The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.

T he Covid-19 pandemic is a bracing national security challenge — and how the country responds is doubly crucial, since biological history tells us that another, potentially more lethal, pathogen is inevitable. The US military can play a valuable role in helping to fight the next pandemic, if the lessons of this crisis are inculcated and implemented now. America’s armed ...

A large part of managing the economic disruption from the coronavirus crisis has been keeping businesses and individuals afloat amid the shutdown of large parts of the economy. Banks, landlords, the federal government, hospitals and workers have all chipped in to do their part. But one notable group of companies has been missing from this process — large technology companies ...

A Holy Grail of policymaking since the end of the 1970s high-inflation era has been to stop turning public debt into interest-free money. In emerging economies like India, where the idea made a late entry, this dogma is threatening to get in the way of mounting a robust response to the coronavirus. The reluctance to surrender hard-won victories is understandable. ...

Bloomberg European stocks dropped with US futures on Thursday as investors weighed the latest signs of the coronavirus’s impact on the global economy and a slew of corporate earnings. Crude oil rose to about $15 a barrel in New York. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index quickly erased its opening gain as an estimate of private-sector activity in the euro area ...

Bloomberg Indian stocks rose, set for a second straight day of gains, as investors bought riskier assets amid a partial easing of the nationwide lockdown and signs of the coronavirus outbreak easing globally. The S&P BSE Sensex climbed 9% to 31,673.78 as of 1:19 pm in Mumbai, while the NSE Nifty 50 Index advanced by the same magnitude. Both measures ...

Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG is setting aside more than $1 billion to cover writedowns and provisions for bad loans, the biggest such hit in more than a decade as the coronavirus pummels economic activity across the globe. The bank is holding back 568 million Swiss francs ($585 million) for credit losses, almost triple what analysts had been expecting, and ...

Bloomberg Standard Bank Group Ltd. said first-quarter net income declined 27% after Africa’s largest lender prepared for a surge in loan defaults as measures to contain the coronavirus batter business and personal incomes alike. Credit-impairment charges for the three months through March were “significantly higher” than in the prior year, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement. “The increase was ...

Bloomberg A former Deutsche Bank AG veteran’s Japanese cryptocurrency exchange is poised to start trading services just as Bitcoin shows signs of a recovery from coronavirus-fuelled turmoil. More than two years after its foundation, FXcoin Ltd. plans to offer Bitcoin transactions on its platform from May, it said in a statement on Thursday. The firm has recently begun accepting applications ...

Bloomberg Last month HSBC Holdings Plc shocked investors by announcing it would scrap its dividend. For the Hong Kong Medical Association, a group in charge of community public health programs instrumental in the fight against the coronavirus and a long-time investor in the city’s biggest bank, the news meant it would lose 7% of its annual spending budget. With more ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) will accept some junk-rated debt as collateral for its loans to banks in a move that aims to shield the euro area’s most vulnerable economies as they face the risk of credit downgrades in the coronavirus. The ECB will accept bonds as long as they had at least the lowest investment grade on April ...