December, 2021

• 5 December

  50% of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Roads Corridor complete

  

  Dubai / WAM Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced the completion of 50 percent of the Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Roads Improvement Corridor. The project, which extends eight kilometres (km) along Ras Al Khor Road, runs from the intersection of the Dubai-Al Ain Road to the junction of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road. Improvement works also include the construction ...

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• 5 December

  EU lawmakers push for stricter rules to avoid greenwashing

  

  Bloomberg European Union (EU) legislators are looking to tighten the region’s planned green bond standards and make it harder for issuers of environmentally-friendly debt to overstate their promises to investors. Sellers of European green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds should develop a transition plan indicating how they will adhere to a 1.5°C global warming scenario and reach climate neutrality by 2050, ...

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• 5 December

  Italy to spend $3bn to stem energy-price hike

  Bloomberg Italy’s Finance Ministry said that it plans to spend about 2.8 billion euros ($3.2 billion) from the 2022 budget to help shield consumers from surging energy prices. The support will target the first quarter of the year, and will include 800 million euros of savings from a tax overhaul and unspent cash from previous months, according to people familiar ...

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• 5 December

  Taiwan may be next crisis, delaying clients’ retirement

  

  Future US pensioners should feel pretty happy about their golden goose. A strong stock market, coupled with a dovish Federal Reserve, has buffed up their retirement accounts. For the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, corporate pension plans are edging close to being fully funded. Over the past year, their collective retirement pot has grown an average 15.6%, data ...

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• 5 December

  Texas looks to future to guide its past

  

  Texans think very highly of Texas. This has always been the case, at least in my experience, but during a recent trip to Austin I noticed a deeper development: Texans are beginning to come to terms with their state’s history — and they are less concerned about past misdeeds than about future achievements. The relevant “monument” in Austin at the ...

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• 5 December

  Barbados is trading one empire for another!

  The Royal Standard flag representing the Queen was lowered for the last time in almost 400 years over Barbados, the Caribbean island that is now a republic with a president as head of state. At the handover ceremony declaring Barbados’s constitutional independence, Prince Charles gave a contrite speech and Rihanna was formally declared a national hero. That does not sound ...

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• 5 December

  China’s role in inflation in US won’t be transitory

  Somehow, China’s currency doesn’t come up in conversation so much anymore. The mercantilist approach of the Trump administration has been abandoned, and the level of the yuan is no longer a geopolitical flashpoint. However, perhaps we should all pay more attention. The yuan is now at its strongest in more than three years versus the US dollar. The last time ...

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• 5 December

  China to bring back 737 Max to skies after 3-year grounding

  

  Bloomberg Boeing Co’s 737 Max jets may resume commercial flights in China by the end of this year or early 2022, the nation’s Civil Aviation Administration said, a day after issuing an airworthiness directive that paved the way for the single-aisle workhorse to return to the Chinese skies after an almost three-year grounding. China will also start introducing new Max ...

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• 5 December

  Kazakh airline Air Astana considers IPO next year

  

  Bloomberg State-owned Kazakh airline Air Astana is considering an initial public offering, according to four people familiar with the talks, who asked not to be identified as the information is not public. The company has approached banks, although talks are still at an early stage for a share sale, the people said. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic that’s hit air travel ...

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• 5 December

  Cathay Pacific Air plans to hire hundreds of pilots as morale falls

  

  Bloomberg Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd plans to hire hundreds of pilots next year, amid reports of a rising number of resignations as Hong Kong’s Covid policies severely constrain manpower and weigh on morale at the airline. “We plan to employ several hundred pilots in the coming year, many of whom have already expressed an interest in being part of the ...

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