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

  DOHA / Reuters Qatar Petroleum (QP) and ExxonMobil will start drilling for oil and gas off the southern coast of Cyprus in 2018, the Qatari firm said after signing an exploration and production sharing contract with the Mediterranean island. Exploring the Mediterranean’s Levant Basin has become more attractive since Eni discovered Egypt’s offshore Zohr field in 2015, the biggest ...

  Bloomberg The new way foreign worker visas are doled out in the US is poised to benefit some of the biggest technology companies, like Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc., while punishing outsourcing firms that developed a disproportionate dependence on the program. The administration is increasing scrutiny on H-1B visa applications for low-level computer programmers, focusing enforcement on ...

  Bloomberg Toronto’s residential housing market showed no signs of cooling last month, with the average sale price soaring a record 33 percent from a year ago, pushing the cost of a detached home in the heart of the city to almost C$1.6 million ($1.2 million). In Toronto and surrounding suburbs prices climbed by a third in every major housing ...

  Bloomberg Uncertainty about President Donald Trump’s domestic policies and weak European currencies buoyed outbound dealmaking by US companies during the first quarter of the year. US acquirers spent more than $70 billion on European targets in the three months to March 31, more than double the amount they dropped in the same period a year earlier and the most ...

  Bloomberg Seattle’s first-in-the-nation law allowing drivers-for-hire to unionize was blocked by a federal judge, giving a boost to ride-hailing companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. US District Judge Robert Lasnik in Seattle on Tuesday granted a request by the US Chamber of Commerce to put the city’s ordinance on hold before it goes into effect. The ...

  When people come up to me and declare that economists are charlatans, they usually mention how economists failed to predict the Great Recession. This is true. No mainstream macroeconomic model of the day managed to anticipate that the largest, longest economic downturn since the Great Depression was imminent, until it was already underway. Macroeconomists typically respond that forecasting isn’t ...

  Looking at the headlong growth in Australian house prices — up 19 percent from a year earlier in Sydney in March — it’s tempting to believe that the market is simply uncontrollable. In 2014, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), announced measures to restrict the increase in investment mortgages. For three quarters it seemed to be working, with loan ...

  On the eve of their first-ever meeting this week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has one great advantage over US President Donald Trump: He knows what he wants. By contrast, US policy towards China looks confused and contradictory. Until and unless this changes, not much progress will be made on critical issues in the most important bilateral relationship in the ...

  The Russian subway bombing, which killed 14 people, was the worst terrorist attack in a major Russian city in years. The suspected bomber has been identified as Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, 22, a Russian citizen born in Kyrgyzstan. It drew wide condemnation from Russia’s friends and foes. The UAE strongly condemned the terrorist bombings and expressed its full solidarity with Russia ...

  Turmoil continues for small currencies on Europe’s periphery: The Czech Republic finally may be about to drop the koruna’s peg to the euro, and Iceland is looking for a currency to use to value the krona. The agony of these decisions may give central bank governors an illusion of control, but currency pegs appear to be outliving their usefulness. ...