Friday, May 6, 2016Rajab 29, 1437 AH

BUSINESSGULF TIMES

Economy slows, risks stalling

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QIA said in talks to buy St. Regis New York and San Francisco hotels BloombergLondon

The Qatar Investment Authority is in advanced talks to buy the luxury St. Regis hotels in New York and San

Francisco from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

The properties may be worth as much as $1bn, though they could sell for less, said the people, who asked not to be identifi ed be-cause the talks are private. The St. Regis New York, a Beaux Arts landmark on 55th Street off Fifth Avenue, has 238 rooms. The California property, across the street from the San Fran-cisco Museum of Modern Art, has 260 rooms.

Starwood has been trying to sell its re-maining real estate as it prepares to be ac-quired by Marriott International next quar-ter, a deal that will create the world’s biggest hotel operator. Starwood is seeking to sell fi ve hotels in the US, including the Westin Maui Resort & Spa, Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta and the Tremont Chicago Hotel at Magnifi cent Mile. It is also trying to sell the leasehold on a sixth property, the W New York - Times Square.

David Henderson, a spokesman for the Qatar Investment Authority, and Carrie Bloom, a spokeswoman for Starwood, de-clined to comment. Starwood’s fi ve owned hotels don’t include two properties that are scheduled to be sold to Interval Lei-sure Group in connection with the pending spinoff of Starwood’s timeshare business.

Middle Eastern and Chinese buyers have been buying hotels around the world as they seek to diversify their holdings and capitalise on the growth of the travel business. China’s Anbang Insurance Group Co made a sur-prise $14bn bid for Starwood in March before walking away three weeks later, leaving Mar-riott to proceed with its takeover.

The Qatar Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, was set up

in 2005, with a real estate division estab-lished in 2009. It has invested about $38bn in property around the world, with $21.7bn in offi ce transactions and $7.5bn for hotels, including the 2014 purchase of the St. Regis Rome, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc.

The QIA fund earlier this year teamed with

Douglas Emmett Inc, a real estate invest-ment trust, to purchase four Los Angeles of-fi ce buildings for $1.34bn. In 2015, the QIA was the second-biggest foreign purchaser of US offi ces, following its investment in Brookfi eld Property Partners LP’s $8.6bn Manhattan West project. The wealth fund and Brookfi eld also acquired London’s Ca-

nary Wharf Group and parent Songbird Es-tates.

The Doha-based fund opened a New York offi ce in September to better access deals in the US and to manage its growing US invest-ment portfolio. The QIA said at the time it plans to invest $35bn in the US over the next fi ve years to diversify its holdings.

DEMAND GAIN: Page 12

Middle East carriers top global passenger growth in March: IATA

‘Goldman, HSBC among banks on Saudi exchange IPO shortlist ’

BloombergLondon

Goldman Sachs Group Inc and HSBC Holdings are among banks shortlisted by Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange to help manage its initial public off ering, according to people familiar with the matter.JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, Gulf International Bank, National Commercial Bank, Samba Financial Group and Saudi Fransi Capital are also being considered for the Tadawul Stock Exchange IPO, and a decision could come as soon as this week, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The IPO could raise more than $500mn for a 30% stake in the company, two of the people said.

Shell to Maersk count on Qatar to provide cleaner fuels at sea BloombergDoha

Shippers from AP Moeller-Maersk /S to United Arab Shipping Co are testing liquefied natural gas to power their vessels, curb pollution and create a new market for the cleaner-burning fuel.Maersk, the biggest container-shipping line, agreed in February to work with Qatar Liquefied Gas Co and Royal Dutch Shell to develop LNG as a maritime fuel. United Arab Shipping signed a similar accord with Shell and Qatargas, as the Qatari company is known, on April 17, having invested $2.3bn in LNG-capable ships since 2014.Finding new customers in an oversupplied market is a priority for Qatar, source of almost a third of the world’s LNG, and Shell, the largest LNG-trading company. Total annual capacity of LNG producers is set to surge 45% to 423mn metric tonnes by 2025, with supply exceeding demand for at least seven years, financial adviser Sanford C Bernstein & Co estimates. Shippers are showing interest as the UN’s International Maritime Organization tightens limits on sulphur.“LNG on a worldwide scale in shipping is something that could happen in the next two years,” Jorn Hinge, United Arab Shipping’s chief executive off icer, said in a phone interview. “Right now there are ships operating within certain eco-zones, mainly in Europe and the US, using LNG, but on a worldwide basis a system doesn’t exist yet.”LNG for shipping is still in its infancy. Most of the maritime industry relies on oil-based products, and Bernstein forecasts that ships will account

for 2.5% of global LNG use by the end of the decade.Out of a global fleet of at least 50,000 ships, 77 LNG-powered vessels are in operation and 85 more are on order, said Martin Wold, a senior environmental consultant at Norway-based DNV GL, which certifies ships for safety. The fleet will grow to five times its current size to 360 ships by 2020, according to Bernstein.New regulations are driving the growth. The UN’ maritime organization plans by January 2020 to impose a worldwide ban on fuel with a sulphur content of more than 0.5%. Most ships currently burn bunker fuel, a tar-like residue from the refining of crude oil that can contain as much as 3% sulphur, Hinge said.“We were aware the environmental regulations were coming,” he said. “It made sense for us to plan our $2.3bn new building and get involved in such initiatives and projects.” United Arab Shipping, based in Dubai, is the largest container line in the Middle East, according to its website.A dearth of LNG-fuelling stations and tight supply of liquefied gas until 2014 limited its popularity for ships. Northern Europe and parts of the US have some fuelling infrastructure in place, and projects to supply the fuel in Rotterdam, Singapore and China are in development. The UAE is also looking at options to provide LNG as marine fuel. LNG prices peaked in 2014 and have dropped 80% since as new supplies come on stream from projects in Australia and the US.“The business case has not been strong enough for many ship owners to make the investment,” DNV’s Wold said by phone from Høvik, Norway. “Many of them will now think twice about their choices in the future when they see this

movement into LNG fuel.” Qatargas, Shell and Maersk are focusing for now mainly on selecting sites for filling stations in the Middle East. A 7.8mn tonne-per-year plant owned jointly by Qatargas and Shell will supply LNG, and the three companies plan to deliver the fuel to commercial vessels by 2020.“People have to have the belief that the infrastructure is actually building out,”

Lauran Wetemans, general manager of Shell’s downstream LNG business, said from The Hague. Maersk declined to provide details about its partnership, while Qatargas didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.The maritime industry used about 70,000 tonnes of LNG in 2013. Demand is expected to grow to 10mn tonnes by 2020, just a fraction of the 372mn tonnes of bunker fuel used in

2013, according to Bernstein. Ships making the shift include car and passenger ferries, support vessels for off shore oil and gas fields, and container ships, according to DNV.“Qatar is in a position to make LNG happen on a global scale,” Shell’s Wetemans said. “Bringing Maersk to the table, bringing Shell to the table, you really have people that can make things happen.”

Sasol’s fuels output rises 3% as Qatar GTL production falls BloombergJohannesburg

Sasol Ltd, the world’s biggest producer of liquid fuels from coal, said nine-month synthetic-fuels production climbed 3% from a year earlier,

while output from its Oryx gas-to-liquids facility in Qatar declined.

Sasol processed 25.4mn barrels of fuel in the nine months ended March 31, from 24.6mn barrels a year earlier, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement on its website yesterday. Output from Oryx GTL fell 6.3% to 3.56mn barrels, with the facil-ity’s capacity-utilisation rate dropping to 81% from 87%.

Sasol has implemented programmes to conserve about 75bn rand ($5bn) of cash through 2018 as oil prices have declined 31% in the past 12 months. It de-layed a decision on whether to build a GTL plant in the US, which would have cost as much as $14bn, and is also reviewing the pricing and timing of the construc-tion of a chemicals plant there.

Pedestrians and staff stand outside the St. Regis hotel in New York (file). The St. Regis New York, a Beaux Arts landmark on 55th Street off Fifth Avenue, has 238 rooms.

Container ship Edith Maersk crosses the Suez Canal at East Port Said Port, 120km northeast of Cairo, in this October 5, 2012 file photo. Maersk, the biggest container-shipping line, agreed in February to work with Qatargas and Royal Dutch Shell to develop LNG as a maritime fuel.

BUSINESS

Gulf Times Friday, May 6, 20162

Saudi government lifts project bidding ban on Binladin group ReutersDubai/Riyadh

Saudi Arabia has allowed major builder Saudi Binladin Group to resume bidding for state projects, a senior Binladin ex-

ecutive said yesterday, in a decision that may ease financial pressure on the troubled firm and banks which lend to the group.

The company, one of the Middle East’s larg-est builders, has struggled since last Septem-ber, when it was suspended from obtaining new government contracts after a crane top-pled into Makkah’s Grand Mosque during a storm, killing 107 people.

It has now received a royal decree allow-ing it to bid for state contracts again, and a travel ban imposed on its top managers after the disaster has been lifted, the executive told Reuters, declining to be named under briefing rules.

He was confirming a report in the Al-Wa-tan newspaper, which in addition quoted a spokesman for the civil aviation authority as saying that Binladin would resume work at the multibillion dollar King Abdulaziz Interna-tional Airport project in Jeddah.

Bank shares rose sharply on the Saudi stock market yesterday with National Commercial Bank, the largest listed lender, gaining 2.6%.

Binladin has declined to describe its finan-cial situation publicly but Gulf commercial bankers have said it is believed to owe a wide range of local and international banks a total of about $30bn.

In addition to the bidding suspension, the company has been hit hard by a general slump

in the construction industry as the govern-ment has cut spending in response to low oil prices, and bankers have worried that Binladin could have to restructure some of its debt.

The company, which last year had a total workforce of around 200,000 according to its LinkedIn page, has laid off tens of thousands of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, and others have staged public protests after going unpaid for months.

Government officials dealing with Binladin could not be reached for comment yesterday, and it was not clear whether authorities had absolved the company of any further liability for the Makkah crane disaster.

There are strong reasons for the government to ease the financial pressure on Binladin; it is involved in projects considered strategic for the economy, such as the Jeddah airport, and few other local firms have its capacity.

Also, Binladin’s financial problems could weaken the wider economy. Some of its sup-pliers have been hurt, and Al-Watan reported on Monday that the company was expected to lay off 12,000 of 17,000 Saudis employed by Binladin in supervisory, administrative, engi-neering and management jobs.

That could be difficult for the government as it seeks to prevent an economic slowdown due to low oil prices from boosting unemploy-ment.

Labour Minister Mufrej al-Haqbani said on Tuesday that the crisis surrounding Bin-ladin would be resolved and that some of its workers would receive their unpaid salaries this month, while others would get the money later. He did not say how the company would obtain the money.

Turkish assets fall, but words of Davutoglu soften landing Lira flat after sliding to nearly 3 to the dollar; Local FX investors sell around $1.5bn worth of dollar: bankers; Moody’s warns Turkey on political uncertainty; Davutoglu comments calm concerns of political unrest; shares turn higher after 2% loss

ReutersIstanbul/Ankara

Turkish markets closed lower yes-terday as Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was set to step down

after weeks of tension between him and President Tayyip Erdogan unnerved in-vestors.

Dollar selling by local forex investors in Turkey reached around $1.5bn, bank-ers told Reuters, as investors looked to book dollar profi ts following sharp drops in the lira this week.

Any renewed political uncertainty is credit negative as it could diminish in-vestor confi dence, credit ratings agen-cy Moody’s said.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appealed to AK Party members to avoid any splits when he steps down as party leader this month and vowed his loyalty to President Tayyip Erdog-an, helping to partially ease market fears.

Davutoglu’s plan to step down, which emerged late on Wednesday, gave in-vestors some clarity following days of uncertainty about his future, and his decision was widely seen as the result of tension between him and Erdogan, who founded the party.

“Davutoglu’s statement was inter-preted as indicating that the transition period would be trouble-free. Hence the markets’ selling reaction eased,” said one bank’s treasury desk head.

“Risks have not been completely eliminated but losses have eased after comments supporting the view that the process won’t lead to more pessimistic scenarios,” he said.

The lira, which hit 2.9765 against the dollar late on Wednesday, stood at 2.9269 by 0524 GMT. It had been be-low 2.8 on Monday, its fi rmest for six months.

The 10-year bond yield, which rose to 9.95% in early trade closed at 9.81%, from 9.62% on Wednesday.

The BIST 100 index, the broadest measure of the Istanbul stock market’s performance, had fallen more than 2% early on and closed down 0.86% at 78,698.84 points, the lowest level since March 8.

Davutoglu’s announcement yester-day came after a meeting with Erdogan on Wednesday evening that followed

weeks of public tension between the two.

Still, his departure raises diffi cult questions about the government’s abil-ity to tackle slowing growth and pass into law the structural reforms that many investors are demanding.

“The spike in political tension has weighed on TRY (Turkey)-denominat-

ed assets, amid a backdrop of deterio-rating global risk appetite,” Finansbank said in a note.

“The political environment is very unpredictable, and this will certainly have negative repercussions for Tur-key’s risk premium, fi nancial volatility and macroeconomic outlook.”

Erdogan wants an executive presi-

dency in Turkey to replace the par-liamentary system, a plan for which Davutoglu had off ered only lukewarm support.

His departure is likely to pave the way for a successor more willing to back Erdogan’s ambition of changing the constitution and strengthening the presidency.

A general view of a unit of South Pars Gas field in Asalouyeh Seaport, north of the Gulf. Iran’s new oil industry investment contract for international oil firms will be ready by July, a senior Oil Ministry off icial was quoted as saying yesterday by Iranian state TV. “The new contracts will be ready in June, July ... We welcome investors from all countries,” Deputy Oil Minister Rokneddin Javadi said. Some 135 companies including BP, Total, Italy’s Eni and Spain’s Repsol attended a conference in Tehran in November to hear about the new Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC) but its launch has been postponed several times. Hardline rivals of pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani have criticised the IPC, which would end a buy-back system dating back more than 20 years under which foreign firms have been banned from booking reserves or taking equity stakes in Iranian companies.

Iran new oil investment contract to be ready by July

Israel near domestic gas solution, Turkish deal, says Steinitz

BloombergTel Aviv

Israel will soon submit to Noble

Energy Inc and Delek Group Ltd

a proposal meant to unblock

stalled development of the

Leviathan natural gas field and

allow exports to Egypt and

Turkey, Energy Minister Yuval

Steinitz said.

The proposal would be a “soft-

er” version of the government’s

off er to promise the energy

explorers regulatory stability

for 10 years, which Israel’s high-

est court struck down in March,

Steinitz said on Wednesday in

an interview in his Jerusalem

off ice.

“We are seeking to reach a

solution soon, in a matter of

weeks, no more than a couple

of months,” he said. “I think

we are very close and I think if

both sides show some flexibility

here, we can move forward.” He

declined to go into details.

The absence of a regulatory

framework has held up the de-

velopment of Leviathan, Israel’s

largest gas reserve, discovered

in 2010, and hindered produc-

tion at the smaller Tamar field.

It also has blocked export deals

and antagonized investors,

making it harder for Texas-

based Noble and units of Israel’s

Delek to secure financing at a

time when energy prices have

tumbled.

Steinitz is leading a team of

government off icials trying to

work around the court’s objec-

tion to the so-called stability

clause, which it said exceeded

the government’s authority.

The government proposal that’s

shaping up would provide

Noble and Delek with some

measure of stability, but not as

much as the original commit-

ment, Steinitz indicated.

“We will probably see some kind

of softer stability commitment,

but still significant,” he said.

“I want to give them some-

thing which is softer but still

substantial, which according to

our experts has a reasonable

chance not to be rejected by the

court once again.”

A money changer counts Turkish lira bills at a currency exchange off ice in central Istanbul. The lira, which hit 2.9765 against the dollar late on Wednesday, stood at 2.9269 by 0524 GMT yesterday. It had been below 2.8 on Monday, its firmest for six months.

Aramco ups oil price to Asia to highest since SeptReutersKhobar/London

Saudi Aramco has raised the price of its benchmark light crude oil for Asian

customers to the highest since September 2015.

The offi cial selling price (OSP) for Arab Light crude to Asia for

June is set at a premium of $0.25 to the Oman/Dubai average, up $1.10 per barrel from May, the company said yesterday.

This marks the biggest one-month rise since April 2015 and comes as international oil prices have hit their highest levels this year, above $45 a barrel.

Traders had expected top oil exporter Saudi Arabia to raise

the June OSPs for Asia. However, any increase was predicted to be moderate, so as not to perturb customers in some of the world’s industrial powerhouses. The rise outstripped forecasts.

“Up until quite recently, their pricing policy was relatively ag-gressive. So, in the context of the recent run-up in (futures) pric-es, this is simply a marking-to-

market. I don’t think it’s more than that,” BNP Paribas’ global head of commodity strategy Harry Tchilinguirian said.

“Since February it’s been a one-way trip up, in view of the rising benchmark prices. So without too much harm to the refi ning margins of your clients, you are able to raise your diff er-entials,” he said.

Aramco, the world’s largest state oil company, raised its June OSP for shipments of Arab Light to northwest Europe by 15 cents a barrel from the previous month to a discount of $4.45 a barrel to the Brent Weighted Average (BWAVE), the strongest level since the start of this year.

Middle Eastern exporters of-ten have more scope to set higher

prices for their Asian customers than for buyers in Europe or the US, because of the lack of alter-native sources of crude in that region, Tchilinguirian said.

The Arab Light OSP to the US, unchanged for June from a month earlier, was set at a premium of $0.35 per barrel to the Argus Sour Crude Index (ASCI).

Saudi crude OSPs set the trend for Iranian, Kuwaiti and Iraqi prices, aff ecting more than 12mn bpd of crude bound for Asia.

Saudi Aramco sets its crude prices based on recommenda-tions from customers and af-ter calculating the change in the value of its oil over the past month, based on yields and product prices.

BUSINESS3Gulf Times

Friday, May 6, 2016

Oil price rally is not as deep as it looks at the fi rst glance BloombergHouston

At fi rst glance, oil prices have ral-lied - a lot.

Look closer, however, and the market is still pricing the “lower-for-longer” mantra, much as it did at the beginning of the year.

Front-month futures for West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, have risen 21% this year, but the recovery looks very diff erent if you focus on the longer term. The fi ve- year-forward WTI contract fell 2.6% over the same period, refl ecting the view that shale oil production could rebound as prices recover, capping any rally.

“The markets may be getting ahead of themselves,” Michael Wittner, an oil analyst at Societe Generale SA in New York, said in a note to clients. “We still believe sustained front-month WTI at $45 to $50 will be self-limiting, as US shale-producer spending and drilling would stabilise and perhaps recover.”

Forward contracts off er clues - al-though not forecasts - about where people who buy and sell oil believe prices are heading. While investors generally trade short-term contracts, long-dated futures are also important because they allow producers - notably US shale companies - and consumers to lock in prices and manage their risk.

The “lower-for-longer” price view still has some notable detractors.

Some of the most senior people in the industry including Patrick Pouy-anne, chief executive offi cer of French giant Total SA, and Fatih Birol, the ex-ecutive director of the International Energy Agency, have warned repeat-edly that investment cuts triggered by the current slump could lead to a pro-duction shortfall in the future. Wood Mackenzie Ltd, an industry consultant, estimated in February that explorers have cancelled or delayed investments worth almost $400bn since prices started their slide in late 2014.

Price movements don’t suggest in-vestors are heeding these calls. Front-month WTI prices have risen about $7.31 a barrel this year as investors bet that supply and demand would start to come into balance, eventually end-ing the glut. Over the same period, the longest-dated WTI contract, for

delivery in late 2024, has fallen almost 70 cents. Although forward oil prices aren’t a predictor, they often signal an anchor for the long term.

