April, 2019

• 13 April

  Threats to trade mean fading global growth

  The world’s finance ministers and central bank governors, gathered in Washington for meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, were assigned some grim reading this week. The IMF’s new forecasts predict a further slowing of the global expansion, and warn of serious downside risks as well. No single factor accounts for this cloud over the world’s ...

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• 13 April

  Britain learns what it really means to ‘take back control’

  

  The mantra “take back control” meant different things to different Brexit voters during the June 2016 referendum. But it’s pretty certain no one thought they’d be getting what came out of European Union (EU) summit. When they finally emerged in the early hours on April 11, the EU’s leaders had agreed to push back the UK’s Brexit deadline yet again, ...

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• 13 April

  Earnings losers are market’s big winners

  

  Chief executive officers are going out of their way to brace investors for what could be the worst first quarter in years. As of the end of last week, more than 20% of the companies in S&P 500 had pre-announced details of how they did in first three months, and nearly 80% of them told investors to lower their expectations. ...

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• 13 April

  Chinese love Vietnam property for wrong reasons

  

  Looking for the hottest residential real estate in Asia? Go to Ho Chi Minh City. Ever since Vietnam allowed foreigners to own apartments in July 2015, its luxury housing sector has been on a tear. Three years ago, when local developer Dai Quang Minh launched the first residential complex in the Thu Thiem area – a 657 hectare grassy plot ...

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• 13 April

  Amazon workers are listening to what you say to Alexa

  

  Bloomberg Tens of millions of people use smart speakers and their voice software to play games, find music or trawl for trivia. Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening. Sometimes, someone is. Amazon.com Inc employs thousands of people around the world to help improve ...

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• 13 April

  Dubai’s Vista buys Uber-like private jet service JetSmarter

  

  Bloomberg Vista Global Holding, which competes with Warren Buffett’s NetJets in the pay-by-the-hour private plane market, agreed to buy US-based JetSmarter, adding a service that sells empty seats on chartered aircraft. While the Uber-style model will extend the group’s product offering in the $11 billion on-demand corporate flights sector, JetSmarter is mainly attractive for industry-leading digital technology and an app ...

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• 13 April

  Elon Musk-linked team outlines system to monitor brain activity

  

  Bloomberg A team of scientists, some of whom have worked for Elon Musk, outlined a way to rapidly implant electrical wiring into the brains of rats. The process, described in an unpublished academic paper, is an important step towards a potential system to plug human brains directly into computers. The paper’s five authors have been employed by or loosely associated ...

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• 10 April

  Mubadala opens New York office as Abu Dhabi fund expands in US

  

  Bloomberg Mubadala Investment Co opened an office in New York as the Abu Dhabi wealth fund builds on its presence in the United States. “Today we have offices in San Francisco, we have offices in Rio De Janeiro, we have offices in Moscow, we have an office in New York City which we just inaugurated, and Hong Kong by the ...

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• 10 April

  Network International rises on $1.4 billion London IPO

  

  Bloomberg Network International shares surged in London trading after the payments processor raised 1.1 billion pounds ($1.4 billion) in an initial public offering that’s the biggest listing in Europe so far this year. Network International jumped 22 percent to 532.20 pence in London. The Dubai-based company sold 200 million shares for 435 pence each, according to a statement on Wednesday. ...

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• 10 April

  Dana Gas production up 6% in first quarter

  

  SHARJAH / WAM Dana Gas has announced that its average production for Q1, 2019 has increased by 6 percent year-on-year to 68,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) from 65,000 boepd in Q1 2018. The first quarter production increase was led by the KRI (Kurdistan Region of Iraq), which leapt to 32,750 boepd in Q1, 2019 from 26,300 boepd ...

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