February, 2021

• 14 February

  Daman announces launch of first online smart branch

  Abu Dhabi / WAM The National Health Insurance Company – Daman has launched the first digital smart branch service in the GCC health insurance sector: the Hayakom-Thiqa smart branch. The innovative smart branch provides all the services of a Thiqa branch and works through an advance appointment system that allows members to choose a convenient time to virtually meet a ...

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• 14 February

  UAE, Oman discuss ways to strengthen cooperation

  

  Abu Dhabi / WAM His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, met with Sayyid Badr Hamad al-Busaidi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Oman, as part of his official visit to Oman. During the meeting, both sides discussed the strong historic ties between the UAE and Oman and ways of strengthening their ...

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• 14 February

  Hamdan bin Rashid donates $500,000 to university in Sudan

  

  Dubai / WAM HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, Minister of Finance and Chairman of the Al Maktoum Foundation, has ordered the donation of $500,000 to the Khartoum-based International University of Africa for the 2020-2021 academic year. The move is in recognition of the university’s role in the field of higher education and Africa and ...

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• 14 February

  DFA seeks to find solutions that reimagine post-pandemic world

  

  Dubai / WAM Dubai Future Accelerators (DFA), an initiative of the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF), has announced that the second phase of the eighth edition of its flagship programme is well underway to position Dubai as a leading city of the future. Being hosted at the DFF’s innovation ecosystem, AREA 2071, the Fall Cohort’s participating entities include Dubai Roads and ...

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• 14 February

  City of London fails to take back control after Brexit

  

  The City of London’s chief coping mechanism for dealing with Brexit’s threat to the financial services business is to dismiss the loss of jobs and investment as a trickle rather than a flood. Yes, cheerleaders argue, some 7,500 jobs have been moved to the European Union, but that’s a fraction of the hundreds of thousands predicted by the doomsayers. Sure, ...

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• 14 February

  Twitter must stick to its guns in India

  

  When India’s minister for commerce and industry recently urged his followers to “connect with me” on Koo, an “Indian micro-blogging platform,” he did so on Twitter. That should be a lesson to the US social media giant: In its battles with India’s government and others around the world, the platform needn’t surrender its principles too easily. The implied threat from ...

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• 14 February

  Amazon spends a lot on R&D. Don’t call it that!

  Along with the news that founder and long-time Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos “will transition to the role of Executive Chair in the third quarter of 2021,” Amazon.com Inc’s fourth-quarter earnings release included the remarkable if not exactly surprising disclosure that the company had spent $42.7 billion on “technology and content” in 2020, up 19% from the year before and ...

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• 14 February

  Would Jeff Ubben shake up Exxon Mobil?

  Like the proverbial buses, we waited a while for an activist to show up at Exxon Mobil Corp and then three came along. The third is Jeff Ubben, founder and former head of ValueAct Capital Management, who is now reportedly raising an $8 billion ESG fund for his new firm, Inclusive Capital Partners. He arrives in the wake of Engine ...

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• 14 February

  Shell files arbitration against Nigeria

  

  Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc launched arbitration proceedings against the Nigerian government over a long-running community dispute. The oil major’s Netherlands-registered holding company and a Nigerian unit filed a case at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, according to the Washington-based organisation’s website. Shell brought its claim against Africa’s biggest crude producer under the bilateral investment ...

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• 14 February

  Vestas ups stakes for world’s biggest wind turbine

  

  Bloomberg Vestas Wind Systems A/S will start selling the world’s biggest offshore wind turbine, standing taller than the highest point of the Golden Gate Bridge. The giant machine, that’ll come into use by 2024, will compete with the skyscraper-sized turbines already on sale by its competitors. The industry is racing to produce increasingly larger machines that generate wind power more ...

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