Front-month WTI is now roughly at the same level as six months ago - $45 a barrel - but the price of the longest-dated contracts has fallen about $6 over the period. One reason is that slower growth in emerging markets and lower production costs will “put downward pressure on long-dated prices,” said Jeff rey Currie, head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc

in New York. If prices were to stabi-lize around $55 into the long term, that would make the current oil-market cy-cle very diff erent from previous ones - where each bust sowed the seeds of the next boom. Take the 1998-to-2008 period, when Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose from below $10 to al-most $150 as an industry that had just cut costs to the bone struggled to keep up with rapid demand growth in China.

One diff erence this time is the role played now by shale oil producers. From North Dakota to Texas, dozens of

US shale companies have the ability to resume spending, restart drilling and bring on new production as prices rise, boosting output more rapidly than in past cycles dominated by major com-panies and giant projects.

While shale producers have been hit hard by the downturn - US produc-tion has fallen by almost 700,000 bpd since June - they are also adapting to lower prices by making the process of hydraulic fracturing more effi cient. Break-even prices at the wellhead in key shale plays have decreased by as

much as 44% during the last three years, according to a report by Oslo-based consultant Rystad Energy AS.

“The million-dollar question is when to start investing again,” said Alex Topouzoglou, an oil analyst at Exane BNP Paribas in London.

Hess Corp, which operates in ar-eas including North Dakota, has said it would boost activity if prices rise to $60 a barrel. Pioneer Natural Resources Co, a shale oil producer focused on Tex-as, said it would add more drilling rigs as soon as prices rebound to $50.

A view of Mexico’s national oil company Pemex’s refinery in Salamanca, in Guanajuato state, Mexico (file). The oil market is still pricing the “lower-for-longer” mantra, much as it did at the beginning of the year, according to experts.

The unloved business that saved Big Oil from price hit

China oil slump seen joining US slide to rebalance market

BloombergLondon

Big Oil is suddenly Big Chemical.For years, the business of turning gas and crude into the chemicals used to make everything from plastic bags to paint has been a mostly unloved corner of the world’s largest oil companies. Now, it’s shining, cushioning companies from Exxon Mobil Corp to Royal Dutch Shell from the worst energy price slump in a decade.“Chemicals are coming back on to the radar screen,” Simon Henry, chief financial off icer at Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, said on Wednesday.In good times, when high oil and gas prices deliver billions of dollars in profits, the chemical business is largely a footnote in the profit and loss account. Today, with most major oil companies losing money in their production and exploration units, petrochemicals have become one of the biggest - if not the biggest - sources of income.The petrochemical business is getting a lift from the very same factor weighing down the production and exploration units: low oil and gas prices. Eff ectively, cheap energy translates into cheap raw materials and higher margins.“Petrochemical has been doing very well, actually,” Total CFO Patrick de la Chevardiere said last week.Take Exxon Mobil. In the first quarter, the chemicals business accounted for

almost 75% of the $1.8bn the company reported in profit. From January to March, it made $1.36bn producing chemicals such as ethylene and propylene. During the same period it lost $76mn pumping oil and gas.Two years ago, when crude traded above $100 a barrel during the first quarter of 2014, the chemicals business accounted for less than 13% of Exxon’s income as the oil and gas business delivered $7.8bn in profits.In a show of how much oil producers are relying on their petrochemical units today, Jeff rey Woodbury, vice president of investor relations at Exxon, called the company’s chemicals business the “highlight” of the first quarter.Shell earned $377mn from chemicals in the quarter, compared with total adjusted net income of $1.55bn.Still, the strength of the chemicals business isn’t enough to end the pain of low energy prices for the major oil companies. Exxon’s first-quarter profit was the lowest since March 1999, before it merged with Mobil Corp. Shell’s net income was the lowest since early 2009, after oil prices plunged from $150 a barrel the previous year to about $40.The chemicals business has taken the baton from oil refining and trading, which performed strongly last year. While both businesses are still doing well, refining margins fell significantly in the first quarter from the same period of 2015.At other major oil companies, including Total and BP, the trend was similar - if not as extreme - during the quarter.

BP earned $113mn from chemical production, helping to off set losses elsewhere and accounting for a large chunk of the $532mn in reported in total adjusted net income.“Strong petrochemical was the standout feature of the earnings, consistent with a trend from other Big Oil names this quarter,” Alastair Syme, an oil analyst at Citigroup Inc in London, said in a note to clients.

Shell said the margins in Asia from turning naphtha - a product of oil refining - into petrochemicals such as ethylene were 82% higher in the first quarter than a year earlier.As oil and gas prices start to rise, petrochemical margins are likely to fall back. Yet oil executives believe the strength of their chemicals businesses is deeply rooted. Demand for plastics in emerging markets remains strong

despite the slowdown in economic growth as more people move into the ranks of the middle class.Perhaps more importantly, companies like Shell and Exxon have invested in new plants - or re-tooled existing ones - to profit from the abundance of a byproduct of the US shale boom known as ethane. Rather than consume more expensive refined products such as naphtha as feedstock for

petrochemicals, they’re using cheaper ethane directly.In mid-2014, Exxon started building a multibillion-dollar chemical plant in Baytown, Texas, which will use ethane as its main raw material. Shell is using ethane for about two-thirds of its chemical business in the US, moving away from naphtha.“That has driven the better results for us,” Shell’s Henry said.

BloombergHong Kong

China’s falling oil output and sliding US production may help rebalance a market struggling to recover from the worst price crash in a generation, according to Standard Chartered.Output from China, the world’s fifth-largest producer, will average 4.05mn bpd this year, down about 253,000

bpd from 2015, analysts at the bank including Nicholas Snowdon wrote in a research report. The Energy Information Administration last month trimmed its US crude production outlook for this year to 8.6mn bpd.“China cannot rebalance the global oil market on its own, but China and the US together are doing most of this work,” the analysts wrote. “The swing from growth to decline in domestic output means that China’s net pull on

the oil market will likely increase this year, despite slower demand growth.”Brent crude, the global benchmark, has rallied about 60% from its 12-year low in January on supply disruptions ranging from pipeline attacks to field shutdowns. PetroChina Co, the country’s biggest producer, sees oil and gas output falling the first time in 17 years as it shuts high-cost fields that have “no hope” of profits, Wang Dongjin, the company’s

president, said in March. The company expects crude production this year at 924.7mn barrels, down 4.9%.Cnooc Ltd sees oil and gas output slipping as much as 5.2% to as low as 470mn barrels of oil equivalent this year after it surged 15% in 2015. China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, known as Sinopec, reported in January that oil and gas output fell for the first time in 16 years and that it will close high-cost fields.

China lags the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Canada in oil production, according to the International Energy Agency. The country’s National Energy Administration said last month that output will slide 6.9% to 200mn metric tonnes this year (about 4.01mn bpd).“High costs, reduced capex and mounting decline rates in the mature fields that have supported China’s domestic output for decades have combined to pull output down,” the

Standard Chartered analysts wrote in the report published on Tuesday.China’s crude imports climbed to a record 7.34mn bpd in the first quarter, up 13% from the same period last year, as higher refining margin encouraged oil processors to boost purchases.US output has fallen 13 of the last 14 weeks to 8.9mn bpd as April 22, extending its decline after last year reaching the highest in more than 40 years.

Oil price risks force Maersk to plan deeper cost cutsBloombergCopenhagen

A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S is adapting its cost base to prepare for the risk of

lower crude prices as the world keeps producing more petroleum than it can consume, according to the chief executive offi cer of the Danish shipping and oil con-glomerate.

Oil has risen about 60% from a 2016 low. But the risk that prices will again fall is forcing Maersk’s oil unit to explore bigger cost cuts than previously planned, said group CEO Nils Smedegaard Andersen.

“The price will obviously be driven by the balance between supply and demand and there will be oversupply for many months still,” he said by phone from Copenhagen. “It defi nitely can’t be ruled out that the oil price will fall again.”

Brent crude has rebounded as lower US output removes some excess supply from the market. One barrel traded at about $45 on Wednesday, compared with a low of $28 in the middle of Janu-ary. “I have previously said the oil price was too low, but it’s very plausible that the balance be-tween supply and demand will continue to be unfavourable,” Andersen said.

Maersk Oil, which has its main operations in the North Sea and Qatar, raised its full-year forecast and now sees the unit breaking even, compared with a forecast for a 2016 loss in February. The unit can now break even with oil at $40 to $45. It previously said oil needed to trade at about $45 to $55 in order to avoid a loss.

The division cut costs by 21% in the fi rst quarter, a higher rate than the 20% it targets for end-2016 when comparing with 2014 levels.

In the fi rst quarter, the chemicals business accounted for almost 75% of the $1.8bn Exxon Mobil reported in profi t. From January to March, it made $1.36bn producing chemicals such as ethylene and propylene. During the same period it lost $76mn pumping oil and gas

BUSINESS

Gulf Times Friday, May 6, 20164

5G networks will do much more than stream better cat videos By Ian King and Scott MoritzBloomberg New York

Every few years, mobile carriers promise to turbocharge smartphones with new “G” technology. Most recently, 4G began replacing 3G, and people from Trenton to Tacoma celebrated the fact that they could watch cat videos without their screens locking up (well, most of the time).This summer, Verizon and AT&T will start testing 5G. If this fifth-generation mobile network works as advertised, it could be far more transformational than previous versions, accelerating adoption of the Internet of Things: Smart homes, driverless cars, surgical robots and more. According to one estimate, the number of connected “things” could more than double to 50bn globally by 2020 - and reach 500bn 10 years after that.The 5G rollout represents the biggest expansion of the Internet to date and has the potential to generate billions of dollars of business for the likes of Cisco Systems Inc, Nokia Oyj, Ericsson, Qualcomm Inc and Intel Corp. All are vying to build the nuts and bolts of the new networks; their ability to lasso contracts could determine whether some of these companies survive.“5G is not about another G with super-fast Internet,” says Ericsson chief executive off icer Hans Vestberg. “5G is about beyond smartphones and tablets. We think 5G could provide an excellent opportunity to transform our world.”While 5G presents an enormous opportunity for a range of industry stalwarts, leadership in one generation of technology is no guarantee of dominance in the next. Nokia failed to see the mobile Web coming and lost to Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co and, ultimately, Apple Inc’s game-changing iPhone. When 4G arrived, Sprint Corp bet on Wi-Max but was forced to adopt technology used by Verizon Communications Inc. There’s no question 5G will happen; it’s just not clear who’ll benefit most because much of the technology has yet to be tested in the real world.As any smartphone user can attest, even the latest 4G networks sometimes struggle to handle millions of people tweeting, watching videos and playing games - leaving us grinding our teeth waiting precious seconds for Google to return search results. That’s not good enough when a self-driving car needs to decide whether it’s safe to cruise through an intersection and has to wait while someone gets the next data packet for the Netflix movie they’re streaming.So for starters, the next network will

have to be far more responsive. For years, the industry has largely focused on the amount of data it can force through the system in a given period of time - a concept known as throughput - with only rudimentary attempts to make sure everyone gets what they need during peak demand.The new focus is latency - how quickly a network responds to a request. To ensure a robot reacts instantly to a surgeon operating remotely, 5G networks will have built-in processing, store data closer to where it’s needed and use multiple forms of radio waves to send and receive traff ic. All of this must be controlled by advanced

software that can dynamically adapt what gets sent where and when according to rapidly changing needs.“Latency matters,” said Akshay Sharma, a Gartner analyst. “Would you rely on getting your data from across country or would rather have it updated locally as it happens, within milliseconds?”The next step is getting billions of things talking directly to each other rather than going through centrally controlled networks, as most connected devices do now. Once that happens, whole new vistas open up. For example, Ericsson and truck maker Scania AB want to make it possible for big commercial rigs to drive in tight

formation to reduce wind resistance and burn less fuel - a system called “platooning.” The 5G network would herd together trucks, which would then “talk” to prevent high-speed crashes.Finally, devices themselves will have to get smarter, working out what traff ic to send when. A water meter doesn’t need to clog up the network during a Soccer World Cup Final. Not every sensor in a building needs to be able to call the fire department when the temperature spikes. More intelligent networks will coordinate and prioritise needs making sure they both minimise traff ic and assign the right priority to packets of information that need it.

None of this will come cheap. Spending on 5G equipment will reach $400bn globally, according to an estimate by Chetan Sharma Consulting. Building the 2G networks in the 1990s cost a relatively paltry $130bn. Companies eager to benefit - and avoid being left behind - are salivating. Chipmaker Intel sees a chance to finally get into mobile and continue its shift away from the shrinking PC business. Ericsson and Cisco are bringing their expertise to the party - mobile equipment for the former; wired gear for the latter.Mobile carriers will make out, too. Chetan Sharma expects them to be able to charge five times what they’re

charging now. That’s not just from jacking up phone bills, but collecting access fees for wearables - think heart-rate monitors and high- definition virtual reality glasses - and “smart gear,” including your drone collection, cars, bikes and even dog collars. Each connection, though only a few bucks a month, could run up a hefty tab.Industry executives, of course, say the benefits will more than outweigh the cost. In an e-mail, AT&T Inc. Chief strategy off icer John Donovan describes a bright future with “new experiences in virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, smart cities, health care and so much more.”

The Internet of Things When toasters go online

By Olga Kharif

Are you looking forward to the day when your sleeping baby’s diaper tells you it’s wet before the wetness wakes your baby? Or are you dreading the day when a hacker or the government can learn everything about you that your car, appliances and even your internal organs can divulge? Either way, that day is coming, as a wave of cheap sensors connected to the Internet begin to invade almost everything around us. Linked by wireless technology, they will make up what’s been dubbed the Internet of Things. Altogether, the network of connected objects is expected to eventually dwarf the Internet of people: Some researchers predict that by 2020 as many as 20bn devices will be connected, up from more than 6bn now. For consumers, that could mean coff eemakers that delay grinding when you hit your alarm’s snooze button. For businesses, it could mean gigantic savings when pipes report their own leaks, warehouses place their own orders and cows that need milking communicate through something more direct than mooing.

The Situation

Tech giants like Samsung, Apple and Google have been connecting all kinds of devices – from thermostats to smart watches — to the Internet. In 2015, Amazon introduced Dash Buttons, which attach to washing machines and pantry doors and,

when pressed, reorder supplies like detergent and Kraft Mac & Cheese. This year, GE put out a washer that can automatically reorder detergent if it’s running out, and makers of devices ranging from printers to glucose meters are following suit. In February, Cisco acquired Jasper Technologies for $1.4bn to help customers connect and manage devices wirelessly. Companies ranging from Microsoft to IBM have launched new tools to make it easier for smaller companies to manage Internet-connected devices. In February, the Linux Foundation said it would build an operating system for the Internet of Things, an eff ort supported by chipmakers Intel and NXP. One challenge continues to be getting devices to talk to each other – a homeowner may need one mobile app to turn up the heat and another to turn on a home alarm system. An even bigger question is security — an issue vividly illustrated by a video a hacker titled “Weaponizing Your Coff ee Pot.”

The Background

In 1982, computer science students at Carnegie-Mellon University put sensors in a Coca-Cola vending machine and connected it to an early version of the Internet so they could tell if it was empty without having to walk all the way there. The term “Internet of Things” was coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, the co-founder of an MIT centre that helped develop the radio chips that businesses now use to track goods and materials. But for the most part, web-connected gadgets remained out of consumers’ reach until the rise of smartphones, which use a

score of sensors to track everything from motion to eye movement, led to a steep drop in prices. Sensors typically connect to an at-home hub via a Wi-Fi network or connect to other devices via Bluetooth technologies.

The Argument

More data, more problems. The data collected, monitored and transferred by wireless devices can include names, addresses, credit card numbers or even health information. Doors and electrical systems can provide clues into whether a house is empty. And while technology companies confidently power ahead, US off icials are moving more slowly, trying to fashion rules that could keep the Internet of Things from becoming a vast feeding ground for hackers who could turn devices against their owners as well as steal information. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney said last year that he disabled the wireless feature on his defibrillator in 2007 because he feared terrorists could use it to kill him. The US Federal Trade Commission last year brought charges against the maker of web-enabled security cameras for leaving the devices vulnerable to hackers. Hardware companies are also struggling to figure out which devices mainstream consumers will be willing to pay to connect to the web. Nest says its $249 thermostat will pay for itself by lowering heating and cooling bills. But wireless diapers may have to be a lot cheaper before consumers regard them as anything more than a novelty.

Bloomberg QuickTake

A 5G sign sits on display in a hallway at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on March 3, 2015. The 5G rollout represents the biggest expansion of the Internet to date and has the potential to generate billions of dollars of business for the likes of Cisco Systems, Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm and Intel. All are vying to build the nuts and bolts of the new networks; their ability to lasso contracts could determine whether some of these companies survive.

BUSINESS5Gulf Times

Friday, May 6, 2016

Repsol posts falling profits but beats expectations CORPORATE RESULTS

Spain’s oil giant Repsol said yesterday that profits fell at the start of the year but that cost-cutting had helped weather the impact of collapsing crude prices. Investors welcomed the results that beat analysts’ forecasts, with Repsol shares surging more than six% on the Madrid stock exchange in mid-morning trading. Net profit fell 43% in the first quarter to €434mn ($497mn) as Repsol, like other oil majors, have battled prices that have plunged more than 60% from mid-2014 peaks. But the company said the quarterly drop was down to one-off revenues in the 2015 period linked to compensation for Argentina’s nationalisation of Repsol’s subsidiary YFP and a stronger dollar. “Measures implemented by Repsol to increase eff iciency and savings in recent months led the company to achieve positive results despite low oil prices,” it said in a statement. Adjusted for fluctuating oil prices in the so-called current cost model much-used in the oil industry, Repsol’s net profit dropped just over 38% to €572mn in the first quarter compared to the same three-month period in 2015. Analysts polled by financial services firm FactSet had pencilled in an average net profit of €167.1mn. In October, the company unveiled a five-year plan to sell €6.2bn of non-strategic assets and cut investments by as much as 38%. It also said it would shed 1,500 positions, or 6% of its workforce, by 2018. Repsol posted a loss of €1.2bn last year after putting aside nearly €3bn in special provisions for the plunge in crude prices. It is also seeking to reduce its debt, which stood at €11.98bn at the end of March, partly due to it having bought Canada’s Talisman Energy in 2015. It also sold its liquefied petroleum gas businesses in Peru and Ecuador.

Occidental

Occidental Petroleum Corp raised its forecast for 2016 production forecast and reported a quarterly profit, compared with a loss a year earlier when it recorded an asset impairment charge of $324mn. The company reported a profit of $78mn, or 10 cents per share, in the first quarter, compared with a loss of $218mn, or 28 cents per share, a year earlier. Production from ongoing operations rose to 590,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from 531,000 boe/d. The company expects oil and gas production to rise 4%-6 % this year, compared with its earlier forecast of 2%-4%.

Manulife

Manulife Financial Corp, Canada’s biggest life insurer, reported a 45% jump in first-quarter earnings, boosted by strong insurance sales in Asia and gains from interest rate movements. Net income attributable to shareholders rose to C$1.05bn ($817mn), or 51 Canadian cents per share, in the quarter ended March 31, from C$723mn, or 36 Canadian cents per share, a year ago. Core earnings rose nearly 14% to C$905mn, or 44 Canadian cents per share, beating analysts average estimate by 1 Canadian cent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The activation of a bancassurance partnership with DBS in Singapore and Hong Kong helped Manulife’s Asian unit push total insurance sales up by 14% to C$954mn, more than making up for another quarter of lacklustre investment gains. Commodities-sector investments have weighed on Manulife’s bottom line for several quarters as mining and oil companies languish amid sliding commodity prices. Manulife had said in February it would be diff icult to achieve its core earnings target of C$4bn in 2016, citing “macroeconomic headwinds and energy price volatility. Assets under management and administration were C$904bn at the end of March, down from C$935bn at the end of December, primarily due to the strengthening of the Canadian dollar.

