Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil major Aramco will takeover Port Arthur Texas refinery in the US. Saudi Arabia will refine its oil shipped from Middle East at Port Arthur refinery and also sell it in the huge North American market.
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The Gulf establishment, Adeptio LLC has approached Kuwait's fast-food chain, Americana, for buying out the 66.8% controlling stake held by the Al Kharafi family valued at $1.7 billion. Currently, the investor is conducting the due diligence but the final outcome will be based on the approval of the Americana franchisers.
Saudi Arabia has suffered from the oil price collapse, and needs to plan a diversified economic strategy. The country has called $30 per barrel oil price is not rational, and aiming to encourage foreign investment to enter the country.
Oracle has disclosed its expansion program in the Middle East for 2016 which involves setting up a data center and new offices in Abu Dhabi and internet cities in Amman and Riyadh. It also plans to increase its workforce to offer better service for the customers across the Middle East and Africa. The vibrant nature of the cloud market in the Middle East region and the ever growing cloud business therein has led the Californian tech giant to approach with larger investments.
Morocco will build the largest concentrated solar power in the world at Ouarzazate city. The project, alongside with hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Morocco's electricity requirement by 2020.
The oil drilling activity in Canada is taking a hit as crude oil price is still hovering at $50 a barrel. The current situation is forcing Canadian oil companies to lower drilling activity in 2016.
The indications are strong such that mighty Middle East (ME) region also may not sustain cheaper oil prices for long. If oil price continues to hover at $50 per barrel, the majority of Gulf nations will run out of cash in the next five years, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF). There's no exception to Saudi Arabia, the leader of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), Oman and Bahrain. The oil price drop is expected to pull $350bn out of the ME region this year alone. The current account deficit of Saudi Arabia may touch 20 percent of its GDP this year.
Deutsche Lufthansa AG invested €3 billion to support its new premium service in the Middle East as it sees potential growth in the region.
The long-haul aircraft requirement of Dubai for positioning itself as a major global hub in the Middle East (ME) Region has been mostly fulfilled by Boeing. Dubai-based Emirates Airlines is banking on Boeing 777 as its top priority and followed by Airbus A380. Emirates Airlines has emerged as the largest airline in the world operating both aircrafts. Emirates Airline has been working on its business strategy to transform Dubai into a global hub in the Region. It aims at becoming an unavoidable destination for passengers from Asia to Europe and the US. This makes the requirement of long-haul aircraft for the Emirates Airlines.
Ater an unsuccessful negotiation with pilot unions, Air France announced it would cut 2900 jobs. Air France-KLM is about to cut 2900 jobs after pilot unions disagreed to compromise with the company's settlement. The board had a meeting on Thursday and ordered the management to minimize some of its operations on October 5, BBC reported.
After exiting the smartphone business in 2005, Japanese electronics major Panasonic is making a comeback in this segment and has prepared business plans to bolster sales volume for reaching the target of $2-billion revenues in next three years.
The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the Doha-based sovereign wealth fund of the world's richest nation by per capita income manages over $300 billion, has opened its office in New York and earmarked $35-billion investment over next five years in the US business opportunity.
Retail Acquisitions, the new owner of department store chain BhS seeks for funding of 70 million pounds several months after buying it. The new owners are now talking with prospect providers for additional funds that would help them transform the iconic brand.
Twitter now wants to forge more content partnerships in the regions of the Asia Pacific and the Middle East. As part of the company's efforts to manage such a feat, the social media giant has tapped their own Singapore-based executive Rishi Jaitly to lead teams to be spread out all across the different sections of the regions, according to Reuters.
The UN FAO reported low food price index - the lowest in six years. If the situation persists, the price drop will be welcomed by consumers globally, which is also beneficial for poor countries. But the plentiful supplies of these products may also have a negative impact for farmers with prices not enough to cover for production costs.
