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Optimism of an economic recovery coupled with better-than-expected macroeconomic data from leading economies pushed global equity markets to a new high during the week ended May 29, 2009. The US GDP growth contraction improved to 5.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009 as against the provisional data, which indicated a decline of 6.1 percent. [...]
News & Views General · The withdrawal of United Arab Emirates from the proposed Gulf monetary union has thrown into question the viability and influence of any union that does emerge eventually. The UAE — the second of six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to pull out of Gulf monetary union after smaller [...]
News & Views General § France Telecom’s unit submitted an obligatory tender offer to acquire the entire stake of Egypt based Mobinil. § Saudi Arabia’s capital expenditure on development projects rose 103% y-o-y to SR40.6 Bn during the first quarter of 2009. § Oman and Uzbekistan have set up a joint investment company with a [...]
After weeks of gains, global equity markets corrected during the week, mainly due to profit booking and lack of positive cues on the macroeconomic front. According to the Dow Jones Newswires survey, retail sales were expected to expand by 0.1 percent. However, US retail sales fell a higher-than-expected 0.4 percent in April 2009, after shrinking [...]
The much awaited results of the stress test of the 19 US banks were released by the US Treasury on May 8, 2009. It highlighted the improving conditions of leading financial institutions. According to the result, 10 out of 19 banks, which underwent the stress test, required around US$75 billion in case of worsening macroeconomic [...]
News & Views General Kuwait based Zain is planning to reduce its headcount by 13.0% till 2011 and outsource back office functions in order to boost its operating margin. UBS AG and Abu Dhabi Investment Co. received commitments of about $250 Mn to invest in the transportation and utilities industries of Middle East and North [...]
Equity markets across the globe further consolidated on their gains of earlier weeks amid news of the health of the US financial sector based on the ongoing ‘stress tests’. The anticipated result of the banking stress test has raised questions on the venerability of the large financial institutions with Bank of America Corporation and Citigroup [...]
