BBVA exceeds 50% in Garanti after raising offer for bank Spain’s BBVA said on Monday it had already secured more than 50 percent of Garanti after raising its bid for the rest of the Turkish bank it does not own, takingadvantage of a slide in the lira with a 1.985 billion euro ($2.1 billion) offer to increase its emerging market exposure. BBVA had said earlier it had upped […] May 4, 2022
Banking and Finance Egypt gets Gulf aid as eyes turn to currency flexibility The central bank allowed Egypt’s pound, which had been stable since November 2020, to drop by 14 percent against the dollar on March 21 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted investors to withdraw billions of dollars from Egyptian treasury markets. Last week Saudi Arabia said it had deposited $5 billion with Egypt’s central bank and […] May 4, 2022
Real Estate UAE’s Aldar Properties reports 26.5% Q1 jump UAE-based developer Aldar Properties on Wednesday reported a 26.5 percent increase in first-quarter profit driven by record quarterly sales and the inclusion of the financial results of Egypt developer SODIC, in which it co-owns a majority share. The company made AED 688 million ($187 million) in the quarter, up from 544 million a year earlier, […] May 4, 2022
Binance registers with France crypto regulator, advances European plans Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has registered with France’s market regulator, Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao said in a tweet, advancing the company’s plan to make Paris its European base. “It’s a real stamp of quality,” said Binance France’s General Manager David Prinçay, referring to the registration with the regulator, AMF. “The perception is changing. It allows […] May 3, 2022
Microsoft partners with Epic Games to bring ‘Fortnite’ to Xbox Cloud Gaming Microsoft Corp is partnering with Epic Games to make “Fortnite” available with Xbox Cloud Gaming, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in a tweet on Thursday. The software behemoth has been looking to bolster its firepower in the booming videogaming market and earlier this year unveiled a $68.7 billion takeover of “Call of Duty” maker […] May 3, 2022
Retail Moncler bets on store expansion, footwear to drive growth Italian luxury group Moncler said on Thursday it would open, refurbish or relocate 200 stores in the next three years, mostly in Asia, and diversify into shoes and clothes for warmer weather. The group, which in 2020 acquired streetwear brand Stone Island, also said it expected to beat analyst forecasts for annual sales of 2.43 […] May 3, 2022
Facebook-owner opens access to AI large language model Facebook-owner Meta Platforms Inc is opening up access to a large language model for artificial intelligence research, the social media company said on Tuesday. Meta said its model was the first 175-billion-parameter language model to be made available to the broader AI research community. “Large language models” are natural language processing systems which are trained […] May 3, 2022
Afghan economy ‘dire’ as household incomes shrink The outlook for Afghanistan’s economy is dire with per capita income having fallen by over a third in the last four months of 2021 after the Islamist Taliban seizedpower and foreign forces withdrew, the World Bank said. “One of the poorest countries in the world has become much poorer,” said Tobias Haque, World Bank senior […] May 3, 2022
Saudis ‘let down’ by US over Houthi security threats, says royal Saudi Arabia feels “let down” by the United States in tackling security threats to the kingdom and wider region by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and former intelligence chief said. Traditionally strong ties between Riyadh and Washington have been shaken under U.S. President Joe Biden by the 2018 […] May 3, 2022
Agriculture Brazil plans ‘fertilizer diplomacy’ trip to secure more imports Brazil’s new agriculture minister Marcos Montes will visit Jordan, Egypt and Morocco in a tour starting this week to discuss increasing fertilizer imports from those countries. “It’s a pilgrimage that we are calling fertilizer diplomacy,” Montes said in an interview with Reuters late on Monday, adding he would be joined by private sector representatives. “We […] May 3, 2022
Employment Deliveroo backs off plan to cut pay of UAE riders after strike Delivery service Deliveroo on Monday put on hold plans to cut pay and extend working hours for its drivers in the United Arab Emirates after a rare strike over the weekend. The Amazon-backed company said in an email to restaurants, seen by Reuters, that it had paused proposed changes in its rider pay structure and […] May 3, 2022
