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

For many years, respected macroeconomists scolded countries that failed to reduce their debt levels. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose job it is to lend money to poor countries in crisis, long demanded fiscal austerity in exchange for aid. In Japan, economists darkly warned of a solvency crisis as that country’s debt climbed. In the US, too, many economists cautioned ...

Day traders may be rejoicing at SoftBank Group Corp.’s biggest ever buyback, but for loyal believers in Masayoshi Son’s magic wand, it’s another worrisome development. SoftBank unveiled the repurchase program last week, promising to spend as much as $5.5 billion on its own stock over the coming year. That would be enough to buy 71 million shares, or 6.5 percent ...

When companies book a massive writedown, shareholders often just shrug. That’s because impairments usually happen a long time after the market has formed a fairly accurate opinion of the company’s financial position — and a charge doesn’t impact cash. India’s Tata Motors Ltd hasn’t been so lucky in how its own writedown was received this week. The 3.1 billion pound ...

India’s interest-rate surprise is looking more like a good one. In what may seem like an odd pairing outside cricket contests, New Zealand may have just validated the subcontinent’s contentious cut. Inflation figures showed an easing in the pace of India’s consumer-price increases in January. That’s what you want to see if you’re going to shock people with a reduction ...

France and Germany’s recent cooperation agreement – in which the two nations promised to form join positions on all important European matters – appears to have withstood a difficult early test. The two powers have forged a compromise over the contentious issue of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. The connection, which will run from Ust-Luga in Russia ...

By his own admission, the boss of Ryanair Holdings Plc hasn’t done a very good job lately. Over the past 18 months, a scheduling fiasco and labor revolt have forced the budget carrier to cancel thousands of flights, offer better pay and conditions to staff and recognize trade unions. To his credit, Michael O’Leary volunteered not to take a bonus ...

How can investors profit from China’s race with the US for 5G supremacy? Finding the answer is as tricky as figuring out the geopolitics. The nation’s sleepy telecom stocks came back to life after Huawei Technologies Co. CFO Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada in early December. While the official charge was that the company had violated US sanctions on ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG aims to rebuild in the Middle East after years of cost cutting and has hired executives to help win debt and advisory deals. “We have pivoted from a pure cost-control focus in 2018 to a controlled, disciplined growth phase in 2019,” Jamal Al Kishi, chief executive officer of the Middle East and Africa for the Frankfurt-based ...

Bloomberg New Zealand’s central bank pushed out its forecast for an interest-rate increase to early 2021, disappointing investors looking for signs of a policy easing later this year and sending the currency surging. Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr left the official cash rate at 1.75 percent on Wednesday in Wellington and said he expects to keep it there “through 2019 ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s central bank committed to a plan to raise interest rates this year and dropped a mandate that had allowed policy makers to intervene rapidly in the currency market to help drive inflation higher. The krona gained on the news, after many in the market had expected the Stockholm-based Riksbank to signal a more cautious stance. The bank left ...