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

  Last month’s Circles drama highlights the struggle Jack Ma’s empire faces in expanding its financial services business. To recap, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and its affiliate Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group Co. added social features to Alipay’s smartphone app to help promote engagement. In theory, more engagement should lead to greater use of its marquee function, ...

  There’s new data out on the taxes that people and corporations in the world’s affluent nations paid in 2015. The US total tax burden of 26.4 percent of gross domestic product (that includes state and local taxes) once again lands us pretty far down in the rankings. Of the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, ...

  The embattled Korean President Park Geun-hye defies pressure to resign. But the scandal-hit Park is ready to accept the result of looming and possibly lengthy impeachment process. The scandal that has served a body blow to Park and crippled the government pertains to her friendship with long-time confidante Choi Soon-Sil. Dubbed as female Rasputin, Choi has been charged with ...

  Matteo Renzi came to power promising to change Italy or change his job. On Sunday, Italians made that choice for him, rejecting the constitutional reform on which he’d staked everything. It’s tempting to plot a continuous line from the UK’s June vote to leave the European Union through to the election of Donald Trump to the Italian referendum on ...

  The emphatic rejection of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s proposed constitutional reform returns Italy to a state of political and economic uncertainty. As Renzi prepares to hand in his resignation, President Sergio Mattarella must establish whether the governing Democratic Party is stable enough to support another prime minister as he seeks to avoid the early election that could open the ...

  Here are two things I’ll bet most people don’t know about Greece. The country’s just-appointed minister of economy and development, Dimitri Papadimitriou, was lured away from his position as head of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College in America. He’s not a member of the ruling Syriza party. And the man appointed secretary general for public revenue in ...

  Reuters The petrochemical sector helped carry Saudi Arabia’s stock market to a fresh one-year closing high on Tuesday after crude oil prices hit a 17-month peak, while Egypt’s market followed global shares upwards. The main Saudi index added 0.7 percent to 7,155 points in extremely heavy turnover with gainers outnumbering losers 139 to 18. The index is now up ...

  London / AFP European equities pushed higher on Tuesday as investors shrugged off Italy’s referendum result that was already priced into markets, dealers said, as lower oil prices weighed on US stocks. Traders have registered little reaction to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s vote defeat Sunday and subsequent resignation, in the wake of recent shock votes in Britain and ...

  RIYADH / Emirates Business The Saudi national carrier, flynas, announced the inauguration of a new flight route between Dammam and Abu Dhabi, in a new step towards strengthening the network of international flights, and linking King Fahd International Airport in Dammam with Abu Dhabi International Airport, which is considered the second largest airport in the UAE, and one of ...

  Bloomberg EasyJet Plc relaxed performance targets for Chief Executive Officer Carolyn McCall as the discount carrier seeks to bolster pay and retain top managers amid a downturn in the European aviation market. EasyJet must achieve a return on capital spending of 13 percent for the next three fiscal years in order to trigger full long-term incentive payments, down from ...