Retail Swiss watchmakers grapple with fallout of Russian crisis Swiss watchmakers are gathering in Geneva this week for their first big industry event in three years, tackling the impact of sanctions on rich Russians arisingfrom the war in Ukraine. Russia was only the 17th largest market for Swiss watch exports last year, but how to manage business and client relations during such a sensitive […] May 3, 2022
Food & Drink Upside Foods valued at $1bn from Abu Dhabi funding Upside Foods has raised $400 million in a funding round led by Temasek and Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, valuing the cultivated meat company at over $1 billion, the company said on Thursday. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Synthesis Capital are among the investors who took part in the latest round, bringing the company’s total capital […] May 3, 2022
Shopify’s revenue growth slowest in seven years, shares plunge Canada’s Shopify Inc reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth since going public in 2015 and delivered a big miss on profit, sending the company’s U.S.-listed shares tumbling 17 percent on Thursday. Easing global e-commerce growth from the frenetic pace seen during the peak of the pandemic has hit Shopify, which provides merchants tools and service […] May 2, 2022
Google gives $100,000 worth of tech training to every US business Alphabet Inc’s Google will provide any US business over $100,000 worth ofonline courses in data analytics, design and other tech skills for their workers free of charge, the search company said on Monday. The offer marks a big expansion of Google’s Career Certificates, a program the company launched in 2018 to help people globally boost […] May 2, 2022
Health Betting big on drug discovery, UK’s OMass Therapeutics raises $100m Betting on a fresh formula for the arduous, expensive and failure-prone field of drug discovery, UK-based OMass Therapeutics on Thursday said it has raised $100million in series B funding. Including the latest injection – led by a pack of prominent new investors including the Google Ventures and Sanofi Ventures as well as existing investors such […] May 2, 2022
Banking and Finance UAE top lender FAB posts record profit First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), the United Arab Emirates’ biggest lender, reported on Thursday its highest ever quarterly net profit, helped by the sale of a majority stake in its payments business. The UAE banking sector is improving on the back of a further easing in COVID-19-related restrictions and a rebound in oil prices, boosting […] May 2, 2022
Retail Apparel to buy Karl Lagerfeld brand in $210 mln all-cash deal Apparel Group Ltd said on Monday it has agreed to acquire the remaining 81% stake in Karl Lagerfeld for $210 million in cash, becoming the sole owner of the Parisian fashion brand. G-III, which owns brands including DKNY and Jessica Howard, will purchase the additional stake from a group of investors led by Fred Gehring […] May 2, 2022
Chip startups using light instead of wires gain momentum Computers using light instead of electricity for processing are gaining traction. And startups that have solved the engineering challenge of using photons in computer chips are getting big funding. Researchers say the technology could drive innovation in everything from quantum computing to driverless cars to artificial intelligence. California-based startup Ayar Labs is developing a technology […] May 1, 2022
Turkey, Saudi to revive great economic potential, Erdogan says Turkey and Saudi Arabia have a common will to “reactivate a great economic potential” between the two countries, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, after his first trip to the kingdom since 2017. Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Saudi Arabia, where he sought to mend frayed ties, Erdogan said the sides […] April 30, 2022
Hollywood actress Jolie visits Lviv, trip interrupted by sirens Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie visited the Ukrainian city of Lviv on Saturday, going to the station to meet people displaced by the war with Russia before later leaving after air-raid sirens sounded. Jolie, 46, is a special envoy for the United Nations refugee agency, which says more than 12.7 million people have fled their homes […] April 30, 2022
Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidate to have UAE trial China’s Suzhou Abogen Biosciences Co said its coronavirus vaccine candidate using the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology and targeting the Omicron variant has obtained clinical trial approval in the United Arab Emirates. With Friday’s announcement, Abogen joins Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna in trialing candidates modified specifically against Omicron, a highly transmissible variant with increased resistance to antibodies […] April 30, 2022