Magna

Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc reported a higher-than-expected first-quarter profit and raised its full-year sales forecast for a second time, boosted by strong vehicle sales in North America and Europe. Shares rose 2.7% at C$52.59 in morning trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Auto sales have been strong so far this year, particularly in the US, helped in part by low gasoline prices. Magna, which bought German transmission parts maker Getrag to help automakers improve fuel eff iciency, has a customer list that includes General Motors Co, Volkswagen AG, BMW and Ford Motor Co Net income from continuing operations attributable to Magna rose 8% to $492mn, or $1.22 per share, in the quarter ended March 31, beating analysts’ average estimate of $1.19 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Magna, which also assembles vehicles under contract, said sales rose about 14.5% to $8.90bn. Excluding the impact of the US dollar, sales rose 19%. The Aurora, Ontario-based company forecast 2016 sales of $35.5bn-$37.2bn, higher than its forecast of $34.6bn-$36.3bn in January.

Kellogg

Kellogg Co, the maker of Corn Flakes and Pringles chips, reported a steeper-than-expected drop in quarterly sales as demand for its breakfast cereals and snacks remained sluggish in the US, its biggest market. The company’s shares were down 2.4% in premarket trading yesterday. They had risen 20% in the past year. Kellogg, like other big food makers, has seen sales decline as consumers opt for healthier foods such as yogurt and sandwiches over sugary and processed products. Sales in Kellogg’s US snacks business, its largest, which sells Cheez-It crackers and Pringles chips, fell 2.6% in the first quarter ended April 2. Sales in its US morning foods business, which makes Corn Flakes and Froot Loops, fell 1.2%. Total sales fell 4.5% to $3.40bn, declining for the fifth straight quarter. Analysts on an average had expected a drop to $3.47bn, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The 110-year old company’s net income also fell, mainly due to a $217mn interest expense bill related to a bond tender. However, Kellogg’s cost-saving measures helped its adjusted profit beat estimates. Net income attributable to Kellogg fell to $175mn, or 49 cents per share, from $227mn, or 64 cents per share. Excluding impact from its Venezuela business and other items, earnings were 97 cents per share. Analysts were expecting 94 cents.

Regeneron

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and raised the sales growth forecast for its blockbuster eye drug, Eylea. The company’s shares rose 4% to $375 in premarket trading yesterday. The stock has lost a quarter of its value in the last 12 months as slowing sales of Eylea in the past few quarters have raised concerns about the company’s prospects. Regeneron has relied heavily on the drug for its explosive growth since late 2011. The company said it expected sales of Eylea, which treats wet age-related macular degeneration among other eye disorders, to increase by 20-25% this year, compared with its previous estimate of about 20%. The drug’s sales surged 54% last year. Evercore ISI said the consensus market estimate for the drug’s sales growth in 2016 was about 21.5%. Eylea generated US sales of $781mn in the first quarter ended March 31, up from $541mn a year earlier. Sales of Regeneron’s cholesterol drug Praluent, often touted as the company’s next best-selling product, were about $13mn in the quarter. That fell short of the average analyst estimate of $15.6mn, JP Morgan analyst Cory Kasimov said. Regeneron’s net income rose to $165.7mn, or

$1.45 per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from $76mn, or 66 cents per share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, Regeneron earned $2.57 per share, just missing the average analyst estimate of $2.58 according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue rose to $1.20bn, beating the average Wall Street estimate of $1.18bn.

Telus

Telus Corp, one of Canada’s three big telecom providers, said it would sell a 35% stake in outsourcing service provider Telus International, and plans to use the proceeds to expand its wireless and wireline networks. Competition among Canadian telecom companies has been heating up, sparked by deals including Shaw Communications Inc’s acquisition of Wind Mobile, the country’s fourth-largest wireless provider, and Rogers Communications Inc’s C$465mn purchase of smaller rival Mobilicity. Telus on Monday entered an agreement with rival BCE Inc to buy one-third of Manitoba Telecom Services’ (MTS) post-paid wireless subscribers, after BCE completes its deal to buy MTS. Vancouver-based Telus said yesterday it would sell the stake in Telus International to Baring Private Equity Asia for proceeds of about C$600mn ($467.14mn), in a deal valuing the unit at C$1.2bn. The company also posted a lower profit due to higher costs, sagging demand in Alberta, Canada’s oil producing hub, and fierce competition for wireless customers. Telus’s net income fell to C$378mn, or 64 Canadian cents per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from C$415mn, or 68 Canadian cents per share, a year earlier. However, operating revenue rose to C$3.11bn from C$3.03bn, helped by growth in wireless and wireline operations.

Shawbrook

British bank Shawbrook reported a jump in first-quarter underlying pretax profit yesterday, and said it would expand customer loan balances to £8.5bn ($12.34bn) by 2020. The lender, which was founded in 2011 and went public last year, said underlying pretax profit rose 20% to £22.3mn for the quarter ended March 31. Net loans and advances grew 6% to £3.57bn. Shawbrook lowered its full-year net interest margin guidance slightly to 5.5%. The bank has been aiming to maintain net interest margin at about 6% in the medium term, according to the target set during the initial public off ering. Founded in 2011, London-listed Shawbrook is one of several “challenger banks” to emerge since the financial crisis to fill a gap in small business lending after larger banks slimmed down to focus on bolstering their capital to meet tougher regulatory requirements. Shawbrook’s return on tangible equity improved to 23.1%. The company said it expected full-year return on tangible equity to be in line with the quarter.

National Australia Bank

National Australia Bank earnings jumped as bad debt charges fell but it booked a hefty Aus$4.22bn ($1.29bn) interim net loss yesterday from spinning off troubled British asset Clydesdale. Cash profit in the six months to March 31 for Australia’s fourth biggest lender, the financial industry’s preferred measure which strips out volatile items, was up 6.5% to Aus$3.31bn. Taking into account its exit this year of the struggling Scottish business, which involved a one-off Aus$4.22bn hit from the demerger and float, the net result was in the red. This compared to a profit of Aus$2.86bn in the same period last year. The underperforming Clydesdale unit was divested with 75% going to NAB shareholders and the rest sold through an initial public off ering to institutional investors. “This is our first result squarely focused on our Australian and New Zealand business,” said

chief executive Andrew Thorburn. “It shows that delivering against our strategic priorities is producing results and laying the foundations for sustainable growth and returns. We have a clear plan and are executing it in a disciplined way.” The bank maintained its dividend at 99 cents and bucked the trend among Australia’s largest lenders by decreasing bad and doubtful debt charges 6% from a year earlier, although they still came in at Aus$375mn. Page 9

MetLife

MetLife Inc, the largest US life insurer, reported a quarterly operating profit that fell far short of expectations as income from investments in hedge funds and bonds declined. American International Group Inc, the No. 1 US commercial insurer, earlier reported a lower-than-expected profit for the third straight quarter as poor returns from hedge funds hurt investment income. Both companies, like their rivals, have been hurt by near-zero interest rates since the financial crisis. New York-based MetLife said its net operating profit fell 19% to $1.33bn, or $1.20 per share, in the three months ended March 31. Analysts, on average, had expected earnings of $1.38 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It was the third straight quarter of lower-than-expected earnings. Prudential Financial Inc, the No. 2 US life insurer, reported a 23.2% fall in operating profit on Wednesday as its revenue from premiums fell. MetLife’s net investment income, which includes returns from investments in bonds, fell 5.5% to $4.71bn in the quarter. Variable investment income more than halved to $109mn, hit by weak returns from hedge fund investments. MetLife won a major battle in March when a judge struck down the US government’s determination that it was “too big to fail”, a designation that would likely require the insurer to boost its capital. The government is appealing.

Fitbit

Wearable fitness device maker Fitbit Inc’s profit forecast for the current quarter fell far short of analysts’ estimates, overshadowing a strong first-quarter report. Fitbit has been spending heavily to diversify its portfolio of colourful wristbands and clippable devices that track calories, sleeping patterns and heart rate, to better compete against rising competition as well as to tap new markets and demographies. “The time to invest is now,” chief financial off icer Bill Zerella said in an interview. Zerella said Fitbit would need to ramp up investments in markets such as China and India as it builds a “global brand”. Fitbit’s operating costs nearly tripled to $215mn in the first quarter ended April 2, largely due to spending on marketing the $200 Blaze smartwatch and the Alta wristband, the company’s first global launches. The San Francisco-based company also bolstered its R&D headcount, which jumped to more than 750 in the quarter from about 300 a year earlier. Fitbit is facing stiff competition from Apple Inc’s Apple Watch line as well as from Garmin Ltd and Under Armour Inc Fitbit forecast adjusted profit of 8-11 cents per share for the second quarter, widely missing analysts’ average estimate of 26 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Despite the tepid current-quarter profit expectation, the company slightly raised its forecast for full-year revenue and profit. Net income attributable to common stockholders fell to $11mn, or 5 cents per share in the first quarter, from $15.6mn, or 22 cents per share. Excluding one-time items, Fitbit earned 10 cents per share, breezing past analysts’ average expectation of 3 cents. Revenue jumped 50% to $505.4mn, beating the average estimate of $443.1mn. The company said it sold 4.8mn connected health and fitness devices in the quarter. Worldwide wearable devices sales are expected to grow 18.4% in 2016 to 274.6mn, according to research firm Gartner.

Kraft Heinz

Kraft Heinz Co, the maker of Kraft cheese, Heinz ketchup and Jell-O, reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit as its costs fell and

demand rose for its condiments and sauces. Kraft Heinz said demand for its ketchup, mustard and cream cheese was strong in the US. The region accounts for more than two-thirds of its total sales. Chief executive Bernardo Hees said in a post-earnings conference call that the company was realizing cost savings from the merger faster than it had expected. Kraft Heinz, which has announced job cuts and closure of some factories, aims to save about $1.5bn in annual costs by the end of 2017. The maker of Oscar Mayer sausage said it achieved savings of about $225mn in the first quarter ended April 3. Excluding items, Kraft Heinz earned 73 cents per share, sailing past the average analyst estimate of 62 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Pro forma net sales declined 3.8% to $6.57bn, but beat the average estimate of $6.47bn. Kraft Heinz said its sales were hurt by a strong dollar and lower demand for beverages in the US.

TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor Inc’s quarterly revenue fell 3%, missing analyst estimates, as a rise in hotel bookings on its websites hurt revenue from referrals to third-party sites. TripAdvisor has been allowing users in the US and the UK to reserve hotels directly on its websites since 2014, charging hotels a fee for the bookings. The feature was rolled out globally in the first quarter. The company, whose profit also fell more than expected, said on Wednesday that referral revenue dropped 13.3% to $189mn in the quarter. TripAdvisor said total costs and expenses rose 13.6% to $310mn in the quarter. TripAdvisor-branded display-based advertising and subscription revenue, which includes display ad and subscription-based revenue, rose 11% in the period. The company’s net income fell 57% to $27mn, or 18 cents per share, in the first quarter from $63mn, or 43 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, TripAdvisor earned 32 cents per share, far short of the average analysts’ estimate of 46 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue fell to $352mn from $363mn, missing the average estimate of $370.5mn.

Transocean

Off shore rig contractor Transocean Ltd posted a quarterly profit, compared with a year-earlier loss, as cost cutting helped counter a slump in crude oil prices. The company’s net income attributable to controlling interest was $249mn, or 68 cents per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, compared with a loss of $483mn, or $1.33 per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned 69 cents per share. Revenue fell 34.4% to $1.34bn.

Merck

Merck & Co Inc reported better-than-expected profit in the first quarter, driven by higher sales of its diabetes drug Januvia and heart drug Zetia. The company also raised its full-year adjusted earnings forecast and narrowed its revenue forecast to account for changes in foreign exchange rates. The 125-year-old company’s stock was up marginally in premarket trading on Thursday. Sales of Januvia rose 2.5% to $906mn in the quarter, while Zetia sales increased 7.7% to $612mn. But, sales of Merck’s arthritis drug Remicade slumped about 30% to $349mn. The drug is facing competition outside the US from cheaper copycat versions. Total revenue dipped about 1% due in part to a stronger dollar. Revenue fell to $9.31bn from $9.43bn, while analysts were expecting an increase to $9.46bn. Net income attributable to Merck rose to $1.12bn, or 40 cents per share, from $953mn, or 33 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, Merck earned 89 cents, beating analysts average estimate by 4 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Merck raised its full-year adjusted earning forecast to $3.65-$3.77 per share from $3.60-$3.75. The drugmaker narrowed its sales forecast to $39.0-$40.2bn from $38.7-$40.2bn.

LATEST MARKET CLOSING FIGURES

6 Gulf TimesFriday, May 6, 2016

BUSINESS

Zad Holding CoWidam Food CoVodafone Qatar

United Development CoSalam International Investme

Qatar & Oman Investment CoQatar Navigation

Qatar National Cement CoQatar National Bank

Qatar Islamic InsuranceQatar Industrial Manufactur

Qatar International IslamicQatari Investors Group

Qatar Islamic BankQatar Gas Transport(Nakilat)Qatar General Insurance & ReQatar German Co For Medical

Qatar Fuel QscQatar Electricity & Water CoQatar Cinema & Film Distrib

Qatar Insurance CoOoredoo Qsc

National LeasingMazaya Qatar Real Estate Dev

Mesaieed Petrochemical HoldiAl Meera Consumer Goods Co

Medicare GroupMannai Corporation Qsc

Masraf Al RayanAl Khalij Commercial Bank

Industries QatarIslamic Holding Group

Gulf Warehousing CompanyGulf International Services

Ezdan Holding GroupDoha Insurance Co

Doha Bank QscDlala Holding

Commercial Bank QscBarwa Real Estate Co

Al Khaleej Takaful GroupAamal Co

85.00

59.10

11.42

18.35

11.01

11.40

87.70

86.90

137.00

59.00

39.00

61.40

50.00

97.40

22.55

48.50

11.89

154.50

203.20

38.00

75.10

86.00

17.95

13.79

18.71

213.10

86.90

88.00

32.90

16.80

99.90

63.80

60.00

33.00

17.30

19.70

35.85

21.55

36.70

32.00

25.50

12.80

0.00

0.17

-2.73

-1.29

0.09

0.44

0.69

0.12

-1.01

-1.34

0.00

-1.44

-1.38

-2.31

-1.96

0.00

-0.08

-0.96

0.10

0.00

-3.10

-3.37

-0.28

0.36

-1.37

0.09

3.45

-1.12

-0.15

0.00

-0.10

-0.31

0.00

0.61

-0.80

-1.50

-2.58

1.03

-0.81

-0.93

-0.78

-0.78

-

605,069

1,187,286

319,355

86,339

5,593

4,087

108

56,720

15,541

-

33,251

265,068

111,697

528,812

-

301,583

1,352

4,997

-

285,534

188,879

312,631

55,619

83,801

7,456

144,194

500

419,468

-

166,487

12,414

57,901

332,296

801,423

2,082

11,765

111,501

164,118

243,030

12,655

113,854

QATAR

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

United Wire Factories CompanEtihad Etisalat Co

Dar Al Arkan Real Estate DevSaudi Hollandi Bank

Rabigh Refining And PetrocheBanque Saudi Fransi

Saudi Enaya Cooperative InsuMediterranean & Gulf Insuran

Saudi British BankMohammad Al Mojil Group Co

Red Sea Housing Services CoTakween Advanced Industries

Sabb TakafulSaudi Arabian Fertilizer Co

National GypsumSaudi Ceramic Co

National Gas & IndustrializaSaudi Pharmaceutical Industr

ThimarNational Industrialization C

Saudi Transport And InvestmeSaudi Electricity Co

Saudi Arabia Refineries CoArriyadh Development Company

Al-Baha Development & InvestSaudi Research And MarketingAldrees Petroleum And Transp

Saudi Vitrified Clay Pipe CoJarir Marketing Co

Arab National BankYanbu National Petrochemical

Arabian CementMiddle East Specialized Cabl

Al Khaleej Training And EducAl Sagr Co-Operative Insuran

Trade Union Cooperative InsuArabia Insurance Cooperative

Saudi Chemical CompanyFawaz Abdulaziz Alhokair & C

Bupa Arabia For CooperativeWafa Insurance

Jabal Omar Development CoSaudi Basic Industries Corp

Saudi Kayan Petrochemical CoEtihad Atheeb Telecommunicat

Co For Cooperative InsuranceNational Petrochemical Co

Gulf Union Cooperative InsurGulf General Cooperative Ins

Basic Chemical IndustriesSaudi Steel Pipe Co

Buruj Cooperative InsuranceMouwasat Medical Services Co

Southern Province Cement CoMaadaniyah

Yamama Cement CoJazan Development Co

Zamil Industrial InvestmentAlujain Corporation (Alco)

Tabuk Agricultural DevelopmeUnited Co-Operative Assuranc

Qassim Cement/TheSaudi Advanced Industries

Kingdom Holding CoSaudi Arabian Amiantit Co

Al Jouf Agriculture DevelopmSaudi Industrial Development

Bishah AgricultureRiyad Bank

The National Agriculture DevHalwani Bros Co

Arabian Pipes CoEastern Province Cement Co

Al Qassim Agricultural CoFiling & Packing Materials M

Saudi Cable CoTihama Advertising & Public

Saudi Investment Bank/TheAstra Industrial Group

Saudi Public Transport CoTaiba Holding Co

Saudi Industrial Export CoSaudi Real Estate Co

Saudia Dairy & Foodstuff CoNational Shipping Co Of/The

Methanol Chemicals CoAce Arabia Cooperative Insur

Mobile Telecommunications CoSaudi Arabian Coop Ins Co

Axa Cooperative InsuranceAlsorayai Group

Weqaya For Takaful InsuranceBank Albilad

Al-Hassan G.I. Shaker CoWataniya Insurance Co

Abdullah Al Othaim MarketsHail Cement

22.79

29.03

5.70

12.64

12.16

24.56

14.67

22.81

22.50

12.55

26.54

25.27

27.02

64.84

14.64

39.77

22.38

36.30

33.28

11.46

51.49

16.68

34.48

18.82

13.50

40.22

35.94

89.91

119.16

19.15

39.96

50.48

8.23

26.19

38.07

15.44

10.30

46.52

38.20

130.03

21.63

62.28

83.22

6.89

4.40

83.10

16.94

13.13

17.19

26.27

18.94

19.58

124.59

77.39

28.48

27.87

12.76

30.35

14.77

12.18

12.41

62.00

11.53

12.51

8.49

29.65

10.56

69.75

11.10

21.46

61.09

10.50

31.38

11.24

34.33

6.80

36.43

12.80

16.57

13.43

34.90

42.77

18.84

139.50

44.34

7.44

42.02

8.95

16.11

18.71

12.74

19.39

20.16

24.91

49.84

98.71

12.72

1.79

0.24

1.42

0.64

4.02

1.70

7.08

0.04

-0.22

0.00

2.35

1.28

0.41

1.85

2.09

0.89

0.58

0.36

2.78

2.87

1.20

0.85

-0.17

0.43

0.00

0.83

0.00

1.88

-0.25

0.90

1.11

0.06

1.48

0.42

-0.73

0.26

-1.15

0.80

0.61

1.62

-0.78

-0.06

1.59

6.99

-0.23

0.08

2.54

2.50

-1.09

1.04

0.42

-0.41

-1.77

1.78

0.81

0.65

0.55

0.10

1.16

1.25

0.00

0.62

1.59

1.46

1.56

1.75

0.48

0.00

0.63

1.27

0.16

0.19

0.26

1.44

0.70

0.15

0.33

-0.31

0.98

0.90

0.32

1.83

0.75

-0.55

-0.07

1.09

1.20

-0.78

0.69

0.21

-0.55

0.00

0.30

1.43

1.07

0.12

0.55

323,970

290,361

23,448,836

672,821

3,348,548

62,271

6,979,169

757,567

14,555

-

253,962

868,806

460,188

125,066

1,133,024

798,260

52,081

94,406

2,057,015

5,110,340

232,080

2,614,881

263,399

494,120

-

118,277

527,127

12,190

31,953

413,497

440,059

293,607

982,095

372,400

3,019,487

589,617

3,656,230

65,527

549,824

103,193

6,354,931

244,649

9,564,103

44,842,238

6,543,109

21,470

394,420

1,614,599

875,446

105,079

159,225

1,170,065

42,999

21,045

736,275

359,696

2,803,434

344,937

1,253,126

1,378,816

659,599

101,672

495,537

417,410

486,747

208,226

981,378

-

408,710

1,360,755

27,961

740,240

46,685

3,362,450

220,226

688,950

853,222

363,593

561,001

1,523,989

45,735

569,989

768,943

5,504

1,853,185

2,225,803

399,957

4,035,076

917,417

703,962

386,443

-

374,654

679,479

280,835

37,769

374,596

SAUDI ARABIA

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Saudi Re For Cooperative ReiSolidarity Saudi Takaful Co

