Global Business Outlook Issuu 2 2018

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02 02 | Issue 01 VolumeVolume 02 | Issue | 2018

www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

“Qatari insurance sector needs a positive mark”

Turkey’s lira crisis: a new economic threat emerges

Pg 10

Norway: leading the world in sustainability Pg 34 Global housing boom: when the bubble is about to burst Pg 44

FINANCE | TECHNOLOGY | ENERGY | REALTY | BRANDS | EDUCATION | GBO AWARDS

EDITOR’S NOTE

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his new issue of Global Business Outlook brings to light the most noteworthy, exciting and urgent developments across the sectors of finance, technology, energy, realty, brands and education.

We trace down how Turkey’s currency, the lira is collapsing and its potential ramifications and after-effects. Then, we explore Vietnam and its exceptional, rapidly-booming economy. We move on to exploring the evolving role of the CFO in bringing about great transformations, as well as the phenomenon that is social media bots, and their dark side.

We then shine a spotlight on Norway and how it has become a global icon in sustainable living, and the worrying slow pace of the climate change fight. After which, we move across and explore the enveloping real estate bubble that

has become a grave threat to some of the most prized real estate markets across the globe. Not to mention, the recent devaluations in the net worth of China’s financial elite.

We then explore how Tencent has become the biggest name in the global gaming market and provide an overview of the Interbrand best global brands report, and the latest trends it indicates. Finally, we explore Finland’s education system, which is called as the best in the world, and how the traditional education methods are being challenged in economically prime countries like Singapore and Dubai.

Latest news pertaining to each of the sectors is also covered, providing you an exhaustive overview of some of the most important engines that drive the world. We hope this issue delivers an enlightening, informative and exciting read!

Kimberly Rivers

Editor kimberly@gbomag.com

Director & Publisher

Business Development Manager

Editor

Business Development

Daivick Bhaskar Kimberly Rivers

Production & Design Brian Williams David Brenton Ian Hutchinson

Editorial

Stanley Rogers Rachel Taylor, Lucas Cooper

Business Analysts Sumith Jain, Ryan Anderson

Dave Jones, Jerry Thomas

Arran Smith, Benjamin Clive Martin Adams, John Davis Ahmed Salah

Marketing Danish Ali

Global Business Outlook Magazine is the trading name of

Research Analysts

Josephine Rose, Riya Angelina

Press & Media Contact Craig Penn

Registered office:

Business Outlook Media Ltd Winston House, 2 Dollis Park, London, England, N3 1HF Phone: +44 (0) 207 193 3740 Fax: +44 (0) 203 725 9247 Email: media@gbomag.com

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

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INDEX

FINANCE

UAE probing illicit financial activity MAS and Bank Indonesia set up $10 billion deal DIFC’s deal with China Banking Association pg 10

TECHNOLOGY

Vietnam’s impressive economic growth Facebook to organise its AR/VR Spotify prepares its MENA region launch China and France launch satellite

pg 24 ENERGY

The CFO’s evolving role US to grant Iraq waiver over Iran sanctions UAE to pump $132 million into Adnoc Equinor to invest in oil and gas in India

pg 34 REALTY

Norway, the leader in sustainability Malaysia Airports fall 12% after REIT Asteco’s direct debit system for UAE rent Dubai property brokers earn $229 million

pg 44 BRANDS

The global housing bubble is bursting

Apple’s shares downgraded after earnings Manchester United remain partners with Canon Pharrell Williams to design for Chanel pg 58

EDUCATION

Interbrand’s 2018 report overview Yuanfudao raises $250 million from Tencent Malaysia sets education budget for 2019 Tuition fees in the UK to be possibly cut

pg 68 4

Finland’s peerless education system

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06 07 09 18 20 21 23 24 30 31 33 34 40 41 43 44 50 51 52 54 60 61 62 64

SPECIAL FOCUS

The collapse of Turkey’s economy

pg 11

Harmful effects of Social Media Bots

pg 28

Tencent’s lead in global gaming

pg 54

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

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FINANCE NEWS

UK business leaders call for ‘peoples vote’ on Brexit deal Around 60 British business leaders have signed a letter which calls for a public vote regarding the country’s Brexit deal. This has come amid growing concerns that the United Kingdom will exit the European Union in March without an agreement.

The list includes prominent business tycoons, like Waterstones book store managing director James Daunt and Wahaca restaurant co-founder Mark Selby—who have signed the letter published in the Sunday Times, calling for a “People’s Vote” on Brexit.

Both have stated that the proposals being discussed by the government and the European Commission were "not nearly as good as the current deal we have inside the EU." "The uncertainty over the past two years has already led to a slump in investment, which will make our country poorer," stated the letter, which also warned that the country was facing either "a blindfold or a destructive hard Brexit," and added that the "ultimate choice should be handed back to

the public with a People's Vote."

The letter did not specifically mention a second Brexit referendum.

The People's Vote is a grassroots campaign calling for a public vote on the UK's exit deal with the EU. In June 2016, the British public voted in a referendum to leave the European Union by a margin of nearly 52% to just over 48%.

UAE sets up new unit to probe illicit financial activity Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE, has issued a new decree aimed at strengthening measures to target money laundering and financing of terrorism.

The law recommends establishing an independent financial information unit within the central bank, which receives and investigates all reports submitted by financial institutions and other corporate entities regarding any suspected illicit financial activity. The unit will also follow up and gather evidence on the transaction in question, and share the information with relevant law enforcement departments for further investigation.

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A committee has also been set up under the chairmanship of the governor of the central bank, under the provisions of the decree. The National Committee to Counter Money Laundering, Combating the Financing of Terrorism and Financing of Illegal Organisations will propose the relevant systems, procedures and policies, according to the statement.

countering the financing of terrorism."

Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, deputy ruler of Dubai and minister of finance, stated: “The UAE’s wise leadership is keen to develop the legislative and legal structure of the nation to ensure compliance with international standards on anti-money laundering and

Some of the articles provided by the law require the declaration of anyone entering or leaving the country carrying cash, monetary or financial bearer instruments, precious metals or stones of value, as per the regulations set out by the central bank.

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

NEWS FINANCE

MAS, Bank Indonesia set up $10 billion bilateral financial arrangement The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Bank Indonesia (BI) announced that they have established a $10 billion bilateral financial arrangement that enables the two central banks to access foreign currency liquidity from each other, if there is ever a need to preserve monetary and financial stability.

director Ravi Menon, following earlier announcements by Indonesian president Joko Widodo and prime minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Singapore-Indonesia Leaders’ Retreat on October 11. Both the leaders had asked BI and MAS, respectively to work out a bilateral financial arrangement to boost each other’s economies.

The agreements were both signed by BI governor Perry Warjiyo and MAS managing

The arrangement will be in place for one year, and will comprise of two agreements. The first is a new local currency bilateral swap agreement that allows for cash exchange between the two parties for up to $9.5 billion. The second is an enhanced $3 billion bilateral repo agreement that allows for repurchases between the two parties.

Both leaders expressed their pleasure. Menon stated that the agreement will “instil confidence amongst investors”, while Warjiyo, on his part said that it will ensure “commitment of the authorities of Indonesia and Singapore to maintain financial stability amid the lingering uncertainty in the global financial market.”

Citi leads top 20 global M&A financial adviser league table for Q3 2018 Citi has topped the latest M&A league table of the top 20 financial advisers globally for Q3 2018, which was compiled by GlobalData, a leading data analytics company.

