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

  By BMW AG’s high standards, 2016 wasn’t great. While it was a record year in terms of sales, the profit margin of its car business was the lowest since 2010 at 8.9 percent. The company missed analysts’ estimates, and the share price dropped. So CEO Harald Krueger’s decision to reaffirm the firm’s “Automated, Connected, Electrified and Shared” strategy raised ...

  European Central Bank President Mario Draghi knows he’ll eventually have to end the central bank’s bond-buying program and raise interest rates. But he’s rightly determined, no matter how much pressure Germany brings to bear, to keep that day as far in the future as possible — which makes the rest of this year a non-event for euro zone policy ...

  In the past two weeks, the Chinese government granted President Donald Trump 38 valuable trademarks. They come as tensions between China and the US have cooled somewhat, leading to suggestions that the award is a poorly concealed quid pro quo designed to reward a president with considerable personal business interests. On Tuesday, Senator Ben Cardin went so far as ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Major Gulf stock market indexes mostly closed lower on Sunday after oil prices plunged at the end of last week to a three-month low, but shares in Dubai’s Shuaa Capital and Saudi Arabia’s Bank Aljazira surged in response to company-specific news. Saudi Arabia’s index dropped 1.2 percent as the share prices of all 14 listed petrochemical ...

  Bloomberg Vitol Group BV, the trader that shipped the first cargo of US crude after export restrictions ended in late 2015, predicts the country’s oil exports will grow “a lot more” because of rising production in Texas. US crude shipments briefly surged to a record 1.21 million barrels a day in mid-February, up from 32,000 in 2010, when most ...

  Bloomberg Less than three years after it began sending one of its most precious resources overseas, Papua New Guinea’s future may be determined by how much of it stays at home. The Pacific island nation wants some of the world’s top explorers to allow a portion of its natural gas to stay in the country, said Nixon Duban, the ...

  Bloomberg After splurging $200 billion building the world’s biggest gas export plants, producers in Australia are now locked in legal battles with contractors over who should shoulder billions of dollars in liabilities sparked by delays and cost blow-outs. Chevron Corp., owner of the $54 billion Gorgon facility, Australia’s largest resource development, along with Inpex Corp. and Santos Ltd. are ...

  Bloomberg Contracts to sell electricity directly to corporate users are among the key demand drivers for wind and solar power, while the influence of state mandates wanes, according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service. Multiple factors are spurring corporate power deals, especially from companies that have set their own sustainability goals. And the shift comes as costs continue ...

  Bloomberg Exxon Mobil Corp. announced a $20 billion building spree in the heart of the US chemical and refining industry, a program it said would create 45,000 jobs. President Donald Trump quickly tweeted his support, calling the oil producer a “special company.” The only problem? The announcement just gave a name to a series of investments the company began ...

  ROCKLAND / AP Hitachi Ltd. is aiming to expand its rail business in the US by bidding for streetcar and light-rail projects as President Donald Trump pledges to spend as much as $1 trillion to upgrade infrastructure across the country. The Japanese conglomerate “sees quite a big opportunity” in the US, Alistair Dormer, chief executive officer of Hitachi Rail ...