Amana Cooperative InsuranceAlabdullatif Industrial Inv

Saudi Printing & Packaging CSanad Cooperative Insurance

Saudi Paper Manufacturing CoAlinma Bank

Almarai CoFalcom Saudi Equity Etf

United International TranspoHsbc Amanah Saudi 20 Etf

Saudi International PetrocheFalcom Petrochemical Etf

Saudi United Cooperative InsBank Al-Jazira

Al Rajhi BankSamba Financial Group

United Electronics CoAllied Cooperative Insurance

Malath Cooperative & ReinsurAlinma Tokio Marine

Arabian Shield CooperativeSavola

Wafrah For Industry And DeveFitaihi Holding Group

Tourism Enterprise Co/ ShamsSahara Petrochemical Co

Herfy Food Services Co

7.36

9.61

11.42

19.14

20.26

15.23

13.87

13.98

54.99

25.50

44.92

25.40

14.42

22.10

13.32

13.86

58.29

22.03

26.86

16.01

16.17

20.37

24.43

39.44

28.00

15.65

36.76

11.09

70.52

2.36

2.78

3.16

2.35

0.45

0.00

0.65

1.16

-0.11

0.79

0.40

0.00

1.55

0.00

0.99

0.43

0.99

2.47

1.67

1.52

-0.12

0.54

1.20

1.47

2.00

0.90

0.77

3.74

0.74

2,061,294

3,248,507

4,902,928

1,887,824

560,378

-

284,486

68,846,782

272,022

124,808

299,185

516

390,009

235

2,039,209

3,073,203

3,271,534

208,261

719,544

571,349

775,992

754,717

205,371

237,845

1,676,903

638,018

694,012

9,423,391

78,676

SAUDI ARABIA

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Securities Group CoSultan Center Food Products

Kuwait Foundry Co SakKuwait Financial Centre Sak

Ajial Real Estate EntmtGulf Glass Manuf Co -Kscc

Kuwait Finance & InvestmentNational Industries Co Ksc

Kuwait Real Estate Holding CSecurities House/The

Boubyan Petrochemicals CoAl Ahli Bank Of Kuwait

Ahli United Bank (Almutahed)National Bank Of Kuwait

Commercial Bank Of KuwaitKuwait International Bank

Gulf BankAl-Massaleh Real Estate Co

Al Arabiya Real Estate CoKuwait Remal Real Estate Co

Alkout Industrial Projects CA’ayan Real Estate Co Sak

Investors Holding Group Co.KAl-Mazaya Holding Co

Al-Madar Finance & Invt CoGulf Petroleum Investment

Mabanee Co SakcCity Group

Inovest Co BscKuwait Gypsum Manufacturing

Al-Deera Holding CoAlshamel International Hold

Mena Real Estate CoNational Slaughter House

Amar Finance & Leasing CoUnited Projects Group Kscc

National Consumer Holding CoAmwal International Investme

Jeeran HoldingsEquipment Holding Co K.S.C.C

Nafais HoldingSafwan Trading & Contracting

Arkan Al Kuwait Real EstateGfh Financial Group Bsc

Energy House Holding Co KscpKuwait Slaughter House Co

Kuwait Co For Process PlantAl Maidan Dental Clinic Co K

National Ranges CompanyAl-Themar Real International

Al-Ahleia Insurance Co SakpWethaq Takaful Insurance Co

Salbookh Trading Co KscpAqar Real Estate Investments

Hayat CommunicationsKuwait Packing Materials Mfg

Soor Fuel Marketing Co KscAlargan International RealBurgan Co For Well Drilling

Kuwait Resorts Co KsccOula Fuel Marketing Co

Palms Agro Production CoIkarus Petroleum Industries

Mubarrad Transport CoAl Mowasat Health Care Co

Shuaiba Industrial CoHits Telecom Holding

First Takaful Insurance CoKuwaiti Syrian Holding Co

National Cleaning CompanyEyas For High & Technical EdUnited Real Estate Company

AgilityKuwait & Middle East Fin Inv

Fujairah Cement IndustriesLivestock Transport & Tradng

International Resorts CoNational Industries Grp Hold

Marine Services Co KscWarba Insurance Co

Kuwait United Poultry CoFirst Dubai Real Estate Deve

Al Arabi Group Holding CoKuwait Hotels Sak

Mobile Telecommunications CoAl Safat Real Estate Co

Tamdeen Real Estate Co KscAl Mudon Intl Real Estate Co

Kuwait Cement Co KscSharjah Cement & Indus Devel

Kuwait Portland Cement CoEducational Holding Group

Bahrain Kuwait InsuranceAsiya Capital Investments Co

Kuwait Investment CoBurgan Bank

Kuwait Projects Co HoldingsAl Madina For Finance And In

Kuwait Insurance CoAl Masaken Intl Real Estate

Intl Financial AdvisorsFirst Investment Co Kscc

Al Mal Investment CompanyBayan Investment Co Kscc

Egypt Kuwait Holding Co SaeCoast Investment Development

Privatization Holding CompanKuwait Medical Services Co

Injazzat Real State CompanyKuwait Cable Vision Sak

Sanam Real Estate Co KsccIthmaar Bank Bsc

Aviation Lease And Finance CArzan Financial Group For Fi

Ajwan Gulf Real Estate CoKuwait Business Town Real Es

Future Kid Entertainment AndSpecialities Group Holding C

Abyaar Real Eastate DevelopmDar Al Thuraya Real Estate C

Al-Dar National Real EstateKgl Logistics Company Kscc

Combined Group ContractingZima Holding Co Ksc

Qurain Holding Co

82.00

62.00

192.00

88.00

140.00

450.00

38.00

236.00

22.50

42.00

530.00

335.00

420.00

670.00

450.00

208.00

240.00

42.50

33.50

34.50

0.00

69.00

23.00

122.00

16.00

41.50

830.00

500.00

53.00

0.00

39.50

0.00

21.00

0.00

55.00

690.00

0.00

0.00

72.00

54.00

144.00

280.00

89.00

73.00

55.00

170.00

214.00

0.00

23.50

90.00

465.00

33.00

76.00

60.00

56.00

280.00

106.00

160.00

98.00

80.00

110.00

106.00

43.00

66.00

210.00

285.00

37.00

40.00

35.00

39.00

0.00

89.00

510.00

25.00

72.00

138.00

30.50

126.00

104.00

106.00

176.00

60.00

65.00

0.00

345.00

0.00

560.00

32.00

365.00

78.00

1,020.00

194.00

0.00

0.00

89.00

335.00

540.00

39.00

290.00

68.00

0.00

51.00

32.00

35.50

134.00

48.50

48.00

33.50

76.00

27.00

36.50

39.00

208.00

32.00

27.50

43.00

95.00

77.00

25.00

0.00

13.50

79.00

790.00

42.50

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-5.41

0.00

-6.17

0.00

0.00

-2.33

-1.85

0.00

0.00

1.52

0.00

0.97

0.00

0.00

-5.63

0.00

0.00

0.00

2.22

0.00

0.00

-2.35

-2.35

5.26

-1.85

0.00

-1.25

0.00

-4.55

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

10.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

2.17

0.00

0.00

-1.49

-3.80

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-1.79

1.92

-2.27

0.00

0.00

0.00

-1.33

-2.44

4.48

-2.50

0.00

5.95

0.00

4.17

0.00

-1.43

-1.61

-1.56

4.00

3.92

-1.12

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-6.41

-2.50

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-1.27

0.00

1.49

0.00

0.00

1.59

-1.39

0.00

2.11

-1.03

0.00

0.00

-1.82

0.00

0.00

0.00

-1.54

0.00

0.00

0.00

2.67

-1.96

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-1.16

0.00

82,500

84,909

78,000

9,227

10,800

3,254

3,399

643

15,164

5,546,906

13,620

6,981

200,181

1,359,681

69,338

326,688

340,762

4,698

1,181,000

420,000

-

372,322

1,815,320

1,889,199

547,812

2,977,651

171,364

14,763

56,503

-

198,500

-

259,000

-

432

58,900

-

-

640

567,901

2,452

895,000

136,511

1,466,700

1,118,800

1,000

50,000

-

1,727,204

326,918

10

950

415,900

14,236

27,470

122,513

18,709

70,000

500

30,100

8,574

500

252,262

351,810

9,186

1,250

4,557,409

21

968,065

158,000

-

117,240

424,017

13,690

163,000

10,000

132,532

1,049,707

250

38,000

286,697

516,001

12,000

-

640,411

-

25,000

510,177

843

48,000

176

10,635

-

-

8,933

557,600

284,050

6,127,168

1,000

150,000

-

108,001

2,875,200

976,470

3,574

3,542,890

54,141

4,000

20,000

500

14,001

582,100

348,473

605,811

15,100

837,000

49,718

116,630

320,000

-

2,454,947

141,881

10,000

142,061

-

KUWAIT

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Voltamp Energy SaogUnited Power/Energy Co- Pref

United Power Co SaogUnited Finance Co

Ubar Hotels & ResortsTakaful Oman

Taageer FinanceSweets Of OmanSohar Power Co

Sohar PoultrySmn Power Holding Saog

Shell Oman Marketing - PrefShell Oman Marketing

Sharqiyah Desalination Co SaSembcorp Salalah Power & Wat

Salalah Port ServicesSalalah Mills Co

Salalah Beach Resort SaogSahara Hospitality

Renaissance Services SaogRaysut Cement Co

Port Service CorporationPhoenix Power Co Saoc

Packaging Co LtdOoredoo

OminvestOman United Insurance Co

Oman Textile Holding Co SaogOman Telecommunications Co

Oman Refreshment CoOman Packaging

Oman Orix Leasing Co.Oman Oil Marketing Company

Oman National Engineering AnOman Investment & Finance

Oman Intl MarketingOman Hotels & Tourism CoOman Foods International

Oman Flour MillsOman Fisheries CoOman Fiber Optics

Oman Europe Foods IndustriesOman Education & Training In

Oman ChromiteOman Chlorine

Oman Ceramic ComOman Cement Co

Oman Cables IndustryOman Agricultural Dev

Oman & Emirates Inv(Om)50%Natl Aluminium Products

National SecuritiesNational Real Estate Develop

National PharmaceuticalNational Mineral Water

National Hospitality InstituNational Gas Co

National Finance CoNational Detergent Co Saog

National Biscuit IndustriesNational Bank Of Oman Saog

Muscat Thread Mills CoMuscat National Holding

Muscat Gases Company SaogMuscat Finance

Majan Glass CompanyMajan College

Hsbc Bank OmanHotels Management Co Interna

Gulf StoneGulf Plastic Industries Co

Gulf Mushroom CompanyGulf Investments Services

Gulf Invest. Serv. Pref-SharGulf International Chemicals

Gulf Hotels (Oman) Co LtdGlobal Fin Investment

Galfar Engineering&ContractGalfar Engineering -Prefer

Financial Services Co.Financial Corp/The

Dhofar UniversityDhofar Tourism

Dhofar PoultryDhofar Intl Development

Dhofar InsuranceDhofar Fisheries & Food Indu

Dhofar CattlefeedDhofar Beverages Co

Construction Materials IndComputer Stationery Inds

Bankmuscat SaogBank SoharBank Nizwa

Bank Dhofar Saog

0.42

1.00

3.40

0.14

0.13

0.13

0.13

1.34

0.35

0.21

0.72

1.05

1.91

4.70

0.25

0.65

1.42

1.38

2.50

0.29

1.20

0.25

0.15

0.52

0.76

0.56

0.27

0.32

1.64

2.20

0.30

0.12

1.90

0.19

0.20

0.52

0.29

0.00

0.58

0.07

4.57

1.00

0.16

3.64

0.49

0.45

0.50

1.78

1.75

0.16

0.25

0.17

5.00

0.11

0.06

0.53

0.46

0.14

0.63

3.75

0.26

0.11

1.86

0.83

0.12

0.19

0.52

0.12

1.25

0.11

0.39

0.34

0.13

0.11

0.26

10.50

0.15

0.12

0.39

0.17

0.11

1.49

0.49

0.18

0.42

0.21

1.28

0.22

0.26

0.04

0.26

0.40

0.18

0.08

0.26

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-0.75

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

7.01

1.27

-1.59

-0.65

0.00

0.00

1.09

-0.73

-3.03

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-0.49

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.34

-1.52

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.64

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

6.54

0.00

-1.26

0.00

-1.52

0.00

0.00

0.00

-0.80

0.00

0.00

-2.52

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-4.44

-1.79

-0.39

0.00

7.41

-3.33

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-2.78

0.00

0.00

-1.64

0.00

0.00

203

-

-

2,000

-

-

100,000

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

714,557

33,581

8,665

72,892

-

25,000

51,212

240,340

2,190

132,662

-

-

-

-

-

117,000

-

-

-

19,750

517,520

445

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

1,013,739

-

-

-

-

-

-

1,254,245

-

90,949

-

238,000

-

250

-

17,100

-

-

518,194

-

-

-

-

237,100

87,323

62,449

-

6,100

7,636,626

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

188,000

-

375,901

400,172

710,364

41,295

OMAN

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Areej Vegetable OilsAloula Co

Al-Omaniya Financial ServiceAl-Hassan Engineering Co

Al-Fajar Al-Alamia CoAl-Anwar Ceramic Tiles Co

Al Suwadi PowerAl Shurooq Inv Ser

Al Sharqiya Invest HoldingAl Maha Petroleum Products M

Al Maha Ceramics Co SaocAl Madina Takaful Co Saoc

Al Madina Investment CoAl Kamil Power Co

Al Jazerah Services -PfdAl Jazeera Steel Products Co

Al Jazeera ServicesAl Izz Islamic Bank

Al Buraimi HotelAl Batinah PowerAl Batinah Hotels

Al Batinah Dev & InvAl Anwar Holdings Saog

Ahli BankAcwa Power Barka Saog

Abrasives Manufacturing Co SA’saff a Foods Saog

0Man Oil Marketing Co-Pref

3.68

0.53

0.30

0.10

0.75

0.26

0.22

1.04

0.16

1.60

0.41

0.07

0.07

0.31

0.55

0.19

0.23

0.06

0.88

0.21

1.13

0.11

0.23

0.19

0.68

0.05

0.86

0.25

0.00

0.00

0.00

-3.96

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-2.42

0.00

0.00

-1.33

-1.52

0.00

0.00

-1.52

0.87

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-0.94

-0.43

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-

-

-

70,000

-

2,000

124,169

-

2,082,899

-

1,112

218,463

108,000

-

-

108,200

21,470

1,854,396

-

112,828

-

184,886

1,157,536

-

-

-

-

-

OMAN

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Waha Capital PjscUnited Insurance Company

United Arab Bank PjscUnion National Bank/Abu Dhab

Union Insurance CoUnion Cement Co

Umm Al Qaiwain Cement IndustSharjah Islamic Bank

Sharjah Insurance CompanySharjah Group

Sharjah Cement & Indus DevelRas Al-Khaimah National Insu

Ras Al Khaimah White CementRas Al Khaimah Ceramics

Ras Al Khaimah Cement Co PscRas Al Khaima Poultry

Rak PropertiesOoredoo Qsc

Oman & Emirates Inv(Emir)50%Nbad Oneshare Msci Uae Etf

National Takaful CompanyNational Marine Dredging Co

National Investor Co/TheNational Corp Tourism & Hote

National Bank Of Umm Al QaiwNational Bank Of Ras Al-Khai

National Bank Of FujairahNational Bank Of Abu Dhabi

Methaq Takaful InsuranceManazel Real Estate Pjsc

Invest BankIntl Fish Farming Co Pjsc

Insurance HouseGulf Pharmaceutical Industri

Gulf Medical ProjectsGulf Cement Co

Fujairah Cement IndustriesFujairah Building Industries

Foodco Holding PjscFirst Gulf BankFinance House

Eshraq Properties Co PjscEmirates Telecom Group Co

Emirates Insurance Co. (Psc)Emirates Driving Company

Dana GasCommercial Bank Internationa

Bank Of SharjahAxa Green Crescent Insurance

Arkan Building Materials CoAlkhaleej InvestmentAldar Properties Pjsc

Al Wathba National InsuranceAl Khazna Insurance Co

Al Fujairah National InsuranAl Dhafra Insurance Co. P.S.

Al Buhaira National InsurancAl Ain Ahlia Ins. Co.

