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

aThe trade deficit is a lot smaller than it was a decade ago: Over the 12 months ending in June, according to data released last week by the Commerce Department, the US imported about $531 billion more in goods and services than it exported. In 2006, the deficit was $762 billion. Those numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation; if they were, ...

Largely lost in the debate over how much credit President Donald Trump should or should not get for the performance of US stocks this year is that perhaps the biggest reason for the rally is strong earnings. With more than 90 percent of the S&P 500 members having reported second-quarter results, earnings growth is tracking at a 12.2 percent pace ...

If you’ve never tried a Japanese snack called Jagariko, I highly recommend it. When I visited the Tokyo offices of Japanese snackmaker Calbee Inc., I made sure to ask if I could have a free pack of my favorite snack. “Maybe,” the managers hedged. I wasn’t at Calbee to talk about their potato sticks, but their corporate culture. Calbee is ...

Bloomberg It was the late 1990s, and entrepreneurs Steven Abramson and Sidney Rosenblatt were pitching an electronics giant on their new flat-screen technology. It didn’t go well. The product was unproven, and, given that the startup had a pittance in the bank, the manufacturer had doubts about its long-term viability. “You want us to bet the future of our company ...

Bloomberg Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV will join BMW AG and Intel Corp. in developing a platform for self-driving vehicles, giving the Italian-American automaker new technology partners and adding heft to their existing coalition. FCA, which supplies plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica minivans to Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo driverless-car unit, announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the coalition. The automaker ...

Dubai / Emirates Business LG Electronics (LG) will incorporate an F1.6 aperture camera and glass lens in the dual camera of its upcoming V30 flag-ship smartphone, introducing industry-leading innovations that bring a new level of photographic innovation to the mobile industry. Excellence in smartphone cameras has long been a core competency of LG’s mobile devices and the dual camera module ...

Bloomberg Xu Li’s software scans more faces than maybe any on earth. He has the Chinese police to thank. Xu runs SenseTime Group Ltd., which makes artificial intelligence (AI) software that recognizes objects and faces, and counts China’s biggest smartphone brands as customers. In July, SenseTime raised $410 million, a sum it said was the largest single round for an ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. increased its credit line to Brazil’s Nubank, a four-year-old credit-card company that charges no fees and is growing as much as 10 percent a month. Nubank can now borrow as much as $144 million for about two years to finance its revolving credit portfolio, up from 375 million reais, David Velez, the Sao Paulo-based company’s ...

Reuters Egypt’s central bank kept its key interest rates unchanged at a monetary policy committee meeting, it said in a statement, after it had raised them by a total of 400 basis points in the previous two meetings. The bank has raised key interest rates by a total of 700 basis points, or 7 percentage points, since it floated the ...

Bloomberg European Central Bank policy makers are wondering how much stimulus quantitative easing offers once bond-buying stops. Their assessment will likely influence the ECB’s strategy for ending its asset-purchase programme. Keen to avoid any steps that inadvertently tighten financial conditions, policy makers can’t ignore that their open-ended QE design so far means investors are focused more on the monthly flow ...