The American bank advised on 68 deals that were worth $175.4 billion in total, including the quarter’s biggest deal recorded globally – Energy Transfer Equity’s $60.4 billion stake acquisition in Energy Transfer Partners. With a mix of some big-ticket and several small-ticket deals, the bank managed to climb up four positions from Q2 2018 to the top rank in Q3 2018. This was a 47.46% rise in deal value and 25.93% increase in volume, when compared.

According to GlobalData, Barclays also finished second with a deal value of $159.9 billion, closely followed by Goldman Sachs with $159.3 billion in Q3 2018. The two players saw an increase in value of 74.3% and 24.9% respectively over Q3 2017. Among the top 20 legal advisers during the quarter, the 19th-ranked TD Securities saw a 1819% growth in value from $1.2bn in Q3 2017 to $22.2bn in Q3 2018.

With 65 deals worth $153.3bn, and 79 deals

valued at $152.9bn, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan secured fourth and fifth positions, respectively— despite both banks seeing a drop in value and volume this quarter over the same quarter in 2017.

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

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FINANCE NEWS

France to lure private equity with tax break post-Brexit France has been proactive in its efforts to lure UK-based private equity executives into relocating to Paris after Brexit, by pledging to slash the tax rate on the cut of profits managers share with their investors, much to the chagrin of local rivals.

Paris is competing with Dublin and Luxembourg to attract investment funds looking to ensure continued access to European Union clients after Britain exits the EU next March, but has found its tax rules are a barrier for some.

To help make relocation more appealing, France plans to cut the tax rate on 'carried interest', or their share of whatever profits private equity fund managers generate, to 30% from 75%. While until now, a manager needed to hold at least 1% of their fund’s asset or meet other complex rules to secure the 30% tax rate—the new rule will allow newcomers to be taxed at the low rate no matter how much they hold in their find.

"The special tax rate will be applicable only to foreign funds relocating in France," the finance

ministry's special adviser on the matter sated. "Any new fund created in France will have to stick to the pre-existing rules." He added.

The 30% rate is still some way above the 15% in Ireland and roughly 11% payable in Luxembourg, but compares well with lows of around 28% in countries like Germany and Britain.

Over 30 Goldman Sachs execs, top bosses reviewed 1MDB deals Over 30 Goldman Sachs executives including bank boss David Solomon and his predecessor, Lloyd Blankfein reviewed the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) deals, according to sources familiar with the approval process.

According to The Financial Times, the Wall Street bank had helped 1MDB sovereign wealth fund sell about $6.5 billion of bonds between 2012 and 2013, two years before the country’s police raided 1MDB’s offices. In a 2016 indictment, the US Department of

Justice alleged that the majority of the money raised with Goldman’s help was siphoned off by Low Taek Jho, who funnelled it into high-ticket purchases like mansions and paintings.

The report stated that DoJ, which is still exploring what sanctions if any Goldman should face, has also brought criminal charges against former Goldman bankers Tim Leissner and Roger Ng in connection with the deal.

Financial Times also reported that Goldman declined to comment beyond saying that it is reviewing the DoJ’s filings and co-operating with the investigation. The bank had received nearly $600 million in fees from the deals. A senior official at Malaysia’s finance ministry this week also said that Goldman charged between 9-11% of funds raised.

While the US bank has taken a big hit to its business in Singapore and Malaysia, clients in bigger Asian markets are not overly concerned, according to one source.

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Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

NEWS FINANCE

Merrill duo with $550 million of client assets join RBC RBC Wealth Management’s US division stated that it had hired two advisors from Merrill Lynch Wealth Management who had collectively overseen around $550 million of customer assets at Merrill‘s Beverly Hills office. This makes it a significant catch for the US brokerage arm of Royal Bank of Canada, but the release still took a gentle swipe at the Bank of America-owned Merrill.

“After careful consideration, our team made the decision to join RBC Wealth Management because of its strong reputation of always acting in the best interests of clients, as well as access to the global resources of RBC.” team leader Nick Ciriello stated in the press release.

Ciriello stated that he had felt constrained by account and asset growth policies that Merrill had added to its broker compensation plan last year which had restricted him from servicing his book of around 70 high-net-worth households, as well as by Bank of America’s efforts to sell more bank products.

He was with Merrill for 16 years and joined RBC on October 12 with his junior partner Elizabeth

Zimmer and a client service associate, was producing around $2.4mn at Merrill.

Merrill executives have previously said that the growth goals it set for itself last year have sparked newfound enthusiasm for prospecting among its brokers. It also led to more client assets, and will be maintained for 2019.

DIFC in deal with China Banking Association The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) has announced that it is signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the China Banking Association (CBA).

Both DIFC and CBA will collaborate on sharing best practices and delivering enhanced services to their communities of over 2,000 active registered firms operating in the centre, along with 695 member units in the Association, in the areas of financial services and FinTech.

Both entities are also committed to finding ways to provide education and professional training to

members of their respective communities, in the areas of common interests.

The MoU was signed by Arif Amiri, CEO of DIFC Authority, and Guangwei Pan, CEO of China Banking Association.

Amiri stated: "This partnership with China Banking Association is a strategic milestone in cementing DIFC's longstanding connection to China's financial community.

What we aim to create, together with China Banking Association, is a stream of opportunities and best practices that allow our communities to collaborate on unlocking new areas for development."

Pan added to the statement: “As the economic powerhouse of the UAE, the first Arab state of the Persian Gulf that built a strategic partnership with China, Dubai is a perfect place for Chinese banks to tap into the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region markets and work with local institutions in Belt and Road Initiative”.

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

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FINANCE FEATURE

TURKEY’S LIRA CRISIS:

A NEW ECONOMIC THREAT EMERGES Turkey has long been held as one of the largest growing economies in the world—however now it finds itself with a devalued currency amongst an unstable political regime. What’s going on?

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or the longest time, Turkey maintained a vaunted reputation on the world state.

It boasted a both peerless economy and world class infrastructure. Common knowledge for many years was that Turkey was a fast- rising

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economy whose growth rate was comparable to India and China. In fact, it managed to outperform both countries in 2017 thanks to a surge in spending by both households and government. The GDP rose 7.4% in that particular year, with the fourth-quarter output

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

up 7.3%. This was recorded as the fastest annual rate since 2013, owing to the robust growth in industrial output and construction.

The fact that it was able to bounce back after the 2016 attempted coup to become one of the fastest-growing

FEATURE FINANCE

economies in the G-20 group of nations speaks volumes about its resilience and momentum.

But as always, there is a catch.

The reputation that the country acquired of its growth in late 2017 now seems like the distant past. As of right now, there has emerged a crisis that threatens to derail all that has been built.

Its main currency, the lira is collapsing.

Due to an escalating series of events, It has seen extreme depreciation in value—45% down against the dollar since the start of the year so far. This makes it stand at the lowest point it has ever been and marks one of the most serious emergencies that the country has ever faced. Through a series of combined reasons, and

escalating events—the county now stands in the danger of housing an imminent economic collapse that can have grievous repercussions.

To grasp it in certain terms, it’s important to look at first how it grew in the first place.

Its growth has always come on the back of low interest rates and foreign capital. The Turkish government has always financed their projects

Due to an escalating series of events, It has seen extreme depreciation in value—45% down against the dollar"

by borrowing money cheaply.

This was borrowed by Turkish companies to profit from the construction boom in the country. Much of the borrowing also, was also done in highly valuated foreign currencies like the Dollar. Now since corporate debt has swelled to 70% of the total GDP, the country’s economy has become extremely vulnerable. Put it simply, the loans that it acquired overall will be more difficult to pay back. Whatever profits that the country achieves will also be hit because of the depreciation.

