Abu Dhabi government-owned Al Hilal Bank plans to raise $500 million through the sale of a 5-year Islamic bond, or sukuk, a newspaper reported on Monday, citing the bank's chief executive officer.
Mohammad Berro told the newspaper that the Islamic bank is finalising the sukuk issue and will use proceeds to support the bank's growth and diversify its funding.
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Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO), the integrated free zone technology park, on Wednesday announced it has achieved positive results across all areas of operations during the first half of 2011, registering an operating profit of Dh121.9 million, up six per cent compared to the first half of 2010.
DSO also recorded Dh323.3 million in revenues for first half of 2011, a four per cent increase compared to the same period in 2010, and a net profit of Dh58.5 million.
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Housing rents and related items surged by 7.2 per cent in Saudi Arabia in the second quarter of 2011 to keep inflation in the world’s largest oil exporter at relatively high levels despite recovery in domestic credit.
Official data showed inflation in the Gulf Kingdom slipped to around 4.5 per cent in the second quarter from 4.9 per cent in the first quarter but remained relatively high compared with other Gulf countries.
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Dubai has been crowned once again as the ‘Middle East City of the Future 2010/11’ by fDi magazine underlining the emirate’s premier status as a preferred foreign direct investment destination.
Dubai ranked exceptionally well across all categories achieving top positions in Economic Potential, Infrastructure and Business Friendliness.
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Arab capital markets plunged by nearly $32 billion in the first 20 days of August to maintain a downward trend caused by the global fiscal turmoil and political unrest sweeping the region, official figures showed on Monday.
Most of the decline was in Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul, the largest and busiest bourse in the Middle East, as well as in Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt, showed the figures by the Abu Dhabi-based Arab Monetary Fund (AMF).
From around $913.3 billion at the end of July, the combined market capitalization of the Arab world’s 15 official stock exchanges dipped to about $881 billion, a decline of $32.3 billion in 20 days, an average $2.1 billion per working day.
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Capital markets in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) saw another below par performance in the first half of 2011, with the number of floats reducing by 50 per cent to four compared to the eight initial public offerings (IPOs) in the first half of 2010, tax and advisory consultancy PwC said on Thursday in a research note.
However, the agency noted that while last year, the regional IPO activity was dominated by Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul, the UAE bourses were the most active in the region accounting for three out of the four IPOs in the first half of 2011 and representing 74 per cent of the total capital raised.
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Rents and property prices in the Northern Emirates continue to slide against the backdrop of an oversupply in Dubai and uncertainty over future recovery and growth prospects, CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), a real estate service provider and property consultancy, said on Wednesday in a report.
“The performance of individual emirates continues to fluctuate widely with Sharjah and Ajman currently feeling the brunt of Dubai’s overhang of space,” Matthew Green, CBRE UAE’s Head of Research and Consultancy, said in the report.
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High rents allied with rising food and gold prices to push up inflation in Saudi Arabia in July although the increase is not a source of concern for the Gulf Kingdom this year, according to a local investment firm.
Year-on-year inflation rose to 4.9 percent in July from 4.7 percent in June and food, rents and higher prices of jewelry and those for holiday accommodation were the main cause of the rise, though there were some notable falls, the Riyadh-based Jadwa Investment said in a study sent to Emirates 24/7.
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Union Properties (UP) went further into the red in the second-quarter as the struggling Dubai developer booked non-cash provisions against valuation of its properties.
The third largest developer in Dubai made a net loss of Dh521 million ($141.8m) in the quarter, according to Reuters calculations. This compared with a loss of Dh349.38 million in the same period a year ago.
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A global financial storm continued to put pressure on Arab stock markets and depressed them by more than $27 billion in the first nine days of August, bringing the total loss year to date to around $78 billion, official data showed on Thursday.
Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul, by far the largest and most speculative regional stock exchange, emerged as the main victim of the turmoil as it dipped by nearly $15 billion in the first 10 days of August, showed the figures by the Abu Dhabi-based Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), a key Arab League financial organization.
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Non-Resident Indians in the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries are contributing to build what is claimed to be India's biggest mosque, Share Mubarak Masjid, which will come up in the outskirts of Calicut, Kerala, home to a large number of NRIs living in the UAE.
Speaking to Emirates 24|7, Dr MA Hakkim Azhari Kanthapuram, Joint Secretary of Markazu Ssaquafathi Ssunniyya of Calicut, said during his visit to the UAE that about one million members of the organisation, many of them living in the UAE, contributed Rs1,000 (Dh85) each to build the largest Indian mosque in a proposed Knowledge City, which is located on the outskirts of Calicut.
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Aldar Properties, the developer rescued by a $5.2 billion bailout by Abu Dhabi, swung to a second quarter net profit, helped by sales and rental income, and raised an additional Dh1.4 billion ($381.2 million) loan from banks.
The builder of the Yas Marina Formula One circuit made a second-quarter net profit of Dh127.3 million ($34.6 million) compared with a loss of Dh475.3 million in the same period last year, it said in a statement on Abu Dhabi's bourse on Thursday.
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Bank credit to the UAE real estate sector lost steam it gained through 2010 and dropped by around 1.4 per cent in the first five months of 2011 as the sector appears to be still reeling under the 2008 global fiscal crisis.
The current political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa also seems to have allied with the post-crisis tightness by UAE banks’ to keep overall credit growth at low levels despite acceleration in the country’s GDP growth.
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The investment firm headed by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said Tuesday it signed a 4.6 billion riyal ($1.2 billion) deal with the Saudi Binladen Group to build the world's tallest tower.
Kingdom Holding Co. said the more than 3,280 foot (1,000 meter) high Kingdom Tower, to be built north of the Red Sea city of Jiddah, is part of the first phase of the planned Kingdom City. The sprawling mega project, announced in 2008, is slated to cover a two-square mile area.
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The UAE has pumped more than 28 billion barrels of crude oil out of its desert land since it discovered crude.
The production is nearly 6.2 per cent of the cumulative oil output of about 447 billion pumped by the 12-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) since it was created in 1960, Opec's figures have shown.
Despite such a massive production, the recoverable oil reserves of the UAE and most other Opec'snations either remained unchanged over the past decade or recorded a large increase because of new discoveries and the deployment advanced technology to reach more reserves that had been inaccessible.
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