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

This week, France’s data-protection regulator demanded that Google pay a record fine for violating Europe’s expansive new privacy rules. The tab? About $57 million. The purpose? Hmm. In its ruling, the regulator alleged that Google fails to adequately explain how it collects data to offer personalised advertising. Some information is “excessively disseminated” across different documents. Some requires more than one ...

At the moment, despite strong competition from the US, Britain leads the industrialised world in political breakdown. Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan for Brexit has been crushingly rejected by the House of Commons yet the government plods on robotically. As May explained: One, she has heard what Parliament just said and respects it; two, her deal with Europe is the ...

Watch out, electric-car battery makers — Toyota Motor Corp. has arrived. Asia’s biggest automaker is setting up a joint venture with Panasonic Corp. to produce batteries for partners such as its Daihatsu unit, Mazda Motor Corp. and Subaru Corp. that together account for more than 20 percent of global car production. Toyota will own 51 percent of the venture, to ...

Errant debtors are forever looking for ways to undermine creditor protection; but when lenders themselves start making a mockery of a fledgling insolvency law, nobody can save it. That’s where India’s two-year-old bankruptcy regime is today, brought to the brink of irrelevance by the strain of resolving its most high-profile case: Essar Steel India Ltd. The billionaire Ruia brothers have ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve is examining how Deutsche Bank AG handled billions of dollars in suspicious transactions from Denmark’s leading lender, according to people familiar with the matter, further intensifying what could be one of the biggest money-laundering scandals ever. The Fed’s probe is in an early stage as it scrutinises whether Deutsche Bank’s US operations adequately monitored funds from ...

Bloomberg Norway’s central bank is seen sticking to the script this week to slowly lift interest rates as it assesses the first tightening in more than seven years. Policy makers in Oslo will leave the benchmark rate at 0.75 percent when they announce their decision on Thursday, according to all economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The meeting is in between monetary ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan left monetary policy unchanged as it cut its inflation outlook once again, underscoring how far away its price target is and how few options the central bank has for drawing closer. The BOJ maintained its yield curve-control program and asset purchases, it said in a statement on Wednesday, a result predicted by all but one ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s inflation rate reached the mid-point of the central bank’s target range of 3 percent to 6 percent in December — something the Reserve Bank says would allow for flexibility in dealing with price shocks. Consumer-price growth slowed to 4.5 percent from a year earlier compared with 5.2 percent in November, the Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa said in ...

Bloomberg Just when the Federal Reserve most needs fresh data to keep its policy in sync with the US economy, the government shutdown is getting in the way. Timely information on economic growth, jobs, consumer spending and inflation is always crucial to monetary policy making. Now, the longest shutdown on record is blocking the collection and reporting of many of ...

Bloomberg Boeing Co’s first aerial refuelling tanker in a $44 billion programme is scheduled to land on Friday at an Air Force base in Kansas for a celebration tempered by what now may become a delay of at least three years in meeting its most important milestone. A ceremony is planned for the arrival of the KC-46 at McConnell Air ...