Agthia Group PjscAbu Dhabi Ship Building Co

Abu Dhabi Natl Co For BuildiAbu Dhabi National Takaful C

Abu Dhabi National InsuranceAbu Dhabi National Hotels

Abu Dhabi National Energy CoAbu Dhabi Islamic Bank

2.04

2.00

2.65

3.46

1.39

1.10

0.86

1.55

3.85

1.35

1.05

4.10

1.16

3.20

0.81

2.55

0.54

90.00

1.29

6.26

1.08

6.19

0.71

5.00

3.30

5.45

4.79

8.30

0.80

0.56

2.10

7.70

0.81

2.40

2.40

0.89

1.13

1.20

3.55

12.40

2.12

0.81

19.00

6.05

6.00

0.54

2.02

1.35

0.75

0.92

2.22

2.61

4.46

0.43

300.00

5.00

2.25

60.00

7.41

2.61

0.48

5.05

2.00

2.70

0.56

3.80

2.00

0.00

0.00

-0.29

0.00

0.00

0.00

8.39

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-5.88

-1.22

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-3.28

0.00

0.00

0.00

5.83

0.00

0.00

6.67

0.00

-4.55

0.00

0.00

1.05

0.00

-1.11

0.00

0.00

0.00

1.22

0.00

-1.22

1.06

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.75

0.00

-3.16

0.00

2.35

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-3.77

-9.69

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-6.67

0.00

1,163,811

-

-

239,840

-

-

-

1,455,000

-

-

-

-

-

237,100

67,325

-

1,568,821

-

-

-

-

410,414

-

-

-

307,468

-

424,500

5,153,838

9,816,565

710,000

-

-

242,137

-

229,000

-

-

-

553,799

-

31,068,073

1,421,284

-

-

10,369,275

-

76,050

-

97,000

-

10,529,687

-

-

-

-

-

-

704,975

50

156,700

-

-

-

3,336,235

485,743

UAE

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Zain Bahrain BsccUnited Paper Industries Bsc

United Gulf Investment CorpUnited Gulf BankTrafco Group Bsc

Takaful International CoTaib Bank -$Us

Seef PropertiesSecurities & Investment Co

National Hotels CoNational Bank Of Bahrain Bsc

Nass Corp BscKhaleeji Commercial Bank

Ithmaar Bank BscInvestcorp Bank -$Us

Inovest Co BscGulf Monetary Group

Gulf Hotel Group B.S.CGfh Financial Group Bsc

Esterad Investment Co B.S.C.Delmon Poultry Co

Bmmi BscBmb Investment Bank

Bbk BscBankmuscat Saog

Banader Hotels CoBahrain Tourism CoBahrain Telecom Co

Bahrain Ship Repair & EnginBahrain National Holding

Bahrain Kuwait InsuranceBahrain Islamic Bank

Bahrain Flour Mills CoBahrain Family Leisure Co

Bahrain Duty Free ComplexBahrain Commercial Facilitie

Bahrain Cinema CoBahrain Car Park Co

Arab Insurance Group(Bsc)-$Arab Banking Corp Bsc-$Us

Aluminium Bahrain BscAlbaraka Banking Group

Al-Salam BankAl-Ahlia Insurance Co

Ahli United Bank B.S.C

0.13

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.23

0.00

0.00

0.18

0.00

0.00

0.59

0.10

0.06

0.13

6.00

0.16

0.00

0.71

0.25

0.00

0.00

0.80

0.00

0.33

0.00

0.00

`

0.30

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.39

0.00

0.81

0.72

1.14

0.15

0.35

0.00

0.28

0.48

0.09

0.29

0.61

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

5.08

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

31,500

-

-

-

9,000

-

-

65,000

-

-

13,685

758,800

250,000

200,000

5,600

21,986

-

8,828

40,000

-

-

8,858

-

25,676

-

-

-

100,000

-

-

-

-

-

-

10,700

14,526

4,800

44,167

50,000

-

37,200

120,500

120,591

143,988

279,052

BAHRAIN

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Boubyan Intl Industries HoldGulf Investment House Ksc

Boubyan Bank K.S.CAhli United Bank B.S.C

Osos Holding Group CoAl-Eid Food Ksc

Qurain Petrochemical IndustrAdvanced Technology Co

Ekttitab Holding Co SakKout Food Group Ksc

Real Estate Trade Centers CoAcico Industries Co Kscc

Kipco Asset Management CoNational Petroleum ServicesAlimtiaz Investment Co Kscc

Ras Al Khaimah White CementKuwait Reinsurance Co Ksc

Kuwait & Gulf Link TransportHuman Soft Holding Co Ksc

Automated Systems Co KsccMetal & Recycling Co

Gulf Franchising Holding CoAl-Enma’a Real Estate Co

National Mobile TelecommuniAl Bareeq Holding Co Kscc

Housing Finance Co SakAl Salam Group Holding Co

United Foodstuff IndustriesAl Aman Investment Company

Mashaer Holdings Co KscManazel Holding

Mushrif Trading & ContractinTijara And Real Estate Inves

Kuwait Building MaterialsJazeera Airways Co Ksc

Commercial Real Estate CoFuture Communications Co

National International CoTaameer Real Estate Invest C

Gulf Cement CoHeavy Engineering And Ship B

Refrigeration Industries & SNational Real Estate Co

Al Safat Energy Holding CompKuwait National Cinema CoDanah Alsafat Foodstuff Co

Independent Petroleum GroupKuwait Real Estate Co Ksc

Salhia Real Estate Co KscGulf Cable & Electrical IndAl Nawadi Holding Co Ksc

Kuwait Finance HouseGulf North Africa Holding Co

Hilal Cement CoOsoul Investment Kscc

Gulf Insurance Group KscKuwait Food Co (Americana)

Umm Al Qaiwain Cement IndustAayan Leasing & Investment

30.50

29.00

405.00

180.00

116.00

0.00

212.00

0.00

34.50

0.00

26.00

295.00

86.00

730.00

69.00

92.00

0.00

48.00

1,060.00

325.00

64.00

32.00

59.00

1,060.00

100.00

30.50

38.50

140.00

52.00

84.00

17.00

79.00

36.50

0.00

870.00

76.00

96.00

60.00

24.00

81.00

140.00

310.00

93.00

13.00

990.00

78.00

350.00

54.00

350.00

380.00

75.00

480.00

37.00

134.00

42.00

660.00

2,400.00

0.00

39.50

-1.61

1.75

0.00

-1.10

3.57

0.00

-0.93

0.00

-2.82

0.00

4.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-4.17

0.00

0.00

-1.03

8.16

0.00

0.00

-3.03

1.72

-3.64

0.00

-1.61

-1.28

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

1.28

0.00

0.00

0.00

-1.30

0.00

-3.23

-4.00

-1.22

0.00

1.64

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

1.89

0.00

4.11

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

-1.64

0.00

-2.47

2,188,100

799,337

984,488

530,526

296,257

-

69,376

-

2,106,210

-

4,400

17,200

4,630

5,000

524,200

19,567

-

118,650

2,400

31,500

10,000

6,100

106,550

7,215

80,000

595,956

3,017,001

2

12,055

100

159,549

195,000

788,020

-

130,125

340,873

2,500

100

309,000

72,500

910

65,000

37,500

11,177,010

4,000

3,979,117

300

1,306,049

1,000

414,027

50,000

3,948,157

580,511

24,000

8,199

19

29,063

-

6,200,933

KUWAIT

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

7Gulf TimesFriday, May 6, 2016

BUSINESS

Apple IncMicrosoft Corp

Exxon Mobil CorpJohnson & JohnsonGeneral Electric Co

Procter & Gamble Co/TheJpmorgan Chase & Co

Wal-Mart Stores IncVerizon Communications Inc

Coca-Cola Co/ThePfizer Inc

Chevron CorpVisa Inc-Class A Shares

Home Depot IncWalt Disney Co/The

Intel CorpMerck & Co. Inc.

Cisco Systems IncIntl Business Machines Corp

Unitedhealth Group IncMcdonald’s Corp

Nike Inc -Cl B3M Co

Boeing Co/TheUnited Technologies CorpGoldman Sachs Group Inc

American Express CoDu Pont (E.I.) De Nemours

Caterpillar IncTravelers Cos Inc/The

93.20

50.20

88.18

112.71

30.14

81.52

61.48

66.89

50.85

45.21

33.66

101.81

77.42

135.21

104.99

29.97

53.92

26.52

146.48

132.82

129.80

58.37

168.05

132.51

100.72

160.01

64.22

64.45

73.31

110.96

-1.06

0.66

0.27

0.44

0.23

-0.10

-0.15

-0.45

0.02

0.50

0.78

1.21

0.45

0.04

1.27

0.39

-1.62

0.30

1.55

0.60

0.36

-1.25

0.53

1.24

0.05

-0.04

-0.06

0.30

-1.25

1.12

15,607,549

9,403,048

4,011,989

1,989,079

11,020,223

2,975,461

5,777,324

3,428,825

4,177,937

3,810,144

10,027,045

3,127,614

2,250,060

1,357,941

2,711,743

7,551,377

4,343,384

8,528,296

2,624,994

810,654

1,417,146

3,545,229

584,099

1,740,420

1,048,210

1,088,054

1,419,812

696,832

3,578,376

493,172

DJIA

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Wpp PlcWorldpay Group Plc

Wolseley PlcWm Morrison Supermarkets

Whitbread PlcVodafone Group Plc

United Utilities Group PlcUnilever Plc

Tui Ag-DiTravis Perkins Plc

Tesco PlcTaylor Wimpey Plc

Standard Life PlcStandard Chartered Plc

St James’s Place PlcSse Plc

Smith & Nephew PlcSky Plc

Shire PlcSevern Trent Plc

Schroders PlcSainsbury (J) Plc

Sage Group Plc/TheSabmiller Plc

Rsa Insurance Group PlcRoyal Mail Plc

Royal Dutch Shell Plc-B ShsRoyal Dutch Shell Plc-A Shs

Royal Bank Of Scotland GroupRolls-Royce Holdings Plc

Rio Tinto PlcRexam Plc

Relx PlcReckitt Benckiser Group Plc

Randgold Resources LtdPrudential Plc

Provident Financial PlcPersimmon Plc

Pearson PlcPaddy Power Betfair Plc

Old Mutual PlcNext Plc

National Grid PlcMondi Plc

Merlin EntertainmentMediclinic International Plc

Marks & Spencer Group PlcLondon Stock Exchange Group

Lloyds Banking Group PlcLegal & General Group PlcLand Securities Group Plc

Kingfisher PlcJohnson Matthey Plc

Itv PlcIntu Properties Plc

Intl Consolidated Airline-DiIntertek Group Plc

Intercontinental Hotels GrouInmarsat Plc

Informa PlcImperial Brands Plc

Hsbc Holdings PlcHargreaves Lansdown Plc

Hammerson PlcGlencore Plc

Glaxosmithkline PlcGkn Plc

Fresnillo PlcExperian Plc

Easyjet PlcDixons Carphone Plc

Direct Line Insurance GroupDiageo Plc

Dcc PlcCrh Plc

Compass Group PlcCoca-Cola Hbc Ag-Di

Centrica PlcCarnival Plc

Capita PlcBurberry Group Plc

Bunzl PlcBt Group Plc

British Land Co PlcBritish American Tobacco Plc

Bp PlcBhp Billiton Plc

Berkeley Group HoldingsBarratt Developments Plc

Barclays PlcBae Systems Plc

Babcock Intl Group PlcAviva Plc

Astrazeneca PlcAssociated British Foods Plc

Ashtead Group PlcArm Holdings Plc

Antofagasta PlcAnglo American Plc

Admiral Group Plc3I Group Plc

#N/A!

1,586.00

261.90

3,851.00

192.00

3,825.00

219.35

940.00

3,095.50

1,005.00

1,844.00

159.90

181.50

318.80

507.00

855.00

1,476.00

1,132.00

933.50

4,052.00

2,229.00

2,446.00

266.60

582.00

4,200.00

478.80

488.30

1,745.00

1,726.50

213.20

630.00

2,114.50

628.50

1,213.00

6,684.00

5,785.00

1,310.00

2,874.00

1,950.00

805.00

8,895.00

174.70

5,280.00

987.50

1,296.00

427.40

871.00

413.80

2,614.00

64.08

217.80

1,142.00

359.30

2,855.00

223.10

294.50

510.00

3,301.00

2,696.00

863.00

663.50

3,760.00

436.55

1,266.00

579.50

145.45

1,449.50

273.80

1,039.00

1,267.00

1,440.00

418.10

372.20

1,873.00

6,180.00

1,948.00

1,222.00

1,375.00

208.50

3,435.00

998.50

1,178.00

2,057.00

451.05

719.00

4,191.00

358.35

831.10

2,897.00

522.00

160.95

480.60

932.50

428.00

3,809.50

3,116.00

886.50

942.50

442.30

654.60

1,927.00

463.30

0.00

0.00

-1.62

-0.44

2.40

-0.57

0.64

0.16

0.41

1.93

-0.27

-0.09

-0.77

1.30

-0.16

-0.29

-0.67

-2.75

-0.32

-1.32

0.41

-0.29

-0.45

-3.64

0.30

1.98

0.43

1.31

0.94

-2.74

-2.33

0.59

0.48

0.33

0.38

-0.77

-0.15

-2.31

-0.96

2.61

-1.06

-0.23

2.52

0.54

1.09

-0.23

-1.02

0.19

1.48

-1.10

-0.55

0.79

-0.64

-0.90

-0.89

0.41

-0.49

0.03

-0.22

-7.20

1.07

1.35

-0.02

0.48

0.17

0.28

-0.10

0.04

0.29

0.08

0.00

-0.10

0.32

0.97

0.98

-0.15

0.16

0.15

-9.78

-1.15

0.86

-0.08

0.59

2.63

0.56

1.20

-1.16

0.76

-1.33

-0.95

-0.92

0.44

-0.16

-1.34

-0.60

1.00

-0.62

0.64

1.58

1.77

-0.05

0.30

0.00

2,402,937

4,142,515

359,414

24,141,887

345,982

52,076,709

943,496

1,328,759

1,127,196

443,659

22,943,978

4,761,972

5,205,918

6,993,708

765,542

3,444,297

3,603,625

1,860,067

1,091,226

645,792

260,979

9,105,441

4,410,708

3,257,479

2,741,097

1,212,623

7,460,518

4,302,891

11,002,123

8,696,487

3,227,189

2,079,466

3,043,786

1,032,222

1,146,140

3,576,589

539,070

410,490

2,278,134

97,046

7,957,291

912,557

5,190,943

942,989

893,508

646,112

4,762,032

2,046,542

98,507,230

10,971,593

1,275,503

5,871,312

277,026

14,303,820

2,203,056

6,897,177

161,488

584,736

4,715,888

1,052,679

1,550,025

23,440,193

466,418

1,180,465

35,304,207

5,252,881

4,992,799

900,233

1,377,989

887,130

1,234,127

5,466,226

2,654,509

149,128

1,390,129

1,694,388

239,894

74,541,767

371,961

1,214,152

1,803,281

345,539

26,660,142

2,536,293

1,930,344

26,590,564

9,421,873

542,710

1,970,306

27,998,135

4,023,872

564,773

6,087,289

2,193,486

653,219

1,487,657

3,692,657

2,891,417

7,386,870

592,871

1,026,446

-

FTSE 100

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

East Japan Railway CoItochu Corp

Fujifilm Holdings CorpYamato Holdings Co Ltd

Chubu Electric Power Co IncMitsubishi Estate Co Ltd

Mitsubishi Heavy IndustriesToshiba Corp

Shiseido Co LtdShionogi & Co Ltd

Tokyo Gas Co LtdTokyo Electron Ltd

Panasonic CorpFujitsu Ltd

Central Japan Railway CoT&D Holdings Inc

Toyota Motor CorpKddi Corp

Nitto Denko Corp

9,356.00

1,354.50

4,363.00

2,150.00

1,481.50

2,081.00

381.60

222.30

2,359.00

5,475.00

437.00

7,105.00

921.10

384.10

18,850.00

1,033.50

5,442.00

3,149.00

6,578.00

-4.76

-4.28

-4.51

-3.54

2.14

-1.89

-4.00

-5.40

-5.07

-2.98

-9.92

-4.13

-7.37

-1.71

-3.01

-4.44

-3.75

-0.63

8.98

1,564,400

9,656,500

2,897,400

2,827,900

2,911,300

7,292,000

19,540,000

42,977,000

2,927,300

1,438,700

26,693,000

1,357,500

17,411,300

21,040,000

509,500

4,018,400

12,276,200

6,970,100

4,417,300

TOKYO

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Rakuten IncKyocera Corp

Nissan Motor Co LtdHitachi Ltd

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co LtdJfe Holdings Inc

Ana Holdings IncMitsubishi Electric Corp

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial GrHonda Motor Co Ltd

Fast Retailing Co LtdMs&Ad Insurance Group Holdin

Kubota CorpSeven & I Holdings Co Ltd

Inpex CorpResona Holdings Inc

Asahi Kasei CorpKirin Holdings Co Ltd

Marubeni CorpMitsubishi Ufj Financial Gro

Mitsubishi Chemical HoldingsFanuc Corp

Daito Trust Construct Co LtdOtsuka Holdings Co Ltd

Oriental Land Co LtdSekisui House Ltd

Secom Co LtdTokio Marine Holdings Inc

Aeon Co LtdMitsui & Co Ltd

Kao CorpDai-Ichi Life Insurance

Mazda Motor CorpKomatsu Ltd

West Japan Railway CoMurata Manufacturing Co Ltd

Kansai Electric Power Co IncDenso Corp

Sompo Japan Nipponkoa HoldinDaiwa House Industry Co Ltd

Jx Holdings IncNippon Steel & Sumitomo Meta

Suzuki Motor CorpNippon Telegraph & Telephone

Ajinomoto Co IncMitsui Fudosan Co Ltd

Ono Pharmaceutical Co LtdDaikin Industries Ltd

Bank Of Yokohama Ltd/TheToray Industries IncAstellas Pharma Inc

Bridgestone CorpSony CorpHoya Corp

Sumitomo Mitsui Trust HoldinJapan Tobacco Inc

Osaka Gas Co LtdSumitomo Electric Industries

Daiwa Securities Group IncSoftbank Group Corp

Mizuho Financial Group IncNomura Holdings Inc

Daiichi Sankyo Co LtdFuji Heavy Industries Ltd

Ntt Docomo IncSumitomo Realty & Developmen

Sumitomo Metal Mining Co LtdOrix Corp

Asahi Group Holdings LtdKeyence Corp

Nidec CorpIsuzu Motors Ltd

Unicharm CorpShin-Etsu Chemical Co Ltd

Smc CorpMitsubishi CorpNintendo Co Ltd

Eisai Co LtdSumitomo Corp

Canon IncJapan Airlines Co Ltd

1,220.50

5,320.00

950.50

487.50

5,104.00

1,562.50

315.70

1,189.00

3,280.00

2,873.50

27,945.00

2,880.00

1,620.50

4,435.00

854.80

379.70

740.70

1,728.50

570.40

504.10

561.80

16,045.00

15,845.00

4,178.00

7,277.00

1,867.00

8,214.00

3,632.00

1,587.00

1,315.00

5,985.00

1,318.50

1,647.00

1,831.50

6,359.00

12,835.00

997.80

3,912.00

2,865.00

2,869.50

459.30

2,317.00

2,859.50

4,893.00

2,500.50

2,624.50

4,942.00

8,758.00

520.00

904.80

1,445.50

3,964.00

2,666.50

4,111.00

327.40

4,467.00

388.60

1,281.50

621.00

5,828.00

162.80

457.00

2,538.50

3,497.00

2,723.50

3,109.00

1,236.50

1,520.50

3,519.00

65,470.00

8,063.00

1,123.50

2,228.00

6,123.00

25,965.00

1,779.50

14,935.00

6,574.00

1,125.50

3,027.00

3,860.00

0.00

-2.80

-4.95

-5.45

-3.00

-1.08

2.50

-0.75

-3.90

-3.98

-4.25

-2.98

-2.35

-2.38

-3.76

-3.43

-2.50

8.61

-2.68

-3.08

-3.44

-2.79

2.26

-2.75

-4.25

-3.34

-2.74

-1.55

-3.44

-1.98

-2.14

-3.69

-5.59

-3.93

-4.78

-13.25

2.11

-7.97

-2.57

-3.16

-2.40

-0.94

-7.01

0.60

-2.13

-3.69

-0.72

-1.42

0.00

-2.36

-3.44

-3.69

-4.01

-3.52

-4.99

-1.39

-2.07

-4.72

-3.90

-2.67

-2.98

-4.57

-2.40

-5.89

4.87

-4.19

-1.24

-4.16

0.28

-2.52

-1.49

-6.02

-2.81

-1.29

-5.05

-4.48

-1.45

-3.82

-3.80

-2.73

-2.35

9,970,800

2,449,700

20,322,600

36,791,000

2,322,100

7,564,900

34,619,000

11,979,000

11,332,300

7,309,200

1,017,200

1,627,800

7,222,500

3,650,600

9,212,500

20,272,500

5,320,000

9,070,700

11,103,700

98,934,500

5,994,800

1,741,500

638,500

1,260,300

2,014,700

3,376,500

773,100

3,315,200

4,018,600

9,896,400

2,669,400

6,510,500

11,406,900

6,728,200

1,541,300

2,772,200

5,651,900

5,401,500

1,621,400

2,361,300

10,947,600

6,404,700

4,102,800

5,084,000

2,250,300

5,795,000

3,865,900

1,591,700

25,746,000

5,449,000

8,751,400

3,516,800

12,920,900

1,905,800

26,601,000

5,401,700

11,818,000

3,613,900

10,012,000

6,984,800

204,481,300

29,770,200

3,551,100

6,178,600

10,546,500

2,930,000

4,181,000

6,964,000

2,289,000

305,300

2,606,200

4,815,600

5,076,100

2,299,300

300,000

9,276,300

1,158,200

1,238,400

5,365,900

6,860,600

3,443,100

TOKYO

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Aluminum Corp Of China Ltd-HBank Of East Asia Ltd

