February, 2016

• 13 February

  Cloisall secures AED700mn contracts

  

  Ritika Sharma / EMIRATES BUSINESS Gains are in for interior fit-out companies in the UAE as real estate in the region is getting a push from the ensuing Expo 2020. The estimated size of the interior and fit-out market grew at a pace of 8.5 percent and reached US$7.98 billion in 2015. On the same lines, Cloisall, the GCC’s leading ...

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• 13 February

  Du, SAP launch new cloud services in UAE

  

  Sunaina Rana / Emirates Business UAE government enterprises will gain access to some of the world’s smartest applications in 2016 through their new cloud services, according to telecom giant du and software leader SAP. The announcement was made during the World Government Summit held in Dubai. The collaboration between the two organisations will create digitalization and innovation across the country. ...

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• 13 February

  Economic confidence among CEOs in MENA hits 3-year low

  Sunaina Rana / Emirates Business Economic confidence among CEOs in the MENA region has hit a three-year low in the final quarter of 2015, according to a new survey, which attributes the trend to oil price plunge and political, social unrests in many of the nations. The YPO Global Pulse Confidence Index for the MENA declined for the fifth consecutive ...

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• 13 February

  USA, Russia-backed truce draws skepticism in Syria

  

  Bloomberg World powers agreed on a partial cease-fire in Syria’s civil war, reaching a deal that could forestall a humanitarian crisis around the besieged city of Aleppo even amid skepticism about how broad and lasting the truce might be. Backing the accord were all the major outside powers in the five-year-old conflict, including the US, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and ...

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• 13 February

  Refugee crisis strains Germany’s ambition to slash pollution

  

  Bloomberg Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said Germany’s decision to admit more than 1.1 million refugees within the last year is likely to strain the government’s target to cut greenhouse gas pollution. The minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet who also oversees housing asked for 3.9 billion euros ($4.4 billion) in additional spending through 2020 to build homes for asylum seekers. ...

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• 13 February

  Ukraine peace plan far from fulfilled one year on

  

  Bloomberg Germany said there’s little progress in fulfilling a peace deal for Ukraine signed a year ago and called on the parties to the conflict to step up efforts after four- nation talks with Ukraine, Russia and France. While the intensity of fighting has declined, “we are still quite far off from implementing” the accord, said Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier ...

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• 13 February

  Argentina asks USA Judge to drop block on its debt payments

  

  Bloomberg Argentina’s new administration wasted little time trying to end US court orders barring the country from paying holders of its restructured debt, as it seeks to set aside its status as a credit-market pariah after 15 years. Representatives of newly seated President Mauricio Macri, after reaching a settlement with some holdout creditors, is urging US District Judge Thomas Griesa ...

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• 13 February

  What would be the Sanders doctrine?

  

  Is Bernie Sanders a closet foreign policy “realist”? Reading his few pronouncements on foreign policy, you sense that he embraces the realists’ deep skepticism about American military intervention. But he has said so little about foreign policy that it’s hard to be sure. Foreign policy is the hole in Sanders’ political donut. We know what he doesn’t like — the ...

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• 13 February

  What a new Vietnam-Russia deal says

  

  It is potentially an unusual business transaction. While the prospect of a Vietnamese company taking over a Russian group in of itself is unusual, the buyout of a strategic stake in a major fish distributor is also a reflection of changing attitudes to the management of the Mekong River. Food security is the priority issue dominating the political agenda surrounding ...

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• 13 February

  Why the Trans-Caspian transport route matters

  The Trans-Caspian transport route is many things to the many states involved. Transporting goods from Europe to China and back–at the moment crossing through Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan (as well as both the Black and Caspian Seas)–is an alternative to the Russian route. The clearest rationale behind the recent focus on the route is political, but that’s not the ...

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