Bloomberg Asking prices for London homes reached another record this month as the winter lull in the market came to an end. The 5.4 percent monthly surge puts the average price at 643,843 pounds ($932,000), property website operator Rightmove said. Inner London surged almost 8 percent to 848,000 pounds. Nationally, prices rose 2.9 percent in February from January. The report ...
Read More »ADM sponsors, participates in future landscape and public realm meet
Abu Dhabi / WAM As part of its participation in the Fusture Landscape and Public Realm Conference held on Yas Island in February, Abu Dhabi City Municipality, (ADM), reviewed many initiatives in providing services for public realm projects, lighting standards and sustainability in public realms. It also presented other working papers highlighting the role played by the municipality in landscaping ...
Read More »Humanity may be losing a race with its own growth
Bloomberg Humanity is engaged in a high-stakes race with its own growth: Lest our use of energy and materials get out of control, we must constantly innovate to become more efficient. Unfortunately, new research suggests we may be losing. The rapid advancement of electronics technology illustrates how the race works. The number of transistors in the world’s devices has gone ...
Read More »Rice growing gets a ‘DNA’ leap
LOS BANOS / AFP Rice-growing techniques learned through thousands of years of trial and error are about to be turbocharged with DNA technology in a breakthrough hailed by scientists as a potential second “green revolution”. Over the next few years farmers are expected to have new genome sequencing technology at their disposal, helping to offset a myriad of problems that ...
Read More »New thermal energy storage prototype at Masdar Institute
Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, an independent, research-driven graduate-level university focused on advanced energy and sustainable technologies, has announced the successful initiation of its Concentrated Solar Power on Demand Demonstration (CSPonD Demo) pilot at the Masdar Institute Solar Platform (MISP) located in Masdar City. The demonstration is intended to show that the novel ...
Read More »Oil gives up gains as Iran loads shipment for Europe
Singapore / AFP Oil prices turned lower again on Monday as Iran prepared to ship its first consignment of the commodity since sanctions were lifted, reigniting worries over a global supply glut. Both main contracts had soared more than 10 percent on Friday on a report that the OPEC producers’ club was open to output cuts that could drag prices ...
Read More »China yuan surges after central bank chief’s comments
Shanghai / AFP China’s yuan currency surged more than one percent against the dollar on Monday, its biggest rise in over a decade, after the central bank chief said there was no reason the beleaguered unit should fall further. The yuan stood at 6.4944 to $1.0 at 0830 GMT, up 1.14 percent from February 5 — the last trading day ...
Read More »ADCB launches regionally distinctive private banking
Abu Dhabi / EMIRATES BUSINESS Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB), announced the launch of “ADCB Privateâ€, a new private banking proposition providing globally sophisticated banking and wealth management solutions for high-net-worth customers, delivered from the UAE. Wealthy clients in the region and the UAE have historically had to seek international banking and investment services that required them to deal with overseas ...
Read More »Japan’s SoftBank announces $4.4bn share buyback
Shanghai / AFP Japanese telecom giant Softbank said on Monday it will buy back about 14 percent of its shares for more than $4.0 billion, after the stock plunged since the start of the year. The company plans to buy 167 million shares over one year starting Tuesday at a total cost of around 500 billion yen ($4.4 billion), it ...
Read More »Vickers says BoE is soft on UK Bank capital buffers
BLOOMBERG Bank stock volatility this year shows that the Bank of England should “think again†about its capital buffer requirements for U.K. lenders, according to John Vickers, who led the Independent Commission on Banking. The BOE’s 11 percent goal for the “appropriate†level of Tier 1 equity, a regulatory measure of financial strength for the banking system, is “questionable,†Vickers ...
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