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

A missing piece in the global growth jigsaw appears to be falling into place. Spurred by higher profits and buoyant stock markets, some of the world’s best known companies from Amazon.com Inc. to Volkswagen AG are ramping up spending on new plants and equipment after years of caution. For an international economic expansion already gathering speed, that could prove a ...

After months of wrangling, the Italian parliament has finally passed a new electoral law. The new rules will make it much harder for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement to come to power. They will not, however, give Italy the stability it needs to escape the low-growth trap. The law is a complex combination of first-past-the-post and proportional representation. Any party ...

The recent disclosures that Russians bought ads from Facebook, Google and Twitter to target US voters in 2016 have left lawmakers investigating how to prevent foreign interference in future elections. But there’s another alarming problem that Congress also needs to address: how to prevent domestic and foreign organizations from duping Americans out of information they unwittingly share on social media ...

Bloomberg US stocks erased early gains to trade little changed, while the dollar and Treasuries struggled for direction as investors awaited details of Republican tax cuts and the Federal Reserve’s latest decision. The euro slipped as data showed inflation unexpectedly slowed in the region. Small caps advanced, while the S&P 500 pared a gain as a torrent of decisions with ...

Reuters Saudi Arabia’s stock market fell on Tuesday despite a big rebound by petrochemical company PetroRabigh, while Dubai Investments helped offset losses by real estate-related shares in that market. The Saudi stock index dropped 0.2 percent as PetroRabigh’s gain failed to bolster the petrochemical sector as a whole while banking and insurance stocks weighed heavily on the market. PetroRabigh jumped ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. just got more bullish — and hawkish — on India. While the investment bank has for months been an outlier predicting monetary tightening in Asia’s No. 3 economy, it now sees the rate increases coming earlier than investors expect. That’s because the government’s plan to inject a record 2.1 trillion rupees ($32 billion) of fresh ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan left its massive monetary stimulus program unchanged even as it trimmed its inflation forecasts, signaling further divergence ahead from its global peers. Governor Haruhiko Kuroda and the board voted on Tuesday to maintain the central bank’s yield curve control program and asset purchases, a result predicted by all 43 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The vote ...

Bloomberg BNP Paribas SA couldn’t avoid the trading slump that dragged down results at its biggest US and European competitors in the third quarter, as low interest rates and tepid demand from clients curbed activity. Income from trading bonds, currencies and commodities at BNP fell 26 percent to 801 million euros ($932 million) from a year earlier, based on figures ...

Bloomberg Bank of China Ltd. shares slumped the most in almost four months in Hong Kong after the lender failed to report the same improvements in asset quality as its rivals. The stock lost 3.2 percent to HK$3.90 as of 11:16 a.m. local time, paring its rally this year to 13 percent. Bocom International Holdings Co. and Huatai Securities Co. ...

Bloomberg PT Bank Central Asia is seeking to buy a mid-size lender as intensifying competition and a sluggish Indonesian economy prompt some owners to consider exiting the industry, according to the firm’s top executive. Southeast Asia’s largest lender by market value after DBS Group Holdings Ltd. has set aside about 4 trillion rupiah ($295 million) this year to finance an ...