March, 2016

• 5 March

  New advertising drive urges the young to do good

  

  DUBAI / Emirates Business A new advertising competition for the brightest young creative minds in the Middle East has been launched to highlight one of the world’s most under-diagnosed diseases. The Young Lynx Print Competition, a feature of the upcoming Dubai Lynx Festival, March 6-8 at Madinat Jumeirah, will call upon advertising executives under the age of 30 to come ...

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• 5 March

  Europe’s best tech conference coming to Dubai

  

  DUBAI / Emirates Business Codemotion, one of Europe’s largest tech conferences devoted to developing an ecosystem of innovation in coding, will arrive for the first time in the UAE on 1-2 April, offering a unique platform for pioneering developers and technical talents to meet and discuss the latest trends and advances in the field. Codemotion is now a regular feature ...

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• 5 March

  Qatar affirmed by S&P, standing out amid Gulf state downgrades

  

  Bloomberg Qatar’s AA credit rating was affirmed by Standard and Poor’s, which cited the nation’s ample natural gas reserves and an infrastructure investment program as drivers of continued growth. The country is standing out amid the spate of downgrades S&P has issued for energy exporters whose credit outlooks have worsened on plunging oil prices. The rating company has already cut ...

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• 5 March

  Coal prices may rise for first time in two years

  

  Bloomberg Potential supply cuts have the price of metallurgical coal — the kind used to make steel — poised to do something it hasn’t done since October 2013: Rise. The benchmark contract for the coal may gain by a few dollars in the second quarter amid speculation that China is curtailing supply amid high costs, Mark Levin, a coal analyst ...

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• 5 March

  This oil rally looks a lot like last it was during last spring

  

  Bloomberg What is the oil rally running on? “Gasoline!” cry bulls. “Fumes!” cry bears (and the odd headline writer). To find out who is right, it is worth comparing this rally with the one that happened almost exactly a year earlier. The similarity doesn’t end there. This chart shows what happened with oil prices at the start of this year ...

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• 5 March

  Defying global slump, USA hiring surges in February

  

  Washington / AFP US employers defied a global slowdown and pumped up hiring in February, fending off worries about financial market turmoil and the oil industry crash. The Labour Department reported that companies and government authorities added a much better-than-expected 242,000 jobs last month, and the figures for the previous two months were revised higher. Steady growth in consumer spending ...

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• 5 March

  Puerto Rico utility may pay contractors before debt

  Bloomberg Puerto Rico’s main water utility may not have enough money to repay certain bonds if it needs to redirect funds to pay contractors, according to a filing on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s website. The Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority’s board on Feb. 16 approved an alternative plan to divert money to pay contractors if the agency fails ...

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• 5 March

  Brazil’s Lula defiant after detention

  

  SAO PAULA / Bloomberg Brazil’s ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed to battle his opponents in the streets in a defiant speech, hours after being briefly detained as part of a probe into a massive corruption scheme. Wearing a red shirt with his leftist Worker’s Party yellow star on his chest, Lula gave an emotional speech to supporters where ...

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• 5 March

  Argentina to sell $11.7bn bonds to yield 8 per cent

  Bloomberg Argentina plans to mark its return to global capital markets in mid-April by issuing $11.68 billion of bonds to yield 7.5 to 8 percent, Finance Ministry officials told Congress while presenting a debt bill to clear the way for a settlement with most holdout creditors. After reaching a milestone deal with the largest holdout creditors led by billionaire Paul ...

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• 5 March

  Amazon’s decision to reduce tablet security comes at a bad time

  

  BLOOMBERG Amazon.com Inc. is dialing back on the security built into its tablets. Bad timing. The Web retailer decided late last year to remove the ability to encrypt data stored on its Fire tablets, a few months before a battle erupted between Apple Inc. and the FBI over the decryption of information locked in a terrorist’s iPhone. As a result, ...

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