, 2016

• 10 May

  China to plow $11.9bn into civil aviation

    Cal Wong China is preparing to invest RMB 77 billion ($11.9 billion) into domestic aviation infrastructure, with a particular focus on airports in rural areas, said the country’s civil aviation regulator at a State Council executive meeting last week. The announcement suggests this will be a multi-pronged initiative. One of the aims is to build more airports in remote ...

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• 10 May

  TUTAP energy project sparks political infighting in Afghanistan

    Central Asia has no shortage of critical, politically fraught, logistically challenging, and financially important energy projects. There’s the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan India gas pipeline (TAPI) and the Central Asia South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project (CASA-1000), both of which have been discussed in depth here at Crossroads Asia and feature in an excellent recent podcast from RFE/RL. But there’s another ...

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• 10 May

  In South Asia, much ado about F-16s

  

    Much to Islamabad’s chagrin, the message coming out from Washington is loud and clear. Pakistan is now being asked to pay for F-16 jets out of its own pocket. The message that the U.S. Congress is sending to Pakistan after it threatened to yank financing for F-16 jets ordered by the country cannot be more categorical. Pakistan can still ...

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• 10 May

  Taiwan’s railway diplomacy

  

    Michael Reilly On May 6, representatives of Taiwan’s Alishan Forestry Railway and Switzerland’s Matterhorn Gotthard Railway signed a “sister-railway” agreement in Taipei. Aimed at boosting technical cooperation and sharing marketing expertise between the two mountain railways, such an agreement would normally pass by unremarked outside railway circles and the local tourism industry. Indeed, the Alishan railway already has two ...

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• 10 May

  If you expect it, it’s not a ‘black swan’

  It’s the bread and butter of pundits to speculate what the world might look like after a relatively improbable but potentially disruptive event, like the U.K.’s exit from the European Union or a Donald Trump victory in the U.S. presidential election. The perceived probability of these “black swan” events is pretty high, after all, and contingency plans may be in ...

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• 10 May

  Global stocks rise with commodities; Yen drops

  

    BLOOMBERG Stocks rose around the world, as the bearish sentiment that has set the tone on equities markets the past two weeks eased amid a rebound in base metals. The yen declined a second day and Brazil’s real advanced. The MSCI All Country World Index climbed the most in three weeks, with U.S. equities climbing the most in a ...

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• 10 May

  Emirates Securities Market down by -1.04 percent

  

    ABU DHABI / EMIRATES BUSINESS The Emirates Securities Market Index has decreased by -1.04% to close at 4450.90 points. Accordingly the Market Capitalization has lost AED 7.62 billion attaining AED 724.19 billion. A total of 0.57 Billion Shares were traded with a total value of AED 0.6 billion during the trading session of 10-05-2016 through 6543 transactions. The number of companies ...

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• 10 May

  Emaar opens hotel, serviced residence property in Jeddah

  

    Reuters Emaar Hospitality Group, the hospitality and leisure subsidiary of global developer Emaar Properties, has marked its ambitious expansion to Saudi Arabia with the unveiling of its first hotel and serviced residence property in Jeddah Gate. The 14 storey Vida Jeddah Gate hotel tower and the 25 storey Vida Residences Jeddah Gate tower are centrally located in Jeddah Gate, ...

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• 10 May

  Germans fret Draghi rate cuts are fuelling a housing price bubble

  

    Bloomberg Anna Pesch had long assumed she’d be a renter for years to come, but this month she’s buying a three-bedroom house near the German city of Cologne. She’s got Mario Draghi to thank for that. “We didn’t want our money to keep going into rent,” said Pesch, a 32-year-old speech therapist who started looking for a home two ...

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• 10 May

  Brazil’s Itau bank seeks cheaper NY office space

    Bloomberg Brazil’s Itau Unibanco Holding SA plans to move out of its New York City office on the 50th floor of the General Motors Building, which features views of Central Park and some of the highest rents in Midtown, a person familiar with the matter said. The firm, Latin America’s biggest bank by market value, is searching for a ...

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