Bank Of China Ltd-HBank Of Communications Co-H

Belle International HoldingsBoc Hong Kong Holdings Ltd

Cathay Pacific AirwaysCk Hutchison Holdings Ltd

China Coal Energy Co-HChina Construction Bank-H

China Life Insurance Co-HChina Merchants Hldgs Intl

China Mobile LtdChina Overseas Land & Invest

China Petroleum & Chemical-HChina Resources Beer Holdin

China Resources Land LtdChina Resources Power Holdin

China Shenhua Energy Co-HChina Unicom Hong Kong Ltd

Citic LtdClp Holdings Ltd

Cnooc LtdCosco Pacific Ltd

Esprit Holdings LtdFih Mobile Ltd

Hang Lung Properties LtdHang Seng Bank Ltd

Henderson Land Development

2.50

28.20

3.07

4.76

4.42

22.35

12.28

92.60

3.41

4.83

17.34

22.55

87.90

23.50

5.21

17.20

18.66

12.98

12.40

9.02

11.10

72.15

9.11

8.26

6.86

3.19

14.62

139.00

47.25

-1.19

-0.88

-0.32

-0.63

-1.56

0.90

0.00

-0.43

-2.01

-0.62

-0.80

-1.53

-0.17

-0.84

-0.76

-0.12

-2.00

-1.67

-1.59

-0.55

-1.07

0.28

-0.11

-1.08

1.03

-1.54

-1.75

0.14

-1.46

11,517,791

1,894,743

176,540,181

26,186,977

8,373,000

9,213,211

2,708,144

5,119,474

8,210,000

174,476,454

54,462,694

1,561,914

10,894,709

15,925,283

105,460,218

1,904,288

8,210,827

4,689,000

18,132,281

15,918,500

12,041,545

1,853,118

93,611,064

4,078,363

1,298,000

5,634,467

3,813,701

852,801

2,058,482

HONG KONG

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Hong Kong & China GasHong Kong Exchanges & Clear

Hsbc Holdings PlcHutchison Whampoa Ltd

Ind & Comm Bk Of China-HLi & Fung Ltd

Mtr CorpNew World Development

Petrochina Co Ltd-HPing An Insurance Group Co-H

Power Assets Holdings LtdSino Land Co

Sun Hung Kai PropertiesSwire Pacific Ltd - Cl ATencent Holdings Ltd

Wharf Holdings Ltd

14.36

188.40

49.45

0.00

4.03

4.65

38.50

7.44

5.54

35.45

76.65

11.90

93.20

83.00

153.20

41.35

0.14

0.48

-1.40

0.00

-0.49

-1.27

0.79

-1.59

-0.54

-1.53

0.86

-1.16

-0.80

0.06

-0.84

-0.84

5,800,635

5,732,230

30,076,053

-

253,245,046

11,448,616

2,703,897

16,909,368

105,345,000

25,779,779

3,619,153

3,329,384

4,095,496

996,016

13,653,426

4,328,163

HONG KONG

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Zee Entertainment EnterpriseYes Bank Ltd

Wipro LtdVedanta Ltd

Ultratech Cement LtdTech Mahindra Ltd

Tata Steel LtdTata Power Co Ltd

Tata Motors LtdTata Consultancy Svcs Ltd

Sun Pharmaceutical IndusState Bank Of India

Reliance Industries LtdPunjab National Bank

Power Grid Corp Of India LtdOil & Natural Gas Corp Ltd

Ntpc LtdMaruti Suzuki India Ltd

Mahindra & Mahindra LtdLupin Ltd

Larsen & Toubro LtdKotak Mahindra Bank Ltd

Itc LtdInfosys Ltd

Indusind Bank LtdIdea Cellular Ltd

Icici Bank LtdHousing Development Finance

Hindustan Unilever LtdHindalco Industries Ltd

Hero Motocorp LtdHdfc Bank Limited

Hcl Technologies LtdGrasim Industries Ltd

Gail India LtdDr. Reddy’s Laboratories

Coal India LtdCipla Ltd

Cairn India LtdBosch Ltd

Bharti Airtel LtdBharat Petroleum Corp Ltd

Bharat Heavy ElectricalsBank Of Baroda

Bajaj Auto LtdAxis Bank Ltd

Asian Paints LtdAmbuja Cements Ltd

Adani Ports And Special EconAcc Ltd

400.45

912.15

543.10

104.70

3,119.00

479.35

331.80

70.30

391.15

2,470.30

810.45

180.35

975.25

81.45

143.25

210.50

139.70

3,836.85

1,320.85

1,603.60

1,273.85

709.15

317.65

1,192.45

1,037.55

113.50

214.65

1,162.65

850.15

90.45

2,893.75

1,132.30

732.90

4,115.25

365.75

2,929.55

281.80

541.80

136.55

19,094.45

354.40

938.80

122.75

148.70

2,453.30

461.05

867.05

215.85

198.00

1,394.85

-1.01

-0.59

0.57

0.05

-2.03

2.66

0.93

-0.14

2.45

-0.31

0.78

0.22

-0.29

0.25

0.35

-0.07

0.65

0.66

-0.01

1.64

2.17

-0.49

1.60

0.30

-0.43

-5.30

0.09

2.90

-0.38

-0.77

-0.02

0.44

-0.57

-0.70

-0.05

-0.13

0.66

1.61

-0.51

-0.99

-1.95

-0.87

2.51

0.03

-0.28

-0.30

-0.75

0.44

-4.92

-0.63

2,230,441

7,153,127

1,164,658

22,283,539

297,054

1,598,368

9,499,192

2,494,904

10,162,730

670,203

3,345,260

20,138,515

5,205,533

6,269,302

1,623,670

3,336,060

4,087,262

531,341

710,892

754,275

2,054,056

1,007,309

4,547,907

3,682,854

1,046,829

6,861,603

26,424,375

4,839,261

805,895

17,648,634

626,656

1,346,715

2,653,426

32,768

885,177

221,940

3,377,656

1,114,677

2,915,733

8,902

2,294,513

735,093

5,683,735

8,184,622

138,763

9,133,269

444,475

1,308,915

18,982,856

232,097

SENSEX

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

WORLD INDICESIndices Lt Price Change

GCC INDICESIndices Lt Price Change

Dow Jones Indus. AvgS&P 500 Index

Nasdaq Composite IndexS&P/Tsx Composite Index

Mexico Bolsa IndexBrazil Bovespa Stock Idx

Ftse 100 IndexCac 40 Index

Dax IndexIbex 35 Tr

Nikkei 225Japan Topix

Hang Seng IndexAll Ordinaries Indx

Nzx All IndexBse Sensex 30 Index

Nse S&P Cnx Nifty IndexStraits Times Index

Karachi All Share IndexJakarta Composite Index

17,706.63

2,056.92

4,736.43

13,660.40

45,235.56

51,868.96

6,117.25

4,319.46

9,851.86

8,689.40

16,147.38

1,299.96

20,449.82

5,344.53

1,308.73

25,262.21

7,735.50

2,767.81

24,620.63

4,822.60

+55.37

+5.80

+10.79

+28.40

-113.44

-683.84

+5.23

-4.77

+23.61

+35.10

-518.67

-40.59

-76.01

+8.94

+9.67

+160.48

+28.95

-5.26

+331.33

+10.33

Doha Securities MarketSaudi Tadawul

Kuwait Stocks ExchangeBahrain Stock Exchage

Oman Stock MarketAbudhabi Stock MarketDubai Financial Market

9,748.78

6,656.41

5,373.17

1,112.80

5,979.75

4,428.61

3,307.61

-106.07

+69.91

-2.19

+0.53

-4.24

+46.50

-16.39

“Information contained herein is believed to be reliable and had been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. The accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. This publication is for providing information only and is not intended as an off er or solicitation for a purchase or sale of any of the financial instruments mentioned. Gulf Times and Doha Bank or any of their employees shall not be held accountable and will not accept any losses or liabilities for actions based on this data.”

CURRENCIESDOLLAR QATAR RIYAL SAUDI RIYAL UAE DIRHAMS BAHRAINI

DINARKUWAITI

DINAR

A general view of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The DAX 30 index posted a 0.2% increase yesterday as gains for pharmaceutical firm Bayer over a new cancer treatment off set banking stock weakness amid worries about Italy’s financial sector.

Europe markets eke out modest recovery AFPLondon

European and American stocks managed a half-hearted recov-ery yesterday after two days of

heavy losses as concerns over slowing global growth continued to weigh.

Higher oil prices helped markets shrug off overnight falls in many Asian indices, which had taken their lead from Wall Street’s previous ses-sion, as markets geared up for key US jobs data due Friday.

At the European close, London’s benchmark FTSE 100 index stood 0.1% fi rmer.

In the eurozone Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index posted a 0.2% increase as gains for pharmaceutical fi rm Bayer over a new cancer treatment off set banking stock weakness amid worries about Italy’s fi nancial sector.

The Paris CAC 40 closed a touch weaker.

Wall Street was trading around 0.3% higher at that time.

Markets in France and Germany were open despite a public holiday in both countries, but many deal-ers were away from their desks,

making for lower volumes. In foreign exchange, the euro fell

against the dollar as the US currency extended its recovery against rival units after recent sharp falls that were triggered by concerns over the world’s biggest economy.

A disappointing set of readings and announcements from leading econo-mies over the past week have cast a pall over fi nancial markets, revers-ing recent gains that were fuelled by hopes a recovery was taking hold.

“Global growth fears seem to be edging up again,” Deutsche Bank ana-lysts said in a note.

Markus Huber, trader at City of London Markets, noted bargain-hunting in stock markets after four straight sessions of declines.

“However overall sentiment re-mains negative as uncertainty con-cerning global growth, a potential US rate hike in the third quarter and disappointing corporate earnings continue to take a toll on markets,” he added.

Asian stock markets moved cau-tiously as worries over the global economy sapped confi dence, but the dollar held the previous day’s gains and oil prices extended a rally.

Data showing sluggish manufac-turing activity in China and a lower growth forecast for the eurozone weighed on sentiment, while data last week indicated US fi rst-quarter eco-nomic growth was sharply lower than expectations.

The weak report also raised fears about today’s closely-watched US government jobs report.

“The main focus is already on the US non-farm payrolls due tomorrow,” Rabobank analysts said in a note.

If the fi gures confi rm the market consensus for a 200,000 increase in the payroll this “would provide the US dollar with further support”, they said.

In Asian trade yesterday, Hong Kong was off 0.4% and Singapore dipped 0.6%. There were also losses in Taipei and Manila. But Shanghai and Sydney ended 0.2-percent higher.

Tokyo and Seoul were closed for public holidays.

“Markets seem to be at something of a crossroads at present, waiting for clearer signals on whether US activity will bounce back in the second quar-ter,” Sharon Zollner, a senior econo-mist in Auckland at ANZ Bank New Zealand, said in a note to clients.

BUSINESS9Gulf Times

Friday, May 6, 2016

ReutersSydney

Australia’s major lenders this week signalled they are ready to forego some of the

highest dividends in the banking world after seven years of rising payouts, putting investors like the $1.5tn pension industry on notice of lower returns in future.

In a dire week of bank results, Westpac Banking Corp left its divi-dend unchanged after growing it since 2009, ANZ Banking Group cut dividends for the fi rst time in seven years and National Australia Bank kept its dividend steady for the second straight half.

Three of the four major lenders also decided to pass on Tuesday’s 25 basis point cut in offi cial inter-est rates in full, squeezing margins which are already near record lows due to tougher capital requirements and stifl ing competition.

The rate cut more than reverses hikes by each of the major banks including Commonwealth Bank of Australian since late last year, and spells the end of an era of ever-ris-ing yields for bank investors.

“We are certainly more cautious with respect to dividend sustaina-bility for Australian banks and have been more comfortable shifting ex-posure to sectors such as REITs and utilities,” said Singapore-based Sat Duhra, who manages Henderson’s Asia dividend income fund.

“We assess the risks to the sec-tor has being higher than 12 months ago – the capital issue is ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, dividends are not expected to be sustainable during this process and the housing mar-ket has continued into bubble ter-ritory.”

To be sure, Australian banks of-fer dividend yields of 5.5-7%, well ahead of international peers like US retail lender Wells Fargo at 3% and British bank Lloyds’ 3.4%.

But the cost of funding is go-ing up and something has to give, ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott warned on Tuesday.

“So either the shareholders just accept a lower return or banks work really hard on productivity and reconfi guring their business,” he told reporters.

Some of that reconfi guring is likely to include boosting account-ability and pulling back from ag-gressive practices that have re-sulted in a series of reputationally damaging scandals.

On top of their balance-sheet worries, bank executives are fi ght-ing calls for a high-powered judicial inquiry into industry misconduct ahead of a general election expected on July 2.

The “Big Four” banks, which cruised through the global fi nancial

crisis on the back of a solid mort-gage market and the commodities boom, are rethinking strategies to boost productivity and lower costs.

ANZ is shifting its strategic fo-cus away from low-returning busi-nesses in Asia. Others are deploying less capital in institutional lend-ing, where competition from for-eign lenders is intense, and pushing further into housing. They are also cutting costs and staff .

But some investors are not con-vinced. Bank shares have taken a

beating this year, down 5-12%, and hedge funds are taking unprec-edented short positions due to con-cerns about infl ated house prices.

Bank executives counter that their asset quality is sound. The major banks’ Tier 1 capital buff ers, at 11.8% to 14.3%, are commensu-rate with global peers and rising.

“When you’ve got an economy in transition like the Australian economy is you’re going to face some stressed accounts,” NAB CEO Andrew Thorburn said yesterday

after the bank posted a 7.4% rise in bad debt charges from Sept-end, refl ecting an industry-wide trend.

Pension fund UniSuper, with A$52bn ($38.77bn) in funds under management, is one investor that is prepared to ride out the banks’ troubles.

It notes that Australian house-holds, on average, have assets well in excess of debt and, if unemploy-ment remains steady, borrowings can be serviced even if property prices stumble.

Australian banks signaldividend growth era end

Indian stocks rebound from three-week lowBloombergMumbai

Indian stocks climbed, led by in-dustrials and real estate compa-nies, as some investors judged the

decline in the benchmark index to a three-week low was excessive.

Housing Development Finance Corp was the biggest gainer on the S&P BSE Sensex after the largest mortgage lender picked banks to ar-range an initial public offering of its life insurance venture. Bharat Heavy Electricals rebounded from its big-gest drop in two months. Sun Phar-maceutical Industries, the most val-uable health-care company, rose for a second day after the success of its psoriasis drug trials. Its peers Lupin and Cipla were also among the big-gest gainers on the index.

The Sensex climbed 0.6 to 25,262.21 at close in Mumbai. The gauge slid to a three-week low on Wednesday,

capping three days of losses, as anxi-ety over slowing economic expansion globally and renewed concerns about higher US interest rates curbed de-mand for riskier assets. The decline pulled down the index’s valuation to the cheapest level since March.

“Industrial and utilities stocks are moving higher as they were consid-erably beaten down and as there is revival in industrial activity,” Pankaj Sharma, head of equities at Equirus Securities, said by phone. “Market valuations are near their one-year forward historical averages.” Indiab-ulls Real Estate jumped to its high-est level since October 19, the best performance on the S&P BSE India Realty Index. DLF, the biggest devel-oper, jumped 3.3%, ending three days of losses. The gauge has surged 30% from a February low amid optimism lower borrowing costs would stoke demand for property. The Reserve Bank of India has cut benchmark in-terest rates five times since the start

of 2015. “Industrial stocks rebound-ed amid expectation that transmis-sion of interest rates will lower their interest burden in the coming quar-ters,” Chakri Lokapriya, the Mum-bai-based chief investment officer at TCG Advisory Services, which manages about $3bn in assets world-wide, said by phone. “We are posi-tive on real-estate stocks as interest rates decline and asset prices drop.” Foreign investors unloaded $4.6mn of local stocks on May 4, paring this year’s inflows to $1.7bn. They invest-ed $585mn last month after an inflow of $4.1bn in March, which was the highest in three years.

The Sensex has retreated 3.3% this year and trades at 15.5 times 12-month projected earnings versus 11.3 for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.

Meanwhile, the rupee was little changed at 66.5550 a dollar in the spot market yesterday. The rupee has retreated 0.3% this week.

National Australia Bank CEO Andrew Thorburn speaks at a press conference after the bank’s half-yearly results were announced in Sydney yesterday. Australia’s major lenders, including the NAB, signalled they are ready to forego some of the highest dividends in the banking world after seven years of rising payouts.

Asian markets cautious on global economicgrowth worries AFPTokyo

Asian stock markets moved cautiously yes-

terday as worries over the global economy

sap confidence but the dollar held the

previous day’s gains and oil prices extended

a rally.

A disappointing set of readings and

announcements from the world’s biggest

economies over the past week have cast a

pall over stock markets, reversing recent

gains that were fuelled by hopes a recovery

was taking hold.

New York provided another negative lead,

with the city’s three main indexes ending

deep in the red after a payrolls group said far

fewer private-sector US jobs were created

last month than expected.

The figures came a day after figures show-

ing sluggish manufacturing activity in China

and a lower growth forecast for the eurozone,

while data last week indicated US first-quar-

ter economic growth was sharply lower than

expectations.

The weak report also raised fears about

today’s closely watched official April jobs re-

port. In Asian trade Hong Kong was off 0.4%

while Singapore dipped 0.6%. There were

also losses in Taipei and Manila. But Shanghai

ended 0.2% higher and Sydney gained 0.2%.

Tokyo and Seoul were closed for public

holidays.

The dollar enjoyed another day of buying

on the back of comments from two Fed chiefs

suggesting the US central bank could hike

interest rates as soon as next month.

It was up 0.8% against the South Korean

won and 0.5% versus the Indonesian rupiah.

The oil-dependent Malaysian ringgit was

0.2% lower but Australia’s dollar recovered

slightly, adding 0.4% after losing around 2.5%

over the previous two days following a shock

interest rate cut by the country’s central

bank. The greenback also rose to 107.15 yen

from 107.03 yen in New York on Wednesday

and is well up from the 18-month low around

105.50 yen touched Tuesday.

However, the greenback is still almost

13% down against the Japanese currency

owing to concerns about the global outlook.

The yen is considered a safe bet in times of

uncertainty.

Crude prices surged thanks to figures

showing another fall in US oil output, while

the wildfires burning in Canada’s Alberta

region are also threatening production there,

analysts said. “The trend of declining US pro-

duction is a real positive,” Michael McCarthy,

chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney,

told Bloomberg News. “I expect prices will

probably touch the $48 to $50 zone. We will

have to see significant inroads into crude

stockpiles to push through that area.”

In afternoon trade West Texas Intermedi-

ate was up 3.4% at $45.25 and Brent added

2.6% $45.77.

