
Qatar’s Purchase Of Manchester United Stalls Due To Family Drama
Upheaval among the football club’s owners, and angry fans, puts a $6 billion-plus deal at stake.
THE ALLURE OF ETHICAL BANKING By Gordon Platt Islamic banks in the Gulf region are tapping into growing demand for ethical banking and are upping their game in structuring sukuk and wholesale banking services. Ethical banking services ...
WELCOME TO THE FUTURE Photo Credits: RITU MANOJ JETHANI/ Shutterstock.com Passengers arriving at Dubai International Airport on Emirates’ double-decker Airbus 380 aircraft taxi up to a new $3.2 billion dedicated terminal, Concourse A, which opened in February. After disembarking, ...
BRIDGING THE GAPS By Gordon Platt Jordan has a difficult road ahead as it implements economic and political reforms as part of an IMF loan package and deals with the spillover from unrest in neighboring countries. Jordan’s ...
SEEKING UNITY By Gordon Platt GCC members continue to pay lip service to economic and political union, but experts say much more needs to be done on the military, security and development fronts before that can happen. ...
SHARING RISK By Anita Hawser Takaful insurance markets are growing steadily in the Gulf, but the regulatory framework is still developing in some countries. Taking out car, property or life insurance is second nature in the West, ...
DEFYING EXPECTATIONS By Gordon Platt For many, the Arab Spring symbolizes years of painful economic and political reforms ahead. But financial institutions are upbeat about the region’s prospects, noting that markets such as Iraq and Libya continue to ...
DRAGGING A GEOPOLITICAL ANCHOR By Justin Keay There were few bright spots for Lebanon over the past year. However, the banking and real estate sectors showed encouraging signs, and a recovery has begun. Despite their traditional stoicism, ...
SIGNS OF RESILIENCE By Gordon Platt In spite of poor global economic and investment conditions, Middle Eastern investment banking looks set for another solid year in 2013. The outlook for investment banking in the volatile Middle East ...
DUBAI SEEKS ROLE AS CAPITAL OF ISLAMIC ECONOMY By Gordon Platt Dubai plans to become the capital of the Islamic economy by setting global standards. In addition to promoting Islamic finance and insurance, the emirate wants to arbitrate ...
CONFLUENCE OF RISK By Vanessa Drucker In this month’s Salon, Global Finance sat down with Karen Elliott House, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones & Co vet and author of On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, ...
RESISTANT TO CHANGE By Gordon Platt Saudi Arabia is working hard—and spending heavily—to diversify its economy and create jobs for its expanding population through a broad-ranging series of reforms. But these reforms are ruffling feathers in some quarters. ...
GCC LEADERS FAIL TO ADVANCE POLITICAL UNION By Gordon Platt When the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council met in Bahrain in late December for their annual summit, they postponed an official announcement of the GCC Union proposed by ...
NEW SAUDI MORTGAGE LAW COULD SPUR HOUSING BOOM By Gordon Platt The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the kingdom’s central bank, issued new regulations governing the enforcement of foreclosures as part of a new mortgage law that has been ...
MILESTONES: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES By Anita Hawser Dubai Mercantile Exchange is on a mission: It wants to take up more space on the screens of futures traders, according to new CEO Christopher Fix, who once sat on the ...
GRAND VISIONS By Anita Hawser Qatar has used its oil and gas wealth to finance its global ambitions. But its economy remains vulnerable to ever-present geopolitical tensions. For a small country, Qatar certainly punches above its weight ...
COMING OF AGE By Anit a Hawser Islamic finance is starting to spread within the countries of North Africa with high Muslim concentrations. Any discussion of Islamic finance usually includes Islamic financial hubs such as Malaysia or ...
RECORD US LOAN BACKS SAUDI PETROCHEMICAL PROJECT By Gordon Platt The US Export-Import Bank approved a $5 billion loan to Sadara Chemical, a joint venture of Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical, to finance US exports needed to build ...
DISTINGUISHING GLOBAL GROWTH By Kathryn Tully Global Finance’ s most recently instituted awards acknowledging the best Islamic finance institutions globally, by region and by country only began in 2008, but in that relatively short time, a number of ...
NEWSMAKERS: BERMUDA By Gordon Platt Paula Cox, Bermuda’s premier and minister of finance, shared the stage with former US president Bill Clinton in New York in September at the C3 Summit, a conference designed to promote relations between business ...
MILESTONES: IRAN By Michael Shari The collapse of Iran’s currency, the rial, has cut so deeply into the credibility of Iran’s government that it’s inching closer to regime change than it has been since a popular uprising deposed ...