Oil at $60 by year-end not ‘unthinkable’: Saudi minister

  Bloomberg The oil-price could recover to $60 a barrel by the end of 2016, said Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, just weeks after agreeing to cut supply for the first time in eight years. The world’s largest crude exporter will work with other producers to determine output caps and is “optimistic” about reaching a deal by the end of November, ...

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Oil bulls leap into market as OPEC supply accord spurs rally

  Bloomberg OPEC’s first deal to cut output in eight years has spurred a running of the oil bulls. Prices surged, breaching $50 a barrel, since the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to the cut on Sept. 28 in Algiers. The group, which pumped at a record in September, will decide on quotas for its members at an official ...

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Kuwait postpones planned $10bn sovereign bond issue until 2017

  DUBAI/ Reuters Kuwait has delayed a sovereign bond issue of up to $10 billion until next year after deciding it is in no rush to raise funds overseas, bankers familiar with Kuwaiti debt policy said. Finance Minister Anas al-Saleh said in July the government planned to sell as much as $10 billion of U.S. dollar-denominated conventional and Islamic bonds ...

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Qatar’s Masraf Al Rayan, Doha Bank to launch ETFs by year-end

  Doha / Reuters Qatari banks Masraf Al Rayan and Doha Bank plan to launch the Gulf state’s first exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by the end of 2016, a move that should boost capital flows into the local stock market, a bourse official said. The launch of ETFs – portfolios of stocks that track an index – could boost a market ...

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Scramble for green yield in Europe has big power beating banks

  Bloomberg Some of Europe’s largest utilities are choosing to finance renewable energy projects alone instead of involving banks, leading to an unexpected gain in cash flowing into the industry that’s struggling to cope with subsidy cuts. Investment in clean energy in Europe, rose 2 percent to $41.2 billion in the first nine months of this year compared with the ...

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UK immigration plans would harm economy, warn biz chiefs

  Bloomberg UK government proposals to make companies list their foreign workers would harm the economy because they are “anti-business and dangerously naive,” more than 100 leaders of small and medium-sized businesses said in a letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. “The ability to hire both British and non-British people has historically helped business grow by bringing in varied skills ...

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May’s Brexit smoke signals won’t sway EU, Dombrovskis says

  Bloomberg European Union policy makers aren’t attempting to read anything into signals sent by Theresa May and the rest of the U.K. government on Britain’s future relationship with the bloc and are just waiting for an official communication, an EU Commission vice president said. “The European Commission will probably not be interpreting the U.K. government,” Valdis Dombrovskis said in ...

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Contract theory earns pair Nobel Economics Prize

  Stockholm / AFP British-American economist Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom of Finland on Monday won the Nobel Economics Prize for their work on contract theory, the jury said. “This year’s laureates have developed contract theory, a comprehensive framework for analysing many diverse issues in contractual design, like performance-based pay for top executives, deductibles and co-pays in insurance, and the ...

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Bayer chief promises no Monsanto genetically modified crops in Europe

  Bloomberg German chemicals firm Bayer said on Monday it would not introduce genetically modified crops in Europe after its gigantic takeover of US seed and pesticide producer Monsanto. “We aren’t taking over Monsanto to establish GM plants in Europe,” chief executive Werner Baumann told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “Some people think it might be easier for us than for ...

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Germany widens trade surplus in August

  Berlin / AFP Booming exports pumped up Germany’s trade surplus in August, as calls grow for Europe’s largest economy to use the cash it brings in to nurture growth. Firms exported 102.3 billion euros ($114.3 billion) of goods in August 2016 adjusting for seasonal and calendar effects, the federal statistics office Destatis said. That was an increase of 5.4 ...

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