February, 2016

• 18 February

  At Pemex, a new CEO confronts painful reckoning for oil bust

  Mexico City / bloomberg For nearly 80 years, Pemex has ruled Mexico’s oil industry like a nation unto itself. Few dared challenge the state-owned monopoly, a pillar of government revenue with powerful political allies. Now, a Harvard-educated economist is about to try. Like a thunderclap, the arrival of Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya at Petroleos Mexicanos is sending shock waves across ...

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• 18 February

  Nouveau-riche bling blossoms in Cuba

  

  Havana / AFP Eddy Relova used to scrape a living buying and selling goods in the street, but now he sits wearing a thick gold necklace at a posh restaurant in Havana. State controls over Cuba’s economy are gradually easing, unleashing a new class of moneyed consumers in a communist island where wealth is largely taboo. Now, aged 23, Relova ...

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• 18 February

  Now, monitor your 1,000-mile away farmlands from home

  

  ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business Thanks to UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) technology, soon UAE-based agriculturists and investors will be able to monitor their sprawling farmlands situated as far as in Sudan, without even stepping out of their homes. Under the concept of remote ownership, this could be made possible through smart drones that would do daily monitoring of faraway meadows ...

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• 18 February

  Campaign to educate workers on legal rights upon arrival at airport

  

  Dubai / WAM Saqr Ghobash, Minister of Human Resources and Emiratisation, on Thursday launched a campaign under the slogan ‘Know your rights’ to educate workers about their rights, upon arrival through Dubai airports. “This campaign comes in the framework of the ministry’s keenness to raise awareness among foreign workers that enter the labour market for the first time especially when ...

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• 18 February

  Women set to take root with STEM Hackathon

  

  ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business Women active in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), from across the MENA region, are all set to kick-start their start-up dreams in Dubai on Friday. These exceptionally talented women will converge in Dubai to take part in two-day event all-women Smart City Hackathon 2016. Themed ‘Smart Cities for Women’, this hackathon ...

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• 18 February

  Jalboot adds more services and stops for Abu Dhabi

  

  RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business Are you tired of hiring a cab, or driving your car across the city for weekend getaways? Have you been longing for a closer but comprehensive view of the Emirates capital or wanting to offer the same to your overseas guest visiting you? In short, if you want to experience Abu Dhabi in a new ...

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• 18 February

  App that draws divorce tiffs to a close

  

  Bloomberg Sheri Atwood is the rare Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose pitch includes intimate details about her family—namely, how it was broken up. Twice. “My parents had a horrific divorce,” says the 36-year-old former Symantec Corp. executive. “It felt like the only time they communicated was in court—and when it had to do with money.” Her own divorce years later, and ...

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• 18 February

  McDonald’s ‘chocolaty’ bid to woo back diners

  

  Tokyo / AFP Customers like Shigeaki Yamaguchi may be the last hope for McDonald’s Japan as it battles slumping sales in the wake of an embarrassing string of food scandals. At a location in Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku district, Yamaguchi munched on the chain’s newest culinary offering — french fries drizzled in brown and white chocolate syrup. “Delicious,” the 37-year-old proclaimed ...

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• 18 February

  Algeria awards contract for refineries

  Paris / Bloomberg Algeria has awarded UK-based Amec Foster Wheeler the front end engineering design (Feed) for three green-field refinery projects, which are estimated to have a total budget of around $6bn. A statement issued on 16 February by the state-controlled energy company Sonatrach said that the design contract for the three refineries has been “provisionally awarded to the tenderer ...

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• 18 February

  Carbon dioxide project commissioned in Kuwait

  Paris / Bloomberg Equate Petrochemicals, a joint venture between US-based Dow Chemical and the Kuwaiti government, has commissioned a $70m carbon dioxide plant in Kuwait. The carbon dioxide-recovery facility has a capacity of 280 tonnes a day. The gas will be produced by existing Equate petrochemicals plants. It will filter and purify the carbon dioxide, then liquefy it, making it ...

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