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Dubai / EMIRATES BUSINESS Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the global financial services hub connecting businesses and financial institutions with emerging markets across the Middle East, Africa & South Asia (MEASA), achieved another record year in 2015, was announced on Wednesday. The number of new company registrations at DIFC increased by more than a quarter (27%) compared with 2014, from 242 ...

WASHINGTON / Bloomberg Federal Reserve policy makers are beginning to worry that a corporate-credit squeeze will constrict the economic expansion. With banks tightening standards on business loans and investors demanding higher yields on some corporate debt, companies may find it harder and more expensive to raise the money they need to grow. The concern is that could prompt them to ...

Ottawa / Bloomberg Finance Minister Bill Morneau said economic conditions will make it difficult for the new Liberal government to meet a campaign pledge to balance the budget by the end of its mandate. Morneau, speaking to reporters in Ottawa, said the government’s main objective is to bolster growth in the economy while seeking to balance the budget in the ...

Rio De Janeiro / Bloomberg Dilma Rousseff’s supporters are almost cheerful, missing no opportunity to proclaim that the political crisis that shook Brazil in 2015 and led to impeachment proceedings against the president has lost momentum. In private, they are worried. Their main concern is that an almost two-year probe into a scheme of kickbacks in return for political favors ...

New York / AFP Argentina has reached a deal to settle with a group of holders of eurobonds it defaulted on 15 years ago, a US court mediator in its debt battle said. Mediator Daniel Pollack announced that the country reached a deal in principle with the “Brecher Class” of “holdout” creditors, to repay them 100 percent of the principal ...

Ottawa / Bloomberg It’s been a dismal start to the year for Canada’s newspapers, and investors see little sign of a turnaround. Postmedia Network Canada Corp., owner of many of the country’s newspapers, announced in January it was merging newsrooms in cities where it has two papers, eliminating dozens of jobs. Torstar Corp., publisher of the country’s largest circulation paper, ...

Bloomberg China deployed surface-to-air missiles this month on a contested island in the South China Sea, keeping tensions high even as leaders of Southeast Asian nations pledged to try and peacefully resolve territorial disputes in the waters. Satellite images showed two batteries of eight HQ-9 surface-to-air missile launchers and a radar system on Woody Island, part of the Paracel chain ...

Harare / AFP Zimbabwean former vice president Joice Mujuru announced on Wednesday that she is forming a new party to challenge President Robert Mugabe’s all-powerful ZANU-PF, in a move that could shake up the country’s politics. Mugabe, who turns 92 on Sunday, has ruled since independence in 1980 during an era marked by vote-rigging, mass emigration, accusations of human rights ...

Bloomberg Ukraine headed for a standoff between its two most powerful politicians after Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk defied President Petro Poroshenko’s call for his resignation and defeated a no-confidence motion in parliament. The result threatens to conserve political gridlock that’s jeopardizing the economy and billions of dollars of foreign aid. The motion to remove Yatsenyuk can’t be repeated during the ...

Uganda / AFP Ugandan election officials on Wednesday said they were expecting presidential and parliamentary polls to pass off peacefully, a day before seven candidates challenge veteran leader Yoweri Museveni’s three-decade grip on power. “The stage is set. We have dispatched electoral materials to all polling stations throughout the country and are ready to kick off the exercise,” national electoral ...