Speaking of depreciation, it’s important to note that the country’s current inflation rate is running at an estimated 101%.

Inflation almost always leads to devalued currency, so there’s

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

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FINANCE FEATURE

even more danger of falling down this particular well. This was echoed in the statement

by Steve Hanke, who has in the past, set up systems to stabilize currencies in Argentina and Bulgaria. He stated to CNBC: “Today, I measure inflation with high-frequency data, and the inflation rate in Turkey is 101 percent on an annual basis.

That’s the first time it’s been over 100 percent.” This was a milestone that “a country does not want to reach” he stated in a tweet soon after.

Controlling inflation of course is par for the course of a country’s economic responsibilities. However, Turkey has been slipping even in that regard—with a highly questionable economic policy.

In fact, much of the recent concern has been fuelled by the country’s president Recap Tayyip Erdogan’s approach to how he envisions running the

The country’s current inflation rate is running at an estimated 101%. Inflation almost always leads to devalued currency." economy. In Turkey, the central bank is not independent of the government, like it is in other countries. Erdogan has insisted, to keep the banks under his watch, in an unusually authoritarian approach. Most notably (and bizarrely), he has refused to raise interest rates at all—which is considered a standard response to controlling inflation.

His rationing, that ‘interest rates the mother and father are evil’ has been met with harsh criticism from both investors and economic advisors in the country –as well as from other nations. Not to mention it has contributed to the lira’s decline itself. It is thought of as regressive, out of touch and severely dangerous to the country. Also, him appointing his own sonin-law Berat Albyarak as the finance minister of the country has bought about further accusations of nepotism and trying to control the economy.

Nafez Zouk, an economist at Oxford Economics, called it a “political set-up which is unconducive to proper economic management,” while talking to BBC’s Today programme.

As if all of the above wasn’t severe enough, Turkey also find itself in hot waters with the US Government. Washington has decided to place a series of sanctions against Turkey, including so far doubling the tariffs on its metal imports into the US. These sanctions have caused a chaos in the financial markets, and have contributed to the massive slump seen by the lira. It is also predicted to cause a potential damage of $1.66 billion in annual Turkish imports—bringing further harm to the economy.

This is due to Turkey’s then refusal to release a man called Andrew Brunson – a US pastor living in Turkey for the last 30 years—who then stood accused of collaborating with the Gulen movement, the primary entity

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Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

FEATURE FINANCE

Turkey’s recent troubling financial facts: 70%

Corporate debt has swelled to 70% of the GDP

-3.4%

101%

Current inflation rate is 101%

0%

Turkey

Growth lowered

Interest rates are not being raised by the president

from 7.4% to 4% in 2018

70%

responsible for masterminding the failed 2016 coup in the country. He faced a jail sentence of 35 years in the country. This was deemed unacceptable by the evangelical right-wing of the US, who see him as an enlightened member of society. Their lobbies put a lot of put pressure on the Trump administration to promptly respond to the situation. Trump himself tweeted his approval of Brunson, calling him a “ fine gentleman and Christian leader in the United States”.

Brunson was eventually released, but the tariffs played their part in giving shape to the latest crisis that poses a threat to not only Turkey, but the global economy at large.

Turkey does not have enough foreign exchange reserves to prevent the slide. It’s foreign reserves of $130 billion with a short term foreign debt of $180 billion. In fact 70% of all

70% of all Turkey’s debt is foreign

its debt if foreign—which has the potential to make a bad thing even worse. Economists meanwhile, have already lowered its growth from 7.4% last year to 4% this year.

As expected, The central bank has launched an economic stability plan as a countermeasure. It announced on Monday that it was “lowering the amounts of funds maintained by commercial banks, and will provide all the liquidity the banks need.” The country also got some help from Qatar, who injected $15 billion into Turkey’s banks and financial markets – which gave the lira the temporary respite of a 5% gain from its initial decline.

However, the respite is temporary. These are still dire times. Investors all over the world have feared that the spill off from the lira’s decline could have a ripple effect in global

financial markets. The euro, South African rand, and Mexico’s peso have already been dented so far. Konstantinos Anthis, head of research at ADS Securities affirmed the same. He called the situation a “global risk” and mentioned his fears of it spilling over to the already struggling banks of Europe, stating: “Even though the country itself has limited ties with the rest of the world, a spreading of the crisis to Europe via its banks’ exposure is a major concern.”

Ross Perot once said: “ A weak currency is the sign of a weak economy, and a weak economy is the sign on a weak country.” The coming time marks a turbulent period for Turkey, where it has to grapple with both internal and external challenges, lest it be weakened. Making it a challenging period where it has to learn to rebuild itself, whilst under heavy internal and external scrutiny. 

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

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Doha Insurance Group–

a pioneer in the Qatar insurance industry Exploring the ins and outs of the formidable Qatar insurance company, and the various factors that make it what it is

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ince its inception in 1999, the Doha Insurance Group has made its mark and established a significant presence on the Qatar insurance industry. Formed initially in response to the need for growth in the insurance industry, which was warranted by the unprecedented accelerated economic expansion in the country, it has evolved into a pioneering force that is poised to play a major role in the Arab insurance industry–as well as the regional one.

To start with, the impeccable credentials it has acquired speaks a tale of itself. In 2018, both AM Best and S&P reaffirmed its “A-“ rating. This acts as proof of the company’s consolidated financial strength, despite the highly competitive insurance market in Qatar, and regional, political and economic challenges.

The company’s second quarter net profits attributable to shareholders stood at $9.3 million-- with a 2% growth over net profits for the same period in 2017. Total investment and income grew to $8.5 million compared to $7.6 million for the second quarter of 2017, making it a 10% increase in income.

The organisation has also kept technological innovation on its agenda, as well as part of its overall outlook. The company has

observed how cloud computing, the internet of things, advanced analytics, telematics, global positioning systems, mobile phones, digital platforms, drones, smart contracts, and artificial intelligence provide new ways to measure ,control and engage with customers–along with reducing costs, improving efficiency. It has focused how these technologies will enable them to create and develop new insurance products, services and business models.

In 2017, they established Barzan IT Solution in Amman, Jordan–as an IT solutions company that provides them with a multitude of technologybased business solutions towards enhancing business growth through higher efficiency in processes and applications, and widening their client base through achieving users’ satisfaction. It has also made the company more digitally-enabled and transparent.

The organisation has developed its Digital Transformation Strategy early in 2016. The strategy was adopted and approved by management and our Board of Directors. Their Centre for Information Technology has subsequently executed an IT transformation plan which focuses on successful outcomes and assessing the range of “costs and benefits” that are associated with

the various available alternatives.

The company has stated that technological transformation is fundamental to their growth– and that it must include that as a strategy towards forging closer customer relationships and operating costs.

DIG also took proactive measures in establishing its brand identity . During 2006, it established an Islamic Takaful branch under the brand name "Doha Takaful" to carry out insurance and reinsurance activities in accordance with Islamic Sharia principles on a non-usury basis in all areas of insurance. In January 2018, Doha Takaful became a limited liability company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Doha Insurance Group, to independently pursue growth and expansion.

The brand identity reflects the “pioneering spirit” of the company and its constant desires to chart new frontiers in the quest to offer the best products and innovative insurance solutions, that put the customer at the centre of its focus.

The identity balances the heritage and roots of the company with the requirements of a regional and future-proof brand, in order to meet the growing and ever-changing insurance needs in the region. It strengthens the

company’s position and brings it in-line with its regional and international expansion plans.

