Ras Al Khaimah / Emirates Business Its multicultural community is a hallmark of the popular Al Hamra Village neighbourhood in Ras Al Khaimah, as leading market developer Al Hamra Real Estate Development reveals in its latest investor nationality statistics for its flagship community. According to Barry Ebrahimy, Head of Commercial for the company, the established community welcomed investors from ...
Read More »Measuring economic progress and prosperity
Where are living standards the highest? You might think that’s an easy question to answer. Just take a country’s total income (in the United States, that’s now about $18 trillion) and divide by the nation’s population (U.S.: now about 320 million). The result is per capita income (now about $56,000 for every man, woman and child in America). Compare ...
Read More »China’s new debt-for-equity swap won’t work
With its debts surging and growth sluggish, China has hit on a new strategy to revitalize its ailing economy. It’s the same as the old strategy. Only this time, it won’t work. Earlier this month, China’s State Council released guidelines for a new swap program, in which companies can exchange troubled debt with banks in return for equity. The ...
Read More »Obamacare will survive, with some manageable tweaks
Next Tuesday will be the start of open enrollment for Obamacare’s state exchanges, which offer health insurance to the 7 percent of Americans who buy their own coverage. It’s an anxious moment for the program: Enrollment is expected to remain significantly less than originally hoped. Some insurers have pulled out of the exchanges altogether. And those that remain have ...
Read More »Business models must adapt to climate risks
Former deputy head of the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority Paul Fisher has made an emphatic remark: Climate change could trigger the world’s next financial crisis. This should ring alarm for the policy makers. Fisher has warned that sudden repricing of assets due to climate change could hugely affect businesses across the globe. His comments come close on ...
Read More »Globalization looks like it has shifted into reverse
There’s a backlash against globalization underway in many Western countries. Although Americans still say positive things about international trade and immigration, political candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have gotten a lot of support for opposing both to a degree that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Meanwhile, trade deals like the relatively innocuous Trans-Pacific Partnership are suddenly ...
Read More »Indian companies need to let their heirs breathe
India’s Tata group of companies, which sells everything from salt to software, is known for being, well, old-fashioned. Genteel, even. It tries very hard to avoid any sort of controversy. That’s why the sudden removal of the group’s young chairman, Cyrus Mistry, and his replacement by his predecessor, Ratan Tata, is particularly startling. Apparently, not even Tata Sons Ltd., ...
Read More »Farmers have tech on their side. Weeds have evolution
Some 12,000 years ago, with the invention of farming, humans started a war against weeds — and the weeds are still a step ahead. As farmers advanced from using hard labor to protect their crops to using chemicals and genetic engineering, the weeds survived thanks to the oldest weapon known to living things: evolution. Now, while scientists work on ...
Read More »British economy goes up defying recession fears
Bloomberg The UK economy slowed less than economists forecast in the quarter after the Brexit vote because of a surge in services, providing ammunition for critics of those who warned of a possible fallout before the referendum. The 0.5 percent expansion was better than the 0.3 percent median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg survey. Services surged 0.8 percent, ...
Read More »Belgium makes breakthrough in talks for EU-Canada deal
Brussels/ AFP Belgium announced on Thursday a breakthrough in talks to secure a landmark EU-Canada trade deal by winning over the leaders of a recalcitrant Belgian region, potentially snapping a deadlock which threatened European credibility anew. However, the announcement came too late for EU leaders and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to go ahead with a signing ceremony in ...
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