March, 2017

• 27 March

  NBAD becomes Gulf’s first issuer of green bonds

    Bloomberg National Bank of Abu Dhabi PJSC is selling $587 million in a class of debt used to fund environmental projects, the first issue of green bonds from a region where governments are looking to curb dependence on oil as an energy source. The state-owned lender is offering the five-year securities at 98 basis points over the mid-swap rate, ...

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• 27 March

  Suspected al-Qaida bomber kills 5 soldiers in Yemen’s south

    SANAA / AP Yemeni security officials say a suicide bomber likely from al-Qaida has attacked a government building in the southern Lahj province, killing five soldiers and wounding ten, including civilians. They say the Monday attack in the provincial capital, al-Houta, could have been worse, but that guards managed to shoot the attacker before he drove his explosives-laden vehicle ...

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• 27 March

  Thousands evacuated as cyclone barrels towards Australian coast

    Bloomberg The worst cyclone in six years is set to smash into the coast of Queensland on Tuesday morning, forcing thousands of Australians to evacuate or seek emergency shelter and prompting some of the world’s biggest miners to halt coal operations. Cyclone Debbie is forecast to intensify before it makes landfall north of the city of Mackay with winds ...

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• 27 March

  Swiss, Turks open probes over ‘Kill Erdogan’ protest banner

    GENEVA / AP Swiss and Turkish prosecutors announced separate investigations on Monday after protesters hoisted a banner in Switzerland’s capital showing a gun pointed at an image of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan next to the words, “Kill Erdogan.” Bern regional prosecutors opened a probe for alleged “public provocation of crimes or violence,” Bern police spokesman Dominik Jaeggi said. ...

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• 27 March

  Trump economy needs wings, prayers to soar

  

    Donald Trump boasts that he has been an economic genius, creating jobs, cutting $12 billion off the national debt and overseeing a soaring stock market in just his first two months. These claims are largely phony. He may need braggadocio, though, because on the economy he has been dealt a bad hand politically. This problem is likely to be ...

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• 27 March

  Postal savings can’t coast on its tax triumph forever

  

    How to command a premium for mediocrity? If that question is posed to Postal Savings Bank of China Co., which counts almost half the people in the world’s most-populous nation as its customers, the answer may well be ‘superior tax planning.’ The Hong Kong-listed Chinese lender enjoys an 8 percent to 26 percent valuation premium over the four largest ...

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• 27 March

  Trump’s top generals ask Cong to join war on terror

  

    Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford found something constructive to tell senators on an appropriations subcommittee this week, even if it had nothing to do with the Pentagon budget. The two men challenged lawmakers to finally provide a legal basis for the U.S. war against terrorist groups. It’s something that President Barack ...

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• 27 March

  Human cost of Mosul battle rising

    Iraqi and coalition forces launched the operation to liberate western Mosul, the most populated urban areas, from IS extremists on February 19. Since then the Iraqi forces have wrested back a series of neighbourhoods. Troops have also retaken the city’s airport, a sprawling military complex, the main government compound. The offensive is being waged from three directions advancing along ...

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• 27 March

  Happy nations don’t focus on growth

  

    The Socialist candidate for the French presidency, Benoit Hamon, says he doesn’t believe in the ‘myth’ and “quasi-religion” of growth– it’s part of the “consumerist, productivist and materialist model” of development, he argues. That’s outside the economic mainstream, and many see those views as a symptom of the meltdown of the global left. But the just-released Global Happiness Report ...

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• 27 March

  Look at your phone to find Asia’s hottest tech stocks

  

    The global smartphone market has seen better days, yet the industry underpins the hottest stocks in Asia’s best-performing sector this year. The MSCI Asia Pacific Infotech index is up almost 16 percent in 2017, outgunning the runner up (industrials) by just shy of 7 percentage points. And leading that sub-index, in dollar terms, are smartphone suppliers. What’s interesting is ...

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