This is reflected in the company’s logo. The icon merges the dal in Arabic and the letter D in English, forming a circle of protection, and represents the essence of what Doha Insurance stands for. This new embodiment also forms the shape of a closed triangle that depicts a fast forward moving motion, true to the aforementioned ‘pioneering spirit’.

The company also recognises the need for exceptional leadership. It is led by Mr. Jassim Al-Moftah, who serves at Doha Insurance Group as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He possesses a longstanding track record in the insurance industry, both locally

and regionally. Mr. Al-Moftah is an accomplished executive with management, strategy and operational achievements, and has worked on leading national insurance projects alongside his industry peers in the market.

Having joined Doha Insurance Group in 2017, Mr. Al-Moftah is responsible for driving the group to continue leading the market in Qatar as it strategically expands in the region and beyond. He works closely with the teams at Doha Insurance Group, to carry on with the group’s mission, which is to be a trusted insurance partner to businesses and individuals, constantly striving to deliver innovative and discerning solutions

that drive success for our clients.

Commenting on his role at DIG, Mr. Al-Moftah stated: “I am privileged to join Doha Insurance Group and become part of its new vision for expansion and development. I look forward to working with my world-class team, and leave another positive mark on the Qatari insurance scene, worldwide. “ Prior to joining Doha Insurance Group, Mr. Al-Moftah was CEO of “Al khaleej Takaful Group” for seven years and was responsible for overseeing its transformation from a traditional insurance company to a takaful based insurer. Prior to that, Mr. Al – Moftah served at the Diplomatic Corps during his tenure at the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar. He has also held several roles in both the European and American affairs department and at the office of H.E the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Sciences from the University of Missouri in the United States.

All these combined form the pillars of the Doha insurance group--which prides itself on its drive, determination, commitment and futuristic push towards growth and expansion. It continues to build on its momentum and sustain it towards charting further enviable frontiers in the insurance sector, and provide products that make a mark across the globe—and solidifies it as an iconic name among its peers and contemporaries.

FINANCE FEATURE

CHARTING VIETNAM’S

IMPRESSIVE ECONOMIC GROWTH Vietnam has managed to carve its place among the formidable economies of the ASEAN region by being its fastest growing one

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he Asian economy has been the subject of rampant global attention.

Being the fastest growing economic region in the world, as well as the largest continental economy by both GDP Nominal and PPP in the world--it plays an unprecedented role in the global economic landscape .While the largest economies in the region, that include countries like China, Japan, India are well documented.

Vietnam has also seen its

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previously lower-profile economy rise through the ranks rapidly, and to a very prominent degree.

At the moment, Vietnam stands as the fastest growing economy in the ASEAN region.

As the World Bank reports: “Vietnam’s shift from a centrally planned to a market economy has transformed the country from one of the poorest in the world into a lower middleincome country”—calling it

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

additionally as “ one of the most dynamically emerging countries in East Asia region.” Giving credit to the strong measures the country took towards its economic growth on the back of the political reforms launched under Doi Moi in 1986, which were responsible for spurring rapid economic development.

McKinsey called it “One of Asia’s great success stories”, attributing the remarkable turnaround the nation, once

FEATURE FINANCE

ravaged by war made, by somehow managing to transform into a country that has posted a per-capita growth of 5.3% since 1986 –faster than any Asian economy aside from China. The economy has performed well over the years due to both a steady rate of global recovery, and well-suited and implemented domestic reforms. The strong, steady and robust growth that came as a result is able to positively boost job creation and build income growth in the country.

This wave of economic growth has also improved the living conditions in the country dramatically.

Vietnam today is a much more educated and healthier society than it was 30 years ago, and these positive qualities share an equity of distribution throughout the country. In school, coverage and learning outcomes remain both high and equal. In fact, Vietnamese students seemed to excel much more in terms of performance than that of many OECD countries in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The country’s household infrastructure has also significantly improved over the years. In 2016, 99% of the population used electricity as their main source of light, a stark rise from the only 14% in 1993.

77% of the rural population had access to sanitation facilities, compared to 36% in 1993. Rural access to clean water has also improved, up from 17% in 1993 to 70% in 2016. In urban areas, access to these services is above 95%.

The country’s socio-cultural landscape has also changed.

Gender gaps have narrowed over the years. Female-headed households in Vietnam are less likely to be poor compared to male ones. More females are attending schools than the males at the upper secondary and tertiary education levels.

The maternity mortality rate has fallen from 233 to 58.3 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Infant mortality has dropped from 44 to 15 deaths per 1000 live births. More women are also working and contributing to the economy—with women’s labour force participation within 10% of men, making it a rare global figure.

The country should also be glad to know that its future economical outlook also looks bright. Taking Stock, the World Bank’s latest update for Vietnam, stated that recent growth in the country was driven by a cyclical increase in global demand, as well as a recovery in investment from FDI and private sector. A move towards more productive manufacturing and service sectors, aside from only agriculture was also credited.

The country’s status as the fastest-growing ASEAN economy is likely to remain so in the coming year, reported Standard Chartered. With a GDP growth of 7% in 2018 so far. It is expected to maintain similar numbers in 2019 as well.

In 2018 alone, Real GDP expanded 7.4% during first quarter, with global GDP growth expected to peak at 3.1% in the year. The country’s trade

balance also improved, owing to strong trade performance and FDI inflows—contributing to the current overall surplus, estimated at 6.8% of GDP. The country’s exchange rate has also remained stable, during the time its reserves have continued to rise—reaching about $63 billion in 2018, an amount equal to 3.6 months of imports.

The country’s monetary policy also remains accommodative, against a backdrop of low inflation. The country’s consumer price index has been ticking up slightly at 2.8% YoY in 2018. While there is the danger of rapid credit growth and a large amount of liquidity making things more volatile in the long run, it is important to note that right now things appear concrete— with public debt being stabilised since 2017, with an overall fiscal deficit of 4.5% of GDP, and the public debt-to-GDP ratio declining to 61.4% in 2017, from 63.6% in 2016 previously.

These favourable conditions allow a lot more room for a further positive push, according to Sebastian Eckardt, Lead Economist for the World Bank in Vietnam—who suggested more reforms.

“Prudent macroeconomic policies should be accompanied by comprehensive and deep structural reforms, including regulatory reforms to remove barriers to and reduce the cost of private sector activity, human capital and high-quality infrastructure investments, and further reforms to enhance productivity of state-owned enterprises.” He stated. 

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TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Facebook to reorganize Oculus and further its AR/VR goals founder and newly-promoted Head of PC VR Nate Mitchell are all set to remain in their leadership positions. No staff was laid off, according to the report.

The social media giant is set to expand on its Augmented and Virtual Reality goals by reorganising both the AR and VR teams from a product-focused divisional structure to a functional structure that focuses on technology.

Facebook had bought Oculus for $2bn in 2014.

Though even now, virtual reality still remains a niche field of technology popular primarily among video game fans.

Facebook confirmed the development to Techcrunch: “We made some changes to the AR/VR organization earlier this week. These were internal changes and won’t impact consumers or our partners in the developer community” stated a spokesperson.

Oculus CTO John Carmack and Oculus co-

This move comes a fortnight after Oculus co-founder Iribe left Facebook, and two and a half years after the company parted ways with Oculus’ other co-founder Palmer Luckey.

It was reported that Iribe and the Facebook executive team had “fundamentally different views on the future of Oculus that grew deeper over time”.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now hoping to expand virtual reality's appeal with Oculus Quest headset, that was unveiled in September and is expected to release in 2019.

