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

For the head of the World Bank Group to quit unexpectedly would have been big news under any circumstances. But, the reason outgoing president Jim Yong Kim gave for his resignation on Monday is even more revealing. Kim said he was leaving the world’s most influential development and infrastructure-building agency to join a private-sector infrastructure investment fund because he believed ...

Build it and they will come. Or will they? A flurry of construction may be about to take off in China, and investors have pinned their hopes on it. Stocks of Japanese machinery makers Komatsu Ltd. and Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. perked up on Monday. Over the past week, Chinese engineering and construction companies’ shares have surfaced from multi-month lows. ...

Health-care costs are not as much in the news nowadays as they used to be. A big reason might be that cost growth has slowed in recent years. Between 1967 and 2007, per-capita health care costs rose at an average of 2.36 percent a year. Since then, it’s only been about 1.31 percent. That’s actually not such great news. Health-care ...

Bloomberg Stocks surged on Tuesday after the Trump administration said there was progress coming out of its two-day mid-level trade talks with China. The dollar rose with Treasury yields, and crude climbed towards $50 a barrel on expectations the market will be tightened by OPEC’s output cuts. All major US equity benchmarks were higher. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq gauges ...

Bloomberg India stocks rose as investors positioned for the corporate earnings’ season that begins this week amid estimates that economic growth may be slower than forecast. The S&P BSE Sensex climbed 0.4 percent to close at 35,980.93 in Mumbai after swinging between gains and losses. The broader NSE Nifty 50 Index rose 0.3 percent. India’s largest companies this week begin ...

Bloomberg For the Federal Reserve, 2019 has started out looking a lot like 2016: the last time uncertainty over global growth roiled financial markets for months on end. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell pointed to the 2016 episode to underscore the US central bank’s ability to be flexible when necessary, recalling the Fed held interest rates steady almost all year. But ...

Bloomberg Jim Yong Kim abruptly resigned as president of the World Bank more than three years ahead of schedule, potentially sparking an international tussle over who replaces him as the Trump administration questions the development lender’s purpose. Kristalina Georgieva, the bank’s second in command, will take over as interim president on February 1, the Washington-based bank said in a statement. ...

Bloomberg Bandhan Bank Ltd, India’s newest lender, will combine with mortgage financier Gruh Finance Ltd in a $11.7 billion deal, bringing the bank closer to meeting shareholding rules and helping it accelerate expansion. Investors in Gruh Finance, controlled by Housing Development Finance Corp, India’s biggest mortgage lender, will get 568 shares of Bandhan Bank for every 1,000 they own, according ...

Bloomberg Bank stock downgrades keep piling up as analysts caution about interest rates and credit with fourth-quarter earnings due to kick off next week. Raymond James downgraded 13 banks and lowered earnings estimates for most banks across its coverage. Analysts David Long and Michael Rose expect “abundant” downward revisions to net interest margin “with rates no longer providing such a ...

Bloomberg Nigeria is preparing rules that will allow wireless carriers to transfer cash, softening a previous policy that protected the turf of banks in Africa’s most populous country. The central bank may have realised it can’t rely on lenders alone to achieve its objective of extending services to the 50 million adults still without a bank account in the nation ...