China’s commodities lose more froth as economic worries underpin curbs ReutersManila

Chinese steel and iron ore futures fell sharply for a third straight day and other commodities also slid yesterday, giving up more froth after Chinese exchanges slapped curbs to quell speculation that spurred a buying frenzy last month. Mixed signals on China’s economic health have also weighed on sentiment, breaking earlier perceptions that the world’s second-largest economy had stabilised. Trading volumes have tapered off from record highs hit in April after China’s securities regulator told commodity exchanges in Shanghai, Dalian and Zhengzhou to rein in speculation following rapid price gains in everything from steel to cotton. Volume in the most-traded rebar contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange dropped to nearly 9mn lots yesterday from as high as 22mn lots on April 21, when the price also touched a 19-month high. The contract closed down 4.1% at 2,309 yuan ($355) a tonne. Last month, trade in most-active rebar, used in construction, hit a record 1.4bn tonnes, surpassing China’s entire annual steel production capacity. “Prices have gone up so much and there was no support from fundamentals, so we’re seeing consolidation,” said Helen Lau, an analyst at Argonaut Securities in Hong Kong. A slew of surveys giving mixed signals on the Chinese economy also hit investor sentiment this week. China’s off icial survey showed manufacturing activity expanding a second month in a row, while a private survey showed it contracted

a 14th straight month. Surveys on the services sector pointed to slower expansion. “There is concern whether the recovery is solid or not,” said Lau. Iron ore futures were hit hard, with the most-traded contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange dropping 5.3% to 412.50 yuan a tonne. Volume on that contract reached 2.2mn lots yesterday versus nearly 7mn lots two weeks ago. Iron ore traded on the Dalian exchange topped 5bn tonnes last month, enough to make more than 3bn tonnes of steel. “The wild card ... is the Dalian (Commodity) Exchange where there are huge quantities of iron ore being traded. That is having an impact on people’s view of iron ore pricing,” Rio Tinto chief executive Sam Walsh told reporters after the company’s annual general meeting in Australia. Such was April’s surge in China’s commodity futures that daily trading turnover in 18 contracts averaged $376bn over the last two weeks, Morgan Stanley said in a report. Morgan Stanley estimates that the share of retail investors in China’s commodity futures market has risen to 50-60% in the past two weeks from around 30% at the end of 2015. The share of those who trade for hedging has dropped to 30-40% from around 60%, the investment bank said. “Many futures brokerage firms are reporting large numbers of newly opened accounts belong to retail investors with investable capital of less than 700,000 yuan per account,” Morgan Stanley said. Other commodities traded in China also declined, including steelmaking raw materials coking coal and coke , which fell 3% and 2.4% respectively.

The Bombay Stock Exchange. The Sensex climbed 0.6% to 25,262.21 yesterday.

China solar equipment fi rm may defaulton bond ReutersShanghai

A Chinese solar equipment fi rm, Baoding Tianwei Yingli New Energy Resources Co,

said it may be miss payment on a 1.4bn yuan ($215.2mn) fi ve-year note maturing on May 12.

The unlisted fi rm, a subsidiary of New York-listed Yingli Green En-ergy Holdings Co, cited consecutive losses as the reason for the potential default. It issued the warning in a statement posted on China’s inter-bank bond market operator’s web-site late on Wednesday.

Prices for solar power equipment have fallen rapidly in recent years, causing fi nancial problems for sev-eral manufacturers. China’s fi rst public bond default in 2014 was by Chaori Solar.

Bond defaults have been acceler-ating in China over the past year and a half, with around 20 fi rms running into repayment trouble in 2016. Defaults have been concentrated in industries with overcapacity such as steel and cement, but fi rms in a wide range of sectors have now de-faulted as the economy has slowed.

Onshore bond yields rose rapidly in April as investors eyed mounting defaults amid less aggressive moves by the central bank to stimulate the economy following better than expected economic data. Chinese fi rms delayed or cancelled more than $15bn of new bond issuance in April.

Nonetheless, bond and money market yields have retreated some-what in recent days following large cash injections by the central bank.

BUSINESS

Gulf Times Friday, May 6, 201610

India plans panel to clean up mountain of bad debtsPM has made repairing bank balance sheets top priority; India’s state banks hold over $100bn in stressed debts; proposal to create panel to review how to pay off big loans; banks often too scared to suggest write-off s themselves

ReutersNew Delhi

India is considering setting up an independent panel to help state-owned banks negotiate set-tlements with big businesses on bad loans, in

order to shield bankers from a populist backlash they say is hobbling eff orts to clean up their bal-ance sheets.

India’s $121bn troubled debt pile, over $100bn of which is on the books of state-owned banks, has come under close scrutiny from prosecutors, the media and politicians. Some have blamed banks for going too easy on corporate tycoons, and do not want taxpayers propping up the struggling banking sector.

The proposal, being examined by the govern-ment and in its early stages, would give the panel power to defi ne the “haircut” a bank should face on a loan gone sour, protecting bankers from crit-ics who want failed Indian fi rms to pay back in full, two fi nance ministry and two central bank offi cials said.

Bad debt has hampered banks’ ability to lend, threatening to throttle a nascent economic recov-ery.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made re-pairing bank balance sheets his administration’s “top-most priority,” a senior government offi cial said.

“Banks have been very reluctant to take a hair-cut where they face newspaper criticism,” said a second senior offi cial, who is familiar with discus-sions on the panel. He declined to be named be-cause he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The second offi cial added that the proposal had run into hurdles already, however, amid questions over how it would fi t into India’s existing legal framework.

A fi nance ministry spokesman declined to com-ment. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) did not im-mediately respond to requests for comment on the proposal.

Fear of bad headlines was one reason why state-run banks declined to consider embattled ty-coon Vijay Mallya’s off er to pay up to $900mn in tranches to settle about $1.4bn his defunct King-fi sher Airlines owed, two banking sources said.

Mallya now also faces a money laundering in-vestigation.

Mallya told the Financial Times late last month that he wanted a “reasonable” settlement that he could aff ord and banks could justify. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Bad loans have piled up as subdued consumer

demand hits corporate earnings, making it harder for big businesses to repay loans.

RBI governor Raghuram Rajan has set a deadline of March 2017 for banks to clean up their books, and the government said it would inject $11bn in state banks by March 2019 to help them repair their balance sheets.

India Ratings and Research, a local affi liate of Fitch, has said the government would have to cough up as much as $45bn if the lenders failed to raise funds from markets to address expected fu-ture capital shortfalls.

Negotiated settlements, in which a bank takes a writedown on a loan gone bad, can help speed up the process. They would allow banks to more quickly establish how much money they would need to bolster their balance sheets.

All state lenders including State Bank of India (SBI), the largest, are trading at a steep discount to

their book values. Healthier institutions would be able to raise money from the market, reducing the burden on taxpayers.

Several fi nance ministry offi cials said stake sales were more likely once valuations of state-run banks improved.

Mahesh Patil, co-chief investment offi cer at Birla Sun Life Asset Management Co, said an inde-pendent panel for deciding haircuts on non-per-forming assets would accelerate decision making and help banks focus on their core lending busi-ness.

“As long as these issues are there, a lot of atten-tion goes in terms of addressing the NPAs,” Patil said. “The decision-making will be much better under an independent panel.”

The proposal envisages setting up a panel com-prising leading bankers and government and cen-tral bank offi cials, to review some larger outstand-

ing loans and try to arrive at a settlement, fi nance ministry and central bank offi cials said.

There is also a suggestion to include judges, they added.

The idea was fi rst fl oated in 2014 after Modi took offi ce, but did not gain much traction then, one of the fi nance ministry offi cials said.

It resurfaced at a two-day bankers’ retreat in March where lenders saw it as a way of giving them some kind of insurance while breaking the logjam on bad loans, one of the central bank offi cials said.

Banks are trying other means to reduce non-performing loans.

In March, for example, SBI asked industrialist Naveen Jindal’s Jindal Steel and Power to speed up a deal to sell a power plant to JSW Energy, run by his elder brother Sajjan, to pare debt, several sources familiar with the matter said.

The deal was announced on Wednesday.

Modi: Repairing bank balance sheets is top-most priority.

AFPBeijing

China’s state-owned rail Corp is more than $600bn in debt, reports

said, almost twice the size of Greece’s obligations.

The China Railway Corp (CRC) operates the country’s trains, including an already world-beating 19,000-kilome-tre (11,800-mile) high-speed rail network, with at least another 11,000 kilometres planned.

But according to a recently re-leased fi nancial report, it owed 4.14tn yuan ($614bn) at the end of April, said respected fi nancial portal Caixin.

In comparison, Greece, whose debt crisis has threatened the eurozone and needed repeated bailouts, had an estimated pub-lic debt of €311bn ($356bn) at the end of last year, according to the European Union’s Eurostat.

CRC’s borrowing increased by over 8% year-on-year, the num-bers showed, a rise driven by the country’s fever for expanding the network of super-fast trains, a point of national pride.

But China has seen a decline in rail freight, a major source of CRC’s revenue, the Global Times newspaper reported yesterday.

The debt number “keeps growing”, Zhao Jian of Beijing Jiatong University told the paper, adding: “This business model isn’t sustainable.”

Company losses rose 35% year-on-year to 8.73bn yuan in the fi rst quarter, the paper re-ported.

China is struggling to move its economy away from its depend-ence on massive construction projects and exports as the main drivers of growth.

But the country’s addiction to massive infrastructure injec-tions to fuel GDP expansion has proven hard to shake.

Rail, in particular, has con-tinued to absorb huge amounts of capital as Beijing continues to push its ultra-modern train system into sparsely populated western regions.

China’s economy, a vital driver of global expansion, grew 6.9% last year, its weakest rate in a quarter of a century.

China national rail fi rm has over $600bnin debt

China carmakers see good prospects for MPVsReutersBeijing

Even as Chinese car buyers feed a boom in crossovers and sport utility vehicles (SUVs), automak-

ers are looking ahead to the likely ‘next big thing’ and reckon aff ordable peo-ple-carriers, or multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs), could be it.

Shifts towards electric cars in many cities, potential breakthroughs in au-tonomous, self-driving technology and lifestyle changes with the relaxa-tion of China’s one-child policy pose challenges for product planners in the world’s largest autos market.

In the near-term, some predict car buyers will want roomier, more com-fortable interior space. Further ahead, others see self-driving cars and elec-tric propulsion leading to radically new body styles with even more space and comfort in cars.

Chinese tend to live near their par-ents, and the changes to the one-child policy are expected to make family units larger, Hiroji Onishi, head of Toy-ota Motor’s China operations, said on the sidelines of the Beijing auto show, which ended on Wednesday.

“We think MPVs have good pros-pects in China. Given those changing life-stage needs, we think what’s going to be popular are smaller, more aff ord-able MPVs like the (Toyota) Noah Voxy, a compact minivan which we market

in Japan,” he said. Developers at the Japanese automaker say sales of the Alphard, a boxy, but premium-level, minivan brimming with gadgets and business-class-like airline seats, sug-gest an emerging appetite for a spa-

cious, upscale people-mover. Imported from Japan, the model starts at around 759,000 yuan ($117,000).

Toyota offi cials and dealers say the van’s interior comfort off ers a more subtle way for China’s rich to signal

their wealth in a climate where overt excess is frowned upon. And in Chi-na, trends that catch on at the pre-mium end traditionally spread quickly through the rest of the market.

Rising demand for MPVs contributed

to an 8.8% increase in overall vehicle sales in March, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufac-turers (CAAM).

MPVs account for about 5.5% of China’s passenger vehicle market, with sales of 1.08mn vehicles last year, says consultancy IHS Automotive.

At the more aff ordable end of the market are the Wuling Hongguan mi-crovan and the Baojun 730, a minivan from SAIC-GM-Wuling, a no-frills joint venture of General Motors, SAIC Motor Corp and Guangxi Automobile. Among global automakers’ off erings are the Buick GL8 and Honda Motor Co’s Odyssey.

The MPV segment has also ex-panded into a lucrative niche for spa-cious, luxury people-movers such as the Mercedes-Benz Viano and the Al-phard. James Chao, Asia-Pacifi c man-aging director at IHS, believes other global automakers will mimic GM’s strategy of emphasising a market for aff ordable, family-oriented minivans.

Chao, meanwhile, sees China’s SUV boom making up as much as 45% of the total market in around a decade - in line with industry trends in the US - up from around 35% today and just 10% fi ve years ago.

The boom has been driven by Chi-na’s well-off thirtysomethings who want sleek looks and a roomy interior. Auto executives and industry experts predict SUV sales will continue to grow strongly for several years, even

as the market becomes more crowded and profi tability dips.

MPVs aren’t likely to hit those heights, but demand is expected to grow at 5-6% a year, Shanghai-based Chao said. “We expect the popularity of MPVs will spread more and more to family purchases,” he told Reuters.

The minivan is a popular format across emerging markets, and smaller, cheaper MPVs sell well in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. In the US, MPV sales are likely to go in the opposite direction, IHS says, slipping to around 500,000 vehicles by 2020, or 3.5% of the total, from 4.5% last year.

Product planners at Audi see auton-omous driving and electric cars as po-tentially revolutionising car design, as new technologies allow for more space and comfort.

“Autonomous driving gives the car interior a totally diff erent meaning,” Joachim Wedler, head of Audi’s China operations, told reporters at the fi rm’s Beijing tech centre ahead of the auto show.

“Fun and relaxation are the new targets for those cars, while (electri-fi cation) off ers us diff erent vehicle packaging opportunities as there’s no (bulky) engine or transmission. Bat-teries more or less lie fl at on the fl oor. We have totally diff erent opportunities for roominess and ergonomics.”

“These will lead us to a new concept for the car,” he said.

Bill to reform monetary policy moves closer to passage ReutersNew Delhi

India moved closer to changing how interest rates are set and monetary policy conducted as the lower house of parliament yesterday approved legislation giving the central bank a mandate

to target inflation. The Finance Bill, passed by a voice vote, will next go to the upper house, which is widely expected to pass it. The bill, which mainly contains tax proposals, seeks to set up a monetary policy panel that will set interest rates through a majority vote, a practice followed by major central banks globally. At present, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)

governor is the sole authority to decide monetary policy. However, he gets assistance from a panel that does not have any voting powers and is purely advisory in nature. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told lawmakers the planned seven-member policy panel will include three representatives from the government and three from the central bank apart from the RBI

chief, who could cast a deciding vote. The inflation target of the RBI would be reviewed once every five years, Jaitley said. The lower house’s passage of the bill is a big boost for RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, who since taking off ice in 2013 has been trying to align the country’s way of setting monetary policy with that of central banks in developed economies.

CRC’s borrowing increased by over 8% year-on-year, the numbers showed, a rise driven by the country’s fever for expanding the network of super-fast trains, a point of national pride

A Baojun 730 model from SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile is on display during the Auto China 2016 in Beijing on Wednesday. Rising demand for MPVs in China contributed to an 8.8% increase in overall vehicle sales in March.

BUSINESS11Gulf Times

Friday, May 6, 2016

ReutersLondon

Britain’s economy slowed in April and may stall as con-sumers worry about June’s

EU referendum, reaching levels at which in the past the Bank of Eng-land began to consider rate cuts, a survey of the dominant services in-dustry showed.

If last month’s weakness persists, economic growth may be just 0.1% in the second quarter, down from 0.4% in the fi rst three months of this year, fi nancial data company Markit said yesterday.

That would be the weakest quar-terly reading since late 2012.

Markit chief economist Chris Williamson said the deterioration in April pushed the surveys into terri-tory which “has in the past seen the Bank of England start to worry about the need to revive growth” by easing monetary policy.

The services sector grew at its lowest rate in more than three years, according to Markit’s activity index, which fell to 52.3 from 53.7 in March, below the lowest forecasts in a Reu-ters poll of economists. Companies said uncertainty about the refer-endum and weakness in the global economy were worrying the main drivers of Britain’s recovery: its consumers. “In combination with the weaker-than-expected manu-facturing index earlier in the week that points to a pretty subdued Q2 GDP reading,” Alan Clarke, strate-gist at Scotiabank said, predicting a less marked slowdown to 0.2% in the second quarter.

“The (BoE) has told us that it will be a little less sensitive than usual to the hard data given the EU referen-dum uncertainty. Nonetheless, a ...

GDP number of 0.2% quarter-on-quarter (or lower) is likely to test the patience of some of the doves.”

Sterling fell while gilts showed lit-tle reaction to the data.

Britain’s economy has outpaced

much of the rest of the rich world over the past three years. But it has been showing signs of slow-ing since late last year. Economists generally believe a Brexit vote on June 23 would deal at least a short-

term blow to the economy, possibly prompting the BoE to cut already record-low interest rates or expand its bond-buying programme.

But it would also probably weaken the pound, adding to infl ation and

making it more diffi cult for the BoE to act. Thursday’s survey showed growth in input costs paid by service companies were the highest in over two years in April, suggesting that a gradual rise in infl ation will continue.

UK economy slows, risks stalling as EU vote nears

Jobless claims in US rise to highest level in 5 weeks BloombergWashington

Applications for US unemploy-ment benefits increased to a five-week high, a sign that

progress in the strongest part of the economy may be moderating.

Jobless claims rose by 17,000 to 274,000 in the week ended April 30, a Labor Department report showed yesterday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey was 260,000. The jump was the largest since January 2015.

Further increases in new applica-tions would probably be needed to mark a shift in sentiment among hir-ing managers about the economy’s prospects after the weakest quarter for growth in two years. Focus turns to payrolls data due Friday from the Labour Department, and forecasts call for another steady employment

gain in April. “If they trend higher for a few weeks, then we start to worry, but we’ve been steadily lower,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, a US strategist at TD Securities LLC in New York, who projected an increase to 271,000. “The US economy may not be grow-ing at 3%, but we’re continuing to muddle along, and that’s still creat-ing a demand for labour.” Forecasts in the Bloomberg survey ranged from 250,000 to 275,000. Filings dropped to 248,000 in mid-April, the lowest since 1973.

While there was nothing unusual in the data, claims last week were es-timated for Washington, according to the Labor Department.

The four-week average of jobless claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, rose to 258,000 from 256,000 in the prior week. Fil-ings have been below 300,000 for 61 weeks - the longest stretch since 1973 and a level economists say is consist-

ent with a healthy labour market.The number of people continu-

ing to receive jobless benefits fell by 8,000 to 2.12mn in the week ended April 23, the lowest level since No-vember 2000. The unemployment rate among people eligible for ben-efits dropped to 1.5% from 1.6 per-cent. These data are reported with a one-week lag.

The Labor Department’s monthly employment report is projected to show employment remained sturdy in April. Economists project about 200,000 jobs were added last month after a 215,000 increase in March.

Federal Reserve officials meeting last week noted that “a range of re-cent indicators, including strong job gains, points to additional strength-ening of the labour market,” even as they passed on raising the benchmark interest rate from its range of 0.25% to 0.5%. The central bankers next meet June 14-15.

Port workers inspect containers at the CSCL Globe in London. Britain’s economic growth may be just 0.1% in the second quarter, down from 0.4% in the first three months of this year, financial data company Markit said yesterday.