Sony boosts its earnings outlook as Playstation heads for record year Sony Corp. upgraded its earnings outlook for a second straight quarter, thanks to several prominent AAA video-game titles that are boosting the Playstation business.

Operating profit for the current fiscal year through March will be $7.72bn, up from the prior forecast of $5.88bn, stated the Tokyobased company in a statement. Revenue will be $76.4bn, as compared with the previous outlook of $75.5bn in July.

The optimism is fueled by growth in the PlayStation division, where last month’s SpiderMan set a new sales record for a Sony-developed video game, with 3.3mn in sales, over the first three days. This topped the previous AAA exclusive God of War, which sold 3.1mn during the same period.

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This resulted in back-to-back increase in outlook upgrades.

About 50% of the increase in outlook, is also being fueled by a one-time accounting gain from Sony’s purchase earlier this year of EMI Music Publishing.

Operating profit at the PlayStation division rose 65% from a year ago.

Sales for the September quarter climbed 27%.

The company is sure to post even higher earnings for the December quarter, due to having one of the best third-party lineups in Playstations history. Chief of which, Rockstar games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 managed to sell 17mn copies in just a fortnight since its release on October 26.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGY

Spotify prepares for its MENA region launch The leading music streaming will now be available for existing account holders in the Middle East and North Africa without the need for a VPN, according to sources.

The company’s UAE service will remain inviteonly for non-subscribers, with visitors to Spotify’s local website able to enter their e-mail address in return for an invite. Gulf News reported in September that the company was launched across the entire region in November—with active services in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Tunisia, Algeria, Qatar and Morocco.

Spotify has also launched a new official

Twitter account, @SpotifyArabia, concurrently with the launch. According to a publicly available Twitter API, Gulf News understands that the account was created on October 29, 2018.

Right now, it is unclear when Spotify plans to become available to nonsubscribers without an invitation. The company could not be reached for comment.

As of Monday night, Spotify was still unavailable on the UAE’s Apple App Store.

In an e-mail sent to staff at a Dubai-based advertising agency, a senior media executive was quoted describing how Spotify is looking for six brands to advertise, at a cost of $200,000 each, ahead of the November launch.

Apple's first 5G iPhone will reportedly come in 2020 According to a report by Fast Company, Apple will launch its first 5G-supported iPhone in 2020.

The report cited sources familiar with Apple’s plans, and added that the company will use Intel’s 8161 5G modern chip in its 2020 iPhones.

As the company continues to battle with Qualcomm, they are expected to rely on Intel as the sole provider of modems for iPhones.

The road to launching the first 5G iPhone is expected to be rocky. This is because

the Intel 8060 modem chip which will be used to test out 5G iPhone is seeing heat dissipation issues that need resolution. This is not a problem that is severe enough for Apple to go back to Qualcomm for supplying 5G modems. Still, as a “Plan B” option, it is in talks with MediaTek to supply modems in case Intel fails to deliver.

Apple's plans to rely on Intel for modems began as early as 2015. This year's iPhones that include the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max use Intel modems exclusively.

2019 will see the first wave of 5G phones, but a couple of years are expected before it becomes a standard.

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TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Demand for tech jobs increasing in the UAE According to latest statistics from recruitment consultancy Robert Half, the diversification of the UAE’s economy has led to an increase in demand for specialist jobs related to the technology field.

Robert Half stated that a majority of CFOs (89%) feel confident about their company’s growth prospects for the year ahead in its 2019 Salary Guide.

According to Robert Half, the most in-demand jobs in tech for 2019 will be IT security analysts, application developers, and system developers. The jobs have predicted starting salaries between $46,600 and $125,100.

In accounting and financing, the top three most in demand roles for 2019 were found to be finance directors, financial planners, analysis managers, and financial analysts, with starting salaries of $65,400 and $402,800.

Other in-demand jobs for 2019 were found to be compliance managers, investment banking and mergers and acquisition associates, FX sales

managers, HR business partners, HR heads, and personal assistants.

However, on the flip side, with increased demand there have also been worries over employee retention. Over 50% of business leaders in Dubai and 45% in Abu Dhabi have expressed concern about the effort needed to attract, secure and retain professionals in the future.

Vietnam says Google and Facebook may have a year to meet cyber law Vietnam is proposing to allow international Internet companies like Google and Facebook, a time period of one year to comply with a controversial cyber law that goes into effect on January 1, and requires them to open local offices and store data of Vietnamese users in the country.

The Ministry of Public Security posted a draft decree on its website on how the law would be implemented following the National Assembly’s approval in June of the legislation—which triggered protests.

The law, which requires companies to store at least 36 months of local users’ data in the country, also bans the use of social networks to organize antistate activities, spread false information or create difficulties for authorities. It drew dissent from some lawmakers and government leaders as well as local tech groups, who sent a petition warning that it would hurt the economy.

The legislation pressures Google and Facebook

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to choose between protecting the privacy of users or growth in one of the world’s fastest-expanding economies. Vietnam’s young, growing middle-class is a lure for digital companies. The country averaged economic growth of 6.3% between 2005 and 2017 and multiplied its per capita income six times since 2000.

Representatives of Google and Facebook have not responded so far.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGY

China, France launch satellite to study climate change (CFOSAT) is the first satellite that is jointly built by China and France, and allows climate scientists to better understand interactions between the ocean and atmosphere.

China sent its first ever satellite built in partnership with another country, a device that is tasked with helping scientists better predict dangerous cyclones and climate change via monitoring ocean surface winds and waves.

A Long March 2C carrier rocket blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China's Gobi Desert at 0043 GMT, according to China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence.

It's equipped with two radars: the French-made SWIM spectrometer, which measures the direction and the wavelength of waves, and China's SCAT, a scatterometer that analyses the force and direction of winds. The data will be collected and analysed in both countries.

Via the satellite, scientists can collect information about winds and waves of the same location simultaneously for the first time, stated Wang Lili, chief designer of the satellite with the China Academy of Space Technology.

The China-France Oceanography Satellite

Zhao Jian, a senior official at the China National Space Administration also stated: "It will help increase the observation and prediction of catastrophic sea states, such as huge waves and tropical storms, and provide security support for offshore operations and engineering, ship navigation, fisheries, and coastal management."

Singapore and Chongqing form fintech alliance Chongqing and Singapore are working together to apply fintech solutions in order to make STC hassle free, safe and cost efficient for stakeholders.

Strengthening the fintech collaboration between Chinese city Chongqing and Singapore under the Chongqing Connectivity Initiative (CCI) could broaden activity between Western China and ASEAN, stated Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) managing director Ravi Menon.

In his keynote at the inaugural Singapore-China (Chongqing) Financial Summit, Menon emphasised how there is great scope to leverage on technology to strengthen connectivity, particularly along the Southern Transport Corridor (STC). It is being established as the connection between Western China and Southeast Asia, according to him.

He also mentioned that investment will be the most serious casualty if the current trade conflict persists—as it will lead to global businesses to scale back investment.

“A decline in investment will reduce productive capacity, delay technological upgrading, and compromise productivity growth,” he added.

Fintech collaboration is expected to be the way forward to mitigate effects on the Asian economy, with Singapore at a good position for such activities. Two out of five, or 39%, of ASEAN fintechs are located in Singapore according to UOB, with 28% of the payment fintech startups in the ASEAN region as of 9 October 2017 calling the country home.

