Bloomberg Sales of London homes under construction last year dropped to the lowest level since 2012, leaving developers with a record number of unsold properties. Purchases of homes currently being built fell 22 percent to 20,695 from a year earlier, according to a report by Molior London seen by Bloomberg. The number of unsold properties that are under construction ...
Read More »Buffett back in money on IBM, reversing $2.6 billion loss
Bloomberg International Business Machines Corp. has climbed above the price that Warren Buffett paid for shares in the computer company, reversing more than $2 billion in paper losses for his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. IBM rose 2.2 percent to $170.55 at 4 p.m. Friday in New York after giving 2017 profit guidance on Thursday that was higher than analysts’ estimates. ...
Read More »UAE, Finland talk ways to promote cooperation
Abu Dhabi / WAM Dr Abdullah bin Mohammed Belhaif Al Nuaimi, Minister of Infrastructure Development and Chairman of the Zayed Housing Programme, on Thursday met Kai Mykanen, Finland’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Development, and Riitta Swan, Finnish Ambassador to the UAE, to discuss ways of promoting cooperation between the two countries. The UAE Minister briefed the Finnish officials ...
Read More »Masdar City’s Eco-Villa project completed
Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business Masdar City’s Eco-Villa, a pilot project incorporating water and energy-saving technologies, has been completed and a UAE national family will soon live in the prototype sustainable dwelling, it was announced on Thursday at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2017. The 405 square-metre Eco-Villa is the first villa to achieve a 4 Pearl rating according to ...
Read More »ADNOC-Masdar carbon capture facility key to limit industrial CO2 emissions
Abu Dhabi / WAM Al-Reyadah, the joint venture between the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s Future Energy Company, was the focus of attention at the World Future Summit (WFES). Discussing the increasingly important role of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, the forum was told that CCS operations like Al-Reyadah ...
Read More »Keep CIA on the path to ‘modernization’
CIA Director John Brennan’s biggest concern the past few years hasn’t been Russian hacking, or even the wars in the Middle East, but what he calls “modernization” of the agency. In an effort to improve performance of this notoriously siloed organization, Brennan moved to fuse operations (the agency’s vaunted spies) and analysis (its less glamorous but no less essential ...
Read More »The Euro’s parity party is on hold
It’s been two years since the European Central Bank decided to combat the region’s economic woes by expanding the supply of money, buying bonds and slashing interest rates to nothing. The moves effectively debased the euro, prompting a chorus of investors and strategists to opine that the shared currency would soon tumble to parity with the dollar for the ...
Read More »The risks of ‘Brexit means Brexit’
On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May set out her fullest account yet of her aims in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations. Greater clarity was overdue, and welcome — but with it comes a clearer understanding of the enormous hazards Britain faces as this process moves forward. May said, “What I am proposing cannot mean membership of the single market.†That ...
Read More »IS Trump-Putin mutual admiration an asset
World is waiting to see where the mutual admiration between President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will proceed to. Will this wooing translate into a long-term courtship? Trump called Putin smart guy. The Republican said, “if Putin likes me, it’s an asset.†Trump also initially out-rightly rejected the intelligence agencies’ findings about Russian hacking and called it ...
Read More »Middle Eastern Debt issuance reached US$77.8bn in 2016
Dubai / WAM Middle Eastern investment banking fees reached US$820.8 million during 2016, an 18 per cent increase compared to fees recorded during 2015 and the highest annual fee total in the region since 2008, according to the annual investment banking analysis for the Middle East region, by leading business information provider Thomson Reuters. “Bolstered by Saudi Arabia’s $17.2 billion ...
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