February, 2016

• 15 February

  ADM sponsors, participates in future landscape and public realm meet

  

  Abu Dhabi / WAM As part of its participation in the Fusture Landscape and Public Realm Conference held on Yas Island in February, Abu Dhabi City Municipality, (ADM), reviewed many initiatives in providing services for public realm projects, lighting standards and sustainability in public realms. It also presented other working papers highlighting the role played by the municipality in landscaping ...

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• 15 February

  Humanity may be losing a race with its own growth

  

  Bloomberg Humanity is engaged in a high-stakes race with its own growth: Lest our use of energy and materials get out of control, we must constantly innovate to become more efficient. Unfortunately, new research suggests we may be losing. The rapid advancement of electronics technology illustrates how the race works. The number of transistors in the world’s devices has gone ...

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• 15 February

  Rice growing gets a ‘DNA’ leap

  

  LOS BANOS / AFP Rice-growing techniques learned through thousands of years of trial and error are about to be turbocharged with DNA technology in a breakthrough hailed by scientists as a potential second “green revolution”. Over the next few years farmers are expected to have new genome sequencing technology at their disposal, helping to offset a myriad of problems that ...

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• 15 February

  New thermal energy storage prototype at Masdar Institute

  

  Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, an independent, research-driven graduate-level university focused on advanced energy and sustainable technologies, has announced the successful initiation of its Concentrated Solar Power on Demand Demonstration (CSPonD Demo) pilot at the Masdar Institute Solar Platform (MISP) located in Masdar City. The demonstration is intended to show that the novel ...

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• 15 February

  Oil gives up gains as Iran loads shipment for Europe

  

  Singapore / AFP Oil prices turned lower again on Monday as Iran prepared to ship its first consignment of the commodity since sanctions were lifted, reigniting worries over a global supply glut. Both main contracts had soared more than 10 percent on Friday on a report that the OPEC producers’ club was open to output cuts that could drag prices ...

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• 15 February

  China yuan surges after central bank chief’s comments

  

  Shanghai / AFP China’s yuan currency surged more than one percent against the dollar on Monday, its biggest rise in over a decade, after the central bank chief said there was no reason the beleaguered unit should fall further. The yuan stood at 6.4944 to $1.0 at 0830 GMT, up 1.14 percent from February 5 — the last trading day ...

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• 15 February

  ADCB launches regionally distinctive private banking

  

  Abu Dhabi / EMIRATES BUSINESS Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB), announced the launch of “ADCB Private”, a new private banking proposition providing globally sophisticated banking and wealth management solutions for high-net-worth customers, delivered from the UAE. Wealthy clients in the region and the UAE have historically had to seek international banking and investment services that required them to deal with overseas ...

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• 15 February

  Japan’s SoftBank announces $4.4bn share buyback

  Shanghai / AFP Japanese telecom giant Softbank said on Monday it will buy back about 14 percent of its shares for more than $4.0 billion, after the stock plunged since the start of the year. The company plans to buy 167 million shares over one year starting Tuesday at a total cost of around 500 billion yen ($4.4 billion), it ...

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• 15 February

  Vickers says BoE is soft on UK Bank capital buffers

  BLOOMBERG Bank stock volatility this year shows that the Bank of England should “think again” about its capital buffer requirements for U.K. lenders, according to John Vickers, who led the Independent Commission on Banking. The BOE’s 11 percent goal for the “appropriate” level of Tier 1 equity, a regulatory measure of financial strength for the banking system, is “questionable,” Vickers ...

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• 15 February

  Egypt’s CIB accepts billionaire Sawiris offer for CI Capital

  Bloomberg Commercial International Bank Egypt SAE approved an offer by billionaire Naguib Sawiris’ Orascom Telecom Media And Technology Holding SAE to buy its investment-banking unit CI Capital. Orascom Telecom made a non-binding offer to buy CI Capital for 924 million Egyptian pounds ($118 million), Egypt’s biggest publicly-traded lender said in a filing to the country’s bourse on Monday. The deal ...

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