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TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

THE EVOLVING ROLE OF THE CFO

IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Traditionally, the roles of the CFOs have been singularly responsible for presiding over organisations’ financial infrastructures – but evolving times mean that their responsibilities have also evolved. Let’s find out how

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FEATURE TECHNOLOGY

The nature of the job has been simple: cut costs, grow revenue and ensure that finances are in control. The responsibilities that are included within these segments include: financial planning, record keeping, asset preservation and risk minimization inside the organization.

But both the nature of organisations, and leadership has evolved. With it, so has this particular role.

The overall sphere of influence that it used to hold has grown much wider. Today’s CFOs require not only require a mastery of finance, but the ability to go beyond it. They are full- borne strategic thinkers that take active leadership in organisations— and are fully integrated into business strategy. While the role traditionally has involved

T

he CFO role has held an inordinate amount of prestige over the years.

Traditionally, the position has been defined as the singular entity that’s in charge of the company’s fiscal infrastructure.

The new-gen, evolutionary CFOs will be sensitive, perceptive and adaptive to digital trends and will have the foresight to adapt them."

leveraging the role of digital technology and build, maintain and develop the organisation’s financial infrastructure—now the responsibility lies in going beyond all of it. To quote Jeff Thomson, the president and CEO of IMA, the duties of the modern day CFO have evolved from “bean counters” to “bean sprouters”— referring to the overall sphere of responsibilities that this job now demands.

The evolution of course, was initiated by the nature of their old job itself. Data Analytics was a key tool of financial operations but it is pretty much a cornerstone in organisational decision making nowadays. It is used for evaluation, analysis, forecasting and measurement of factors both inside and outside the organization. It highlights critical trends, patterns and evaluations. CFOs proven capacity to work with large volumes of data, coupled with rapid advancement of analytic capabilities have made them the ideally suited candidates to oversee a company’s digital transformation. Not to mention , the rapid evolution of digital technology—and the variety of it at their disposal, have streamlined some of their previous responsibilities. Now they have the time, space and flexibility needed to move beyond just

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Image Credit: iStock

TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

New generation CFOs will be sensitive, perceptive and adaptive in implementing digital trends

finance and acclimate themselves to the corporate entity as a whole, in multi-faceted capacities. As the evolution continues, CFOs will leverage digital technologies that may automate financial processes entirely.

The new-gen, evolutionary CFOs will be sensitive, perceptive and adaptive to digital trends and will have the foresight to adapt them. They have to be diligent and persuasive in chasing and adapting these trends, and using them to make the process of evolving an organization a constant throughout. Buoyed by digital transformation technologies, the role of the CFO will cross over from traditional finance, into the all encompassing corporate strategy, business leadership and ultimately talent

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management as well.

For starters, CFOs are actively aware of this trend and have been perceptive to how these technologies can help broaden their responsibility to the company—and their skillset.

A majority of CFOs have been able to venture out into Risk

The CFO will now be increasingly involved in decisions across all areas of an organization, and require direct collaboration with all main organizational figures."

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Management, Regulatory Compliance, IT and Cybersecurity using digital tools. The newest generation of CFOs in fact place an acute emphasis on further advancing data and predictive analysis capabilities that will go a long length in reinforcing their emerging roles as company strategists.

Digital technology also provides an accurate overview of the most important thing that an organisation is based on : It’s revenue. A company’s financial measure is often beset to challenge by the overall macroeconomic and political conditions of the country. Data can provide a window into all sorts of aspects that affect the company in both the short, and the long run. The TERADATA

FEATURE TECHNOLOGY

article The Data-Driven CFO by Jay Humphries, Lance Dacre and David Rosal states that: “CFOs need fact-based data analytics to provide lines of sight across finance and as their influence in the boardroom grows, enable informed decision making.”

The article also states that the ideal sort of financial approach would be one that is “systematic, corporate-wide of cross-finance integrated approach that aligns with goals and strategies of other departments. This will make the business more efficient and reduce, if not eliminate duplication of work.”

These financial transactions of the company cannot take place in silos, because they lead to it being inconsistent, incomplete and inaccessible. Hence, the CFO will now be increasingly involved in key decisions across all major areas of an organization, and require direct collaboration with all main organizational figures—including CEOs, COOs, CIOs, Marketing, HR and Sales in their operations. This will ensure that CFOs are directly involved in every major process in the organization. This will include generating sustainable measures, handling risk and unpredictability, developing organizational talent and be one of the primary drivers for innovation within the industry.

For this, the CFO will also have to possess, or develop exemplary human skills. Put it simply, they will need to have the ability to influence, inspire and build strong leaderships. Not only that, these skills will need to be active both inside and outside the company. Strong relationships

Digital technologies will ensure that organisational communication remains clear and pristine

will need to be built with internal and external stakeholders—as well as employees, opinionmakers and journalists. Digital technologies will offer the CFOs an interface from where they can facilitate both the organization’s communication—and ensure that its image in the space remains positively conveyed and pristine.

CFOs being involved in every major process in the organisation will lead to sustainable measures, better risk handling and development of organisational talent."

This is a trend that modern industry and business has accepted wholeheartedly.

According to a survey of senior financial executives conducted

by CFO research, 82% of modern CFOs believe that leading-edge technology is essential to business transformation—which signifies just how important it has become.

In fact, 49% said that advances in technology change the overall role of the CFO itself.

Times and trends change. And nowadays things are faster than they’ve ever been. Things have entered a phase of rapid evolution, where organizational leaders have to evolve to forge the path that allows them to play a role that is more proactive, involved and strategic. This will lead in both the evolution of great existing organizations—and the creation of new ones with a peerless fiscal structure and organizational culture. 

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TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

SOCIAL MEDIA BOTS

AND THEIR ADVERSE EFFECTS Social media bots have become one of the most notorious and controversial topics regarding the digital world. It’s time to put a microscope to their exact nature and what they represent

C

arl Jung once famously stated : “One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.”

The internet and social

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media wasn’t around then, but it’s shocking to see just how accurate that quote was and how the meanings and implications behind it have been magnified to an extreme—and quite frankly, extremely worrying scenario.

It has become accepted that

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

when we’re interacting online with people, we see them through a lens that they put over themselves—i.e ‘their online personas’. Most people you know online ( and vice versa ) have probably developed one of their own, and so have you. When

FEATURE TECHNOLOGY

you’re interacting with someone online, you’re doing so with a version they present to you.

And just like every other process , there arose a need towards somehow artificially simulating this phenomenon as well. Hence was where the ‘social media bot’ came into effect.

To first lay down in simple terms, a bot isn’t a real person.

It is an algorithm. A computer program. All except for the fact, that it can talk to you.

The Forbes article Do evil: the business of social media bots calls them “scarily natural”, and pays emphasis on just how frighteningly lifelike and naturalistic these supposed programs are at simulating human interaction and conversation . The article states further that Bots cannot only just talk, but “skew algorithms, influence your opinion- or, in some cases, cause a lot of trouble.”

The study called How the ‘Good Life’ is threatened in cyberspace by Reading University revealed that nearly 30% of internet users can be deceived by a bot. There are ones with extremely complex programming and design that can go towards influencing your psychology in the long run, and then go on to perform other heinous activities like liking and sharing your posts across the internet, and even creating fake followers—sometimes in the thousands. Both of these combined can create ‘fake trends’ on the internet, and judging by how fast things spread online, can influence mass psychology and cause a lot of damage that can be often

really hard to revert or repair.

What’s also worrying is that bots by their very nature, are quite easy to make. There are resources readily available on the internet that allow users to build their own bots—including bot software that you can readily download to your computer anytime you want, owing to its freeware nature. Then there are platforms like Dexter that allow for the building of bots that range from extremely simple, to scarily complex. In fact, nowadays Dexter is used to readily build bots for both businesses and brands – indicating that now bots are also a product/ service for customers. Nowadays, people will pay you to build something that fakes human interaction online, in order to build/promote their brand or services.

While the business advantages can be used to defend bots, there can be no denying the sheer devastation that they are capable of causing—and have caused—in the social ,political and psychological landscape.

Take for example, the recent incidents that have rattled the globe. Bots have gone so far as to cause danger to democracies and democratic practices over the globe. Most infamously, their usage in the 2016 US elections in order to try and sway political opinions of a large people have been exhaustively detailed, analysed, debated and criticized.

The fact still remains that it is increasingly easy for bots to massively spread fake news articles to create misinformation and distrust, and then eventually create echo chambers filled with people tricked into believing

falsified facts and information.

Bots have become an increasingly powerful tool for political propaganda that is sure to have influence on upcoming electoral processes across the globe.

Psychologically, they are also implications. The article The Psychology of Chatbots, by Dr. Liraz Margalit, first published in Psychology Today details how the general anthropomorphism humans tend to associate with Chatbots tends to make regular interactions with fellow humans more dull, cold and muted.

“There are power differences in many real-life relationships.

When interacting with bots, people expect to have more power than the other side, to feel they can control the interaction and lead the conversation to whatever places they feel like. Unconsciously this makes them feel better about themselves and gain back a sense of control over their lives.“ wrote Dr. Margalit.

Human interaction was a delicate, careful process that was disrupted majorly in the age of the internet. In a place where there is a lot of information available at a moments notice, and very less of it credible, bots act as unpredictable agents that often hold the potential to create damage that has deadly consequences for multiple parties.

While nowadays people have become savvier and more aware of their presence , there still is a large need for awareness and preventive measures against bots --in order to ascertain the difference between fact and fiction, when it comes to people’s lives and interactions online. 

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ENERGY NEWS

US to grant Iraq waiver over Iran sanctions for energy The United States has informed Iraq that it will be allowed to keep importing crucial gas, energy supplies and food items from Iran after Washington imposes sanctions on Tehran’s oil sector, stated three Iraqi officials.

The waiver is conditional on Iraq not paying Iran for the imports in US dollars, stated the officials—who included a member of Iraq’s ministerial committee that oversee energy activities, as they reported to Reuters.

Yahya Al-e Es’haq, the president of Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce stated that the US dollar has been completely eliminated from trade deals that were conducted between the two countries due to US sanctions.

“Dollar transactions between Iran and Iraq have been removed and a majority of deals are now being conducted with the euro, rial and Iraqi dinar,” the official recently stated.

The new wave of US sanctions take effect on November 4.

The ministerial committee official stated that Iraq’s finance ministry had set up an account with a state-run bank where Baghdad would deposit in Iraqi dinars the amounts owed to Iran for the imports. Central bank officials in August stated that Iraq’s economy is linked extremely closely to Iran’s— and that Baghdad will need to ask Washington for permission to ignore some US sanctions.

Iraq imports crucial supplies from Iran, and is the biggest export destination for non-oil products from the country.

Mongolia gets $60.6 million for solar-wind hybrid project The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has entered into an agreement with the Government of Mongolia under which it will be providing $60.6 mn for distributed renewable energy projects in the nation. The loan and grant agreements were signed by Minister of Finance Khurelbaatar Chimed and ADB Country Director for Mongolia Yolanda Fernandez Lommen in Ulaanbaatar. Also attending

the event were representatives from the Ministry of Energy and Mongolian Tax Authority.

The loan is geared towards developing a 41 MW distributed renewable energy system—the very first of its kind in Mongolia—that uses solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy with advanced battery storage technology and energy management systems. The project will result in the supply of clean and reliable electricity to about 260,000 people in remote and less-developed towns in western Mongolia.

ADB’s funding of $40mn is supplemented by grant co-financing, $14.6mn from the Strategic Climate Fund under the scaling up renewable energy program in low-income countries, and $6mn from the Japan Fund for the joint crediting mechanism.

The Government of Mongolia itself is contributing $5.6mn to the project.

ADB had also previously announced that it will give $20mn loan to Bangladesh under its Power System Efficiency Improvement Project.

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NEWS ENERGY

Energy upgrades for coldest privately rented UK homes to save $233 yearly The amended regulations that require landlords to install energy efficiency measures, will benefit tenants living in some of the coldest homes in England and Wales, announced the energy and clean growth minister Claire Perry.

Since April of this year, landlords who possess some of the coldest privately rented homes have been required to improve them with energy efficient measures. These, following a public consultation, will go further in requiring landlords to contribute to the costs required for the upgrades.

In 2019, properties with Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of F or G—the lowest 2 energy efficiency ratings available—must be made

warmer by landlords before being put on the rental market.

This is expected to cost $1,557 on average and is set to affect 290,000 properties, which represent around 6% of the overall domestic market.

These changes are expected to save households an average

of $233 a year while reducing carbon emissions and potentially increasing property values.

Excess cold is by far the largest preventable cause of death in the private rented sector. WHO estimates that 30% of avoidable winter deaths are due to people living in cold homes.

UAE to pump $132 million into Adnoc The UAE is all set to pump $132mn to ramp up its oil production by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which will also aid the state-owned oil firm to attain self-sufficient and become a net gas exporter in the coming years.

Adnoc is set to increase its oil production for 4mn barrels per day(bpd) by 2020 and 5 million bpd by 2030.

The announcement came on the eve of US

sanctions on Iran’s vital oil sales to force Tehran into negotiations to scrap both its nuclear energy and ballistic missile programmes.

The plan was approved by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces and Vice-Chairman of the Supreme Petroleum Council (SPC), who also presided over the meeting.

The council also announced that it has discovered new gas in place, totalling 15 trn standard cubic feet.

It also announced new discoveries of 1bn barrels of oil in place, and approved Adnoc's new fiveyear business plan and capital investment growth between 2019 and 2023.

The gas strategy will sustain LNG production to 2040 and allow Adnoc to seize incremental LNG and gas-to-chemicals growth opportunities.

Adnoc's current capacity is 3mn bpd, which is expected to hike to 3.4mn bpd by year-end, and eventually 5mn by 2030.

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ENERGY NEWS

Dubai's DEWA raises its solar power purchase deal with Saudi Arabia's ACWA Dubai's water and power utility DEWA stated that it had agreed to increase the amount of electricity it would purchase from a solar park being built by a consortium led by ACWA Power from Saudi Arabia.

As a result of the increased purchases by DEWA, the park's capacity would increase to 950 MW from

700 MW, stated the Dubai government.

"Following the amendment, the total investment for the ambitious project has reached 16 billion dirhams ($4.4bn)," it stated.

The project's cost before the capacity increase was estimated at $3.9bn.

The project will feature a 260m (850 ft) tower receiving focused sunlight, which will be the tallest tower of such kind, stated the Dubai government.

The first stage of the project is due to be commissioned in late 2020. It is part of the Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Solar Park, a vast complex which that aims to generate 1,000 MW by 2020 and 5,000 MW by 2030.

The government aims to use the park and other energy sources to increase the share of clean energy in Dubai’s power output to 7% by 2020, 25% by 2030 and 75% by 2050.

Saudi Arabia to invest in Russian petrochemicals plant Oil giants Saudi Aramco and Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) are preparing to invest into a building processing plant in Russia, according to Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih.

