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

The European Commission is largely hap-py with the first year of its sweeping digital privacy rules. Evidence moun-ts, however, that the General Data Protection Directive, or GDPR, as applied today hur-ts smaller firms and has no effect on tech giants, which are the least interested in preserving user privacy. The directive went into effect in May 2018, demanding companies provide ...

Some investors are fretting that the massive global buildup of debt since the financial crisis a decade ago can’t be sustained. It can, at least for a bit longer — but only at the risk of a more severe correction in the future. That’s because this particular credit cycle may not be typical. The current expansion is largely policy-driven. Governments ...

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney says investment funds that promise to allow customers to withdraw their money on a daily basis are ”built on a lie.” The chief investment officer of Europe’s biggest independent asset manager agrees with him. “There is no point denying we are faced with a looming liquidity mismatch problem,” says Pascal Blanque, who oversees more ...

As you’ve probably heard, House Democrats have cut a two-year budget deal with Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump to suspend the federal debt ceiling and increase federal spending by $320 billion. The debt ceiling is an arbitrary and possibly counterproductive construct, while the spending increases aren’t all that big if you assume that inflation will continue at about 2 ...

A Chinese company in Guangzhou recently exported 300 used cars to buyers in Cambodia, Nigeria, Myanmar and Russia. The shipment was a first for China, which till now had restricted large-scale exports of used cars in deference to manufacturers, who feared that poor vehicle quality could damage their reputations. There will be more such shipments — and their impact will ...

Hong Kong’s ambitions to be an international data-center hub are a potential casualty of the city’s mass protests. Privacy brea-ches stemming from a summer of clashes between demonstrators and police threaten to erode confidence in the city as a base for foreign companies to set up storage facilities. To alleviate concerns, the government needs to improve security and regulation in ...

An abrupt reshuffle at the top of India’s finance bureaucracy makes it unlikely that country’s inaugural issue of a controversial sovereign bond overseas will happen now. It’s just as well. Borrowing in a foreign currency, possibly dollars, would have set back New Delhi’s attempt to drum up more global interest in rupee debt. An unexpected meeting of minds for-med between ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc is preparing to cut hundreds of jobs in its trading division — stark new evidence that an industrywide slump in revenue this year may be more permanent than the tweets and policy moves rattling clients. The New York-based bank plans to slash jobs across its fixed-income and stock-trading operations over the course of 2019, according to people ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s economy unexpectedly shrank in the second quarter, casting further doubts on the Riksbank’s plans to continue to raise rates. Gross domestic product contracted 0.1 percent in the second quarter from the first, according to preliminary numbers from Statistics Sweden. Economists had predicted an expansion of 0.3 percent. Annual growth was 1.4 percent while economists and the Riksbank had ...

Bloomberg Whitbread Plc Chief Executive Officer Alison Brittain has been approached as a candidate to succeed Ross McEwan as boss of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Group Plc, adding to signs the lender is broadening its search as it seeks a new leader. Brittain, who has run the British hotel and restaurant operator for nearly four years, is one of ...