Brexit would make UK less attractive for Japaneseinvestors: Abe

ReutersLondon

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cautioned Britain yesterday that a vote to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum would make Britain less attractive for Japanese investors. “A vote to leave would make the UK less attractive as a destination for Japanese investment,” Abe, who leads the world’s third largest economy, said through a translator at a news conference with Prime Minister David Cameron. Abe’s intervention in Britain’s referendum campaign comes less than two weeks since US President Barack Obama bluntly warned Britain that it would be “in the back of the queue” for a trade deal with the US if it dropped out of the EU. While Abe said that EU membership was a matter for the British people, he added that Japanese interests were also at stake in the referendum. “Japan very clearly would prefer Britain to remain within the EU,” Abe said. “Many Japanese companies set up their operations in the UK precisely because the UK is a gateway to the EU.” Abe said about 1,000 Japanese companies operate in the UK employing 140,000 people. Cameron said Britain benefited more from Japanese investment than from any other country apart from the US. He said Japan had investments worth a total of £38bn ($55bn) in Britain. “Japanese firms see Britain as the gateway to Europe,” said Cameron, who called the referendum and is leading the campaign to keep Britain in the club it joined in 1973. A British exit would unleash volatility in foreign currency, stock and bond markets, undermine post-World War Two European eff orts toward integration and raise questions about the 21st Century fate of Britain’s $2.9tn economy. “Britain’s friends around the world, including Japan, will be watching your decision on June 23 with very close attention,” Abe said.

America’s newest refi nery falls victim to oil slump ReutersHouston

The owners of a North Dakota refi nery that was the fi rst to be built in the US since the 1970s have curtailed output and may try to sell it, the latest

victim of the oil price slump roiling the energy indus-try.

MDU Resources Group Inc and Calumet Specialty Product Partners LP, which jointly own the refi nery, said on Wednesday the refi nery is running at 75% ca-pacity due to high operating costs and slipping demand for diesel, its main product.

“In light of current market conditions, we are as-sessing various options with respect to our ownership interest in the refi nery,” Dave Goodin, MDU’s chief ex-ecutive, told investors on Wednesday.

MDU said it lost $7.2mn on the refi nery, which opened a year ago, during the fi rst quarter. The pullback and sale potential is a reversal of fortune for a state that had prided itself on leading the North American energy renaissance.

MDU and Calumet had hoped that strong regional demand for the engine fuel would justify the project’s

cost when ground was broken in Dickinson in 2013. Construction delays, weather and other factors pushed the fi nal cost to about $430mn, about 40% above initial estimates.

Before the Dickinson refi nery’s construction, North Dakota had only one refi nery and was importing much of its diesel from the US Gulf Coast. The oil price slump has eroded demand for diesel across North Dakota as fewer wells are brought online, thus resulting in fewer diesel-powered trucks and other equipment in operation.

Beyond North Dakota’s pain, the refi nery industry it-self is stressed, an unusual situation as it is historically boosted by cheap crude. Growing fuel inventories and weak demand are now hammering refi ners both large and small, turning a typical advantage on its head.

To operate the refi nery, MDU supplied oil from its own drilling operations, and Calumet, which runs sev-eral refi neries throughout the US, helped run it.

Calumet said the company has started a “compre-hensive review of our existing assets,” including the North Dakota refi nery.

“We believe every asset in our portfolio must be fi -nancially self-reliant to remain part of this long-term portfolio,” Calumet chief executive Tim Go said in a statement.

New ‘cable’ trading: Tech could boost landlocked FX cities

ReutersLondon

The dominance of financial centres such as

London, New York and Tokyo in the $5tn-a-day

global currency market may face challenges

from landlocked cities as new technology

erodes the advantage off ered by high-speed

undersea cables.

A European Central Bank research paper

says these three centres, along with Singapore

and Hong Kong, dominate the industry in part

because of the history of submarine cables

that have made high-frequency trading pos-

sible.

But, it says, new fibre optic networks that

can also carry data at very high speed are

being laid and which could influence the

geography of the 24-hour, five-days-a-week

currency market.

The location of foreign exchange hubs

has implications for big trading firms and job

creation as well as the prestige of the cities or

countries in question.

There is also a political and policy edge to it

now since the ECB has insisted all clearing and

settlement of international euro currency trad-

ing must be conducted within the European

Union - even if the world’s biggest forex centre

London were to find itself outside the bloc if

Britain voted to leave the EU.

Were that to happen, the major centre for

euro trade within the EU would probably be

Frankfurt, the ECB’s headquarters.

A 2013 survey of the FX market by the

Bank for International Settlements showed

that while the United Kingdom, the US and

Singapore expanded their share over the

past decade, trading activity in Germany and

Switzerland shrank. Between them, Germany

and Switzerland account for just under 5% of

global foreign exchange trade.

The ECB paper, however, says recently

installed cables connecting landlocked cities

have the potential to lure back high-frequency

traders, who contribute about a third of trad-

ing.

It cited Spread Networks’ cable between

the data centres of the Chicago Mercantile

Exchange and NASDAQ in New Jersey and

euNetworks’ fibre network route between

Frankfurt and Zurich, a major centre for trade

in the Swiss franc, the world’s fifth most traded

currency.

“Landlocked or not, there may be hope for

Zurich after all,” the paper concludes.

Toby Williams, head of euNetworks’ ultra-

low latency product, said there had already

been a rise in high-frequency trading in

foreign exchange but added the key driver

was liquidity.

The first trans-Atlantic telegraph line was

completed in the mid-1800s and was used to

transmit the exchange rate between the dollar

and the British pound. That gave rise to the

trader slang for the currency pair – “Cable”.

Sub-marine cable laying gathered pace in

the late 1980s. Over time, their use for elec-

tronic trading of currencies and other financial

instruments picked up.

But trading currencies needs more infra-

structure.

Electronic trading platforms, such as those

run by EBS and Thomson Reuters, on which

most high-speed currency trading takes place,

have to invest in expensive servers. High-

speed trading firms prefer to be physically

close to the servers to reduce transmission

time.

The combination of high-speed cable con-

nections and matching servers accounted for

the growing weight of London and New York,

said Barry Eichengreen, professor of econom-

ics at University of California, Berkeley, and

co-author of the ECB paper.

Some veteran traders such as Alan Clarke

who is global FX product manager at BBVA,

say not all currency traders require access to

the fastest technology.

“Aside from high-frequency types, non-

speculative, real money flow isn’t as sensitive

to micro-second latency,” he said.

Nonetheless, Brad Bailey, director at

research and advisory firm Celent, which

focuses on the impact of technology on

financial services, said it was likely new cables

would be a factor allowing other cities to gain

market share.

“I expect over the next decade to see a

change in the balance of where the FX centres

are globally,” he said.

Barclays makes $876mn from African business share sale ReutersLondon

Barclays has raised £603mn ($876mn) by selling a 12.2% stake in

Barclays Africa Group, a crucial first step in a plan to curb risk and refocus on core markets in Britain and US.

Barclays is selling down its 62% stake in the South Afri-can lender as part of a plan to simplify the bank’s structure, shore up its balance sheet and generate higher shareholder returns.

Following completion of the placing, the British lender will continue to hold 424.7mn or-dinary shares or a 50.1% hold-ing in Barclays Africa, worth around $4.4bn based on the placing price.

The sale, priced at a discount of 6.5%, was oversubscribed multiple times and attracted “very high quality demand”

from domestic and interna-tional investors, a source famil-iar with the matter said.

Barclays did not give any de-tails of the investors who took part in the placing. South Af-rica’s state pension fund Public Investment Corp (PIC) said on Wednesday it planned to ac-quire up to 10.3mn shares.

PIC, Africa’s largest fund manager with more than $122bn of South African government employee pension assets un-der its custody, was already the second-biggest shareholder in Barclays Africa with a holding of about 6%.

Yesterday’s share placing is expected to result in a pro-

forma increase of about 10 basis points to Barclays’ com-mon equity tier 1 ratio, a key measure of the bank’s financial strength.

Gary Greenwood, an analyst at Shore Capital, praised the “initial step” in a plan to re-duce exposure to the African arm, one of the bank’s heaviest burdens in terms of risk budg-et, but it would only “be able to reap the capital benefit of this process” when ownership dropped below 20%.

Barclays has struggled to re-assure shareholders it will not need a fresh cash call to prop up its 11.3% tier 1 ratio, which lags behind its major UK banking sector peers, after cutting its dividend to fund its restructur-ing efforts.

Shares in the bank, which have fallen 25% in the year to date, were trading up 0.6% at 163.4 pence at 0820 GMT. Shares in Barclays Africa dropped 1.5%.

Barclays is selling down its 62% stake in the South African lender as part of a plan to simplify the bank’s structure, shore up its balance sheet and generate higher shareholder returns.

Friday, May 6, 2016

BUSINESSGULF TIMES

Saudi index rebounds on banking stocks

Mideast tops in global air passenger demand growthMiddle East carriers experi-

enced a 12% rise in demand in March, which was the largest

increase among various regions, IATA has said in its latest air passenger mar-ket analysis.

Capacity increased 13.6%, however, and load factor dropped 1.1 percentage points to 76.5%, it said.

The global air passenger market ex-panded by 7% year-on-year in the fi rst quarter of 2016 – its strongest start to a year since 2012.

“The result was helped somewhat by the leap year; we estimate that passen-ger volumes grew by around 6% year-on-year once you adjust for the extra day in February 2016–a respectable rate broadly in line with the pace seen in Q1, 2015,” IATA said.

At 12% year-on-year, Middle East-ern airlines saw the fastest annual growth in international RPKs in March, helped by ongoing network and fl eet expansion.

Flight segments on routes to and from the Middle East all grew strongly at the start of 2016.That said, annual growth in Middle Eastern international RPKs eased during 2015 and it has now lagged behind that of capacity for 16 of the past 18 months.

As a result, the region’s international load factor has fallen by more than fi ve percentage points in seasonally-ad-justed terms since its peak in May 2014.

IATA said the annual growth in rev-enue passenger kilometres (RPKs) glo-bally fell to 5.3% in March – its slowest pace since June 2015–and the upward trend in seasonally-adjusted passenger volumes has moderated substantially over the past two months.

It is too soon to say whether this marks the end of the recent golden pe-riod of industry growth.

“Indeed, we expect further stimulus to traffi c to come through in the form of ongoing network expansion and from declines in travel costs during the rest of this year,” IATA said.

Moreover, the latest results from IATA’s quarterly survey of airline CFOs

show a vast majority of respondents expect further improvement in pas-senger volumes over the year ahead.

“Nonetheless, we are perhaps com-ing towards the end of the biggest stimulus to traffi c from lower oil prices, and the bigger picture is that the wider

economic backdrop remains subdued.Having ‘decoupled’ from economic

sentiment during 2015, global passen-ger growth will not be able to defy the pull of economic gravity indefi nitely,” the report said.

The industry-wide load factor came

in at 78.7% in Q1 as a whole, the same as in Q1 2015.

However, IATA said the seasonally adjusted load factor has slipped in re-cent months, refl ecting a combina-tion of a slight acceleration in capacity growth and a weaker trend in traffi c.

March was the second consecu-tive month in which annual growth in available seat kilometres exceeded that of RPKs. The seasonally-adjusted industry-wide load factor has fallen by 1.4 percentage points from its Novem-ber 2015 peak, IATA said.

ReutersDubai

Banking stocks helped Saudi Ara-bia’s index rebound from a two-week low yesterday after the

government ended builder Saudi Bin-ladin Group’s ban on bidding for state contracts, potentially easing the strain on a company heavily in debt to local lenders.

Binladin, which was barred from new government contracts last Sep-tember after a deadly crane accident in Mecca, has now received a royal decree permitting it to bid for state contracts again, a Binladin executive told Reu-ters, declining to be named because of briefi ng rules.

A travel ban imposed on the compa-ny’s top managers has also been lifted, the executive said.

National Commercial Bank and Al Rajhi Bank were among the biggest gainers, rising 1.6% and 1.3% respec-tively.

“Binladin is a big borrower and wor-ries about the company had been pres-suring the banking sector,” said Mazen al-Sudairi of Riyadh-based Al Istith-mar Capital. “There is less risk associ-ated with Binladin now.”

The banking sector index, which

represents about a third of the bourse’s total market capitalisation, rose 1.3%.

Binladin, one of the Middle East’s

largest construction companies, has declined to describe its fi nancial situ-ation publicly, but Gulf bankers have

said it is believed to owe local and in-ternational banks about $30bn.

Overall, the building and construc-

tion sector accounts for 7.9% of total lending among Saudi banks, central bank data shows.

Saudi’s main index rose 1.1%, its fi rst gain in six sessions trimming losses since hitting a 16-week high on April 25 to 3.1%.

The petrochemical sector, the bourse’s second-largest behind bank-ing, was also supportive. It rose 2.4% as Brent crude oil jumped 3.5% to $46.16. Brent is up by nearly two thirds since January’s 12-year low.

In Egypt, Cairo’s benchmark index rose 1.4%, rallying from a three-week low as telecoms stocks helped to end a four-session losing streak.

Investors had sold off stocks ahead of a four-day holiday last weekend and the trend continued after the market reopened on Tuesday.

“We’re seeing a rebound as bargain hunters come in to take advantage of lower prices,” said Mohamed Radwan, head of equities at Pharos Securities in Cairo. He predicted the recovery will be short-lived, with the bourse likely to remain volatile. It is up 15% since mid-March’s devaluation of the Egyptian pound. Global Telecom and Telecom Egypt climbed 1.5% and 2.7% respec-tively.

Other Gulf markets were closed for a religious holiday.

An investor is seen at the Saudi Stock Exchange. The kingdom’s main index rose 1.1% yesterday, its first gain in six sessions trimming losses since hitting a 16-week high on April 25 to 3.1%.

Al Meera calls off plan to buy Spinney’s Qatar

Qatar Stock Exchange-listed Al Meera Consum-er Goods Company yes-

terday said it has decided to call off the proposed deal to acquire Spinney’s Qatar, fi ve months af-ter it fi rst announced an indirect acquisition plan.

“Al Meera Consumer Goods Company has decided to termi-nate the process of negotiation with Spinneys’ owners,” Qatar’s biggest retail chain said in its regu-latory fi ling with the Qatari bourse without divulging the reason.

In December 2015, the listed company had said Al Meera Holding, a subsidiary of Al Meera Consumer Goods Company, in-tends to acquire Spinney’s Qatar for “a consideration of $30mn (QR109mn) less payment of the liabilities towards related parties and fi nancial institutions.”

In this regard, Al Meera has entered into a ‘non-binding’ letter of intent under which contains certain key details of the potential acquisition (of Spinneys). Al Meera Holding is a limited liability company in which 99% stake is held Al Meera Consumer Goods Com-pany, which, in turn, is 26% owned by the government and 74% by public shareholders.

Spinney’s Qatar has three stores – one in The Mall and two in Pearl-Qatar. Its ‘fl agship’ supermarket at Medina Central spans an area of 4,000sqm and the second one in Porto Arabia has a space of 500sqm.

Spinney’s Qatar has three stores – one in The Mall and two in Pearl-Qatar. Its ‘fl agship’ supermarket at Medina Central spans an area of 4,000 sqm and the second one in Porto Arabia has a space of 500 sqm

GHC signs contract with Saudi Aramco

Gulf International Services (GIS) yesterday disclosed that its subsidiary Gulf

Helicopters Company (GHC) has signed a new contract with Saudi Aramco for heavy maintenance of the Saudi Arabian oil major’s fl eet of AgustaWestland AW 139.

GHC, which is fast becoming a regional hub for maintenance due to its cost-effi cient serv-ices, has been witnessing steady growth in maintenance, repair and overhaul services and is able to achieve on-time outputs to meet the target dates set, GIS said in a regulatory fi ling to the Qatar Stock Exchange.

However, the company did not disclose the size of the deal.

GHC, being one of the larg-est helicopter operators in the Middle East, is also building on training capabilities in general and is also developing further as an AgustaWestland train-ing centre and a regional hub, in particular. The AW189 is part of the AgustaWestland family of new generation helicopters that includes the AW169 and AW139 models, which possess the same high performance fl ight charac-teristics and safety features as well as sharing a common cock-pit layout, design philosophy and maintenance concept. This com-monality will allow more cost ef-fective operations for customers operating helicopter fl eets across the 4 to 8.5 tonnes categories.

GHC, being a Federal Aviation Administration approved repair station since 2000, has accumu-lated experience and expertise in maintenance of the helicopters under FAA regulations over the years. “The same combined with a cost effi cient service have been considered not only as a com-petitive edge but also as a unique selling point of GHC,” a GIS spokesman said.

QSE extends bearish spell for fourth consecutive day Santosh V PerumalBusiness Reporter

An across the board selling – particularly in telecom, insurance and banking counters – yesterday extended the bearish spell in Qatar Stock Exchange for the fourth consecutive day and its key index settled below the 9,800 mark.Local retail investors turned bearish and foreign institutions’ net buying weakened as the 20-stock Qatar Index plunged more than 1% to 9,748.78 points, even as global oil prices rose to breach $45 a barrel on worries over output from Canada and Libya.Mid and large cap equities suff ered the most in the market, which is down 6.53% year-to-date.However, there was reduced selling pressure from domestic institutions

and marginally increased buying interests of non-Qatari individual investors in the bourse, where trading turnover and volumes were on the decline.The index that tracks Shariah-principled stocks was seen declining slower than the other indices in the bourse, banking, realty, telecom and consumer goods stocks together constituted about three-fourth of the total trading volume.Market capitalisation eroded 1% or more than QR5bn to QR526.76bn with mid, large, small and microcap equities dropping 1.57%, 0.96%, 0.29% and 0.17% respectively.The Total Return Index shrank 1.08% to 15,772.87 points, All Share Index by 0.96% to 2,728.17 points and Al Rayan Islamic Index by 0.62% to 3,810.42 points.Telecom stocks plummeted 3.23%,

insurance (2.32%), banks and financial services (1.03%), real estate (0.85%), transport (0.72%), industrials (0.33%) and consumer goods (0.12%).More than 68% of the stocks were in the red with major losers being Ooredoo, Vodafone Qatar, Qatar Insurance, QNB, Qatar Islamic Bank, Doha Bank, Barwa, Ezdan, United Development Company, Nakilat, Mesaieed Petrochemical Holding and Aamal Company; even as Gulf International Services, Mazaya Qatar, Dlala and Medicare Group bucked the trend.Local retail investors turned net sellers to the tune of QR9.82mn against net buyers of QR15.01mn the previous day.Non-Qatari institutions’ net buying weakened considerably to QR17.59mn compared to QR28.76mn on Wednesday.However, domestic institutions’ net profit booking weakened substantially to QR13.45mn against QR26.88mn on

May 4. Non-Qatari individual investors’ net buying strengthened to QR5.05mn compared to QR1.61mn the previous day.The GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) institutions turned net buyers to the extent of QR0.2mn against net sellers of QR16.02mn on Wednesday.The GCC individual investors were also net buyers to the tune of QR0.45mn compared with net sellers of QR2.45mn on May 4.Total trade volume fell 16% to 7.39mn shares, value by 15% to QR252.43mn and deals by 17% to 3,923.The banks and financial services sector saw 54% plunge in trade volume to 1.58mn equities, 52% in value to QR54.75mn and 38% in transactions to 902.The real estate sector’s trade volume plummeted 29% to 1.42mn stocks, value by 25% to QR28.46mn and deals by 27% to 620.

The industrials sector reported 17% shrinkage in trade volume to 0.97mn shares, 15% in value to QR45.2mn and 21% in transactions to 678.The consumer goods sector’s trade volume was down 6% to 1.15mn equities, value by 7% to QR54.61mn and deals by 28% to 449.However, the insurance sector’s trade volume more than tripled to 0.32mn stocks and value also more than tripled to QR23.37mn but on 22% decline in transactions to 111. The telecom sector’s trade volume more than doubled to 1.38mn shares and value also more than doubled to QR30.17mn on 63% expansion in deals to 901.There was 64% surge in the transport sector’s trade volume to 0.59mn equities, 2% in value to QR15.86mn and 9% in transactions to 262.In the debt market, there was no trading of treasury bills and government bonds.