The minister stated that the Saudi partners are hoping to cooperate with Sibur, which is Russia’s largest petrochemicals firm.

“I hope our cooperation with Sibur will allow Saudi Aramco and SABIC to invest into building of a petrochemical plant in Russia,” al-Falih told Rossiya 24, Russia’s 24-hour news channel.

He also stated that Saudi Arabia is also discussing the opportunity of constructing a synthetic rubber plant in the

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Saudi city of Jubail with French energy major Total, China’s Sinopec, and Russia’s Sibur.

“We are in advanced discussion with Sibur, as well as with Total and Sinopec.The consortium is looking to build a plant for producing synthetic rubber in Jubail. I’m sure the plant will be built.” Said al-Falih.

According to Sibur CEO

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Dmitry Konov, the partners are currently looking for suitable technical, business and engineering solutions.

“We are launching a joint enterprise to produce synthetic rubber in India this year,” Konov said, emphasising that the production will be powered

by Russian technology. “We are trying to apply the same approach in Saudi Arabia.”

NEWS ENERGY

South Korea adding bio-heavy oil as a renewable resource The country’s legislators passed a law in September, due to be implemented at the start of 2019, which allows the use of bio-heavy oil to generate electricity. The law is designed to use the oil, made from animal fat, leftover cooking oil, and the by-products of bio-diesel processing, in place of petroleum.

The country’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy stated that using bio-heavy oil is more environmentally friendly than conventional oil, and will provide a more stable energy source. The government has tested the use of bio-heavy oil for power generation since 2014 at five power stations that run on bunker-coil.

The Korea Petroleum Quality and Distribution Authority stated that bio-heavy oil emits 39% less nitrogen oxide, 28% less fine dust, and 85% less greenhouse gases than conventional oil—and almost no sulphur dioxides.

The Moon Jae-in administration has made the use of cleaner energy resources a priority, pledging

to increase the country’s use of renewable energy to 20% by 2030.

“Electricity generated using renewable energy will increase once bio-heavy oil is commercialized.

This will contribute to reaching the government’s ‘Renewable Energy 2030’ goal, cutting down on fine dust and greenhouse gas emissions,” said the Trade Ministry in a statement.

Norway’s Equinor pursues oil, gas and renewable investments in India The Norway oil and gas giant is considering investment opportunities in India’s oil, gas and renewables industries, stated CEO Eldar Saetre to Reuters.

“We are looking at India both from oil and gas, but also from the renewables,” he told Reuters,

noting that it’s a very early stage but “we need to be on the ground.”

On a separate note, Equinor is also exploring opportunities for investing in LNG projects.

While it is not something that the Norwegian firm needs to develop—it’s just one of the

opportunities it has considered.

Earlier this month, Equinor and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) agreed to jointly explore unconventional gas opportunities in China and conventional internationally. Al Cook, Equinor’s executive vice president of strategy, stated at a Norway-China energy seminar.

China, alongside India, is the key driver of oil demand growth, and both countries have ambitious plans for natural gas and renewables.

India is expected to overtake China some time next decade as the largest growth market for energy, so Equinor has also set its sights on investing in India.

Equinor's current offshore wind portfolio has the capacity to provide for 1mn European homes.

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ENERGY FEATURE

NORWAY: LEADING THE WORLD

BY EXAMPLE IN SUSTAINABILITY Sustainability and the switch to renewables is a challenge that is as important , as it is complex.

One country however, seems to be on top of it. How?

A

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s our lives extend on this planet, its own tends to slowly end—day by day.

It’s been common knowledge for a while that the earth’s clock has been ticking. Human civilisation has made progress, but it has done on the back of depleting a lot of the planet’s vitality. We now live in dire times where people around the world have to deal with serious symptoms that endanger our day-to-day existence as we know it.

agenda of each and every nation that seeks to achieve prominence in the global stage. Each and every country now has to be held accountable for how much strain it puts on the environment.

This is an incredibly complex problem that requires a lot of emergent thinking, innovation, collaboration, empathy and mutual understanding to get around – and often has a lot of socio-political and economic factors standing in the way.

The need for human beings to recognise this at least—has led them towards working to actively sustain the planet. It is important to try and preserve what’s left in order to make it inhabitable for our future generations.

Sustainablity is now a major

However, one country in particular has led the charge in setting up the example for others. And that is Norway.

While Europe in general is big on renewability—and has managed to hit 30% of its overall renewability targets—Norway

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still stands a class apart in ideation and execution. Not to mention, commitment.

To begin with, let’s take into account that Norway produces 98% of its electricity production from renewable sources. Not only that, it was voted the only country out of the top 10 that produce the most renewable energy—that actually manages to meet its demand overall. This puts it ahead on the global scale, of even countries that produce the most renewable energy on the planet overall, namely the US and China. Norway even managed to get ahead of stiff competition with countries that had incredibly impressive figures in this regard—edging out Brazil (96%) and Canada (72%).

To get a measure around this massive achievement, it’s important to see how the country has overall integrated sustainability in its social, cultural and economic fabric. It stands as a revelatory example of futuristic thinking that has brought out something that many and most will say was unthinkable by all measures. In fact, a prominent energy think tank in the

country-- Energie Norge, has claimed that it’s possible that the country will be entirely

electricity-run by 2050.

To start with, let’s take into account that the country has the highest number of electric cars per capita—and they’re only getting better. There are more than 110,000 electric cars currently in use in the country.

In 2017, more than half the new vehicle purchases made in the country were of electric or hybrid. This year, more than one-third of new vehicle purchases made in the country will be the

same. Experts have predicted that in 2019, the share will rise to 40%. Norway’s

reliance on hydropower for almost all its electricity (98% to be exact) allows for this sort of system to thrive. The country’s government itself has backed this move with a wide range of generous incentives and perks, to make this sort of ecosystem thrive. The country’s ministers have declared that no vehicle powered by fossil fuels will be operational within the country in 2025. A bold declaration, but one that seems plausible, when taken the above numbers in consideration. In fact, compare the figure to some of the most prominent nations in Europe, like say the UK, where only 2% of new cars are electric— the figure begins to seem even more impressive.

Renewability has also seeped into the business and economic mindset of the country. While most of the economy is still run on petro-chemicals, there is an emerging trend of entrepreneurs switching their operations to renewables. This was bought forth by the decline in revenues

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ENERGY FEATURE

from crude oil—which dropped more than 30% between 2014 and 2015—and inspired the government to think of alternative solutions. “It revealed our economy was not sustainable in the long run. New technology supporting more sustainable urbanisation is one area we think can become an export for Norwegian companies.” Sigridur Thormodsdottir, a sustainability expert at Innovation Norway stated.

Since 2014, the government has launched a number of “clusters” that promote startup innovation, including a new solar energy cluster—launched last year with three years of solid funding. Younger start-ups have also joined the clusters of companies. These include wave power firm Tidetec, hydrogen technology firm Hynor Lillestrøm, solar powered-devices company Kyoto Energy

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The decline in revenues from crude oil—which dropped more than 30% between 2014 and 2015, inspired the government to think of alternative solutions." and DeepRiver-- which aims to generate hydropower from rivers.

Major fossil fuel companies are also investing in renewables.

Statoil, for example, is established as the Norweigian state oil company that is testing floating wind turbines technology off the country’s coast.

While cost remains an

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obstacle, and the country is still reliant on Oil and Gas for most of its operations—being one of the biggest exporters of them in the world—the fact that even the business arm of the country recognises it, is an incredibly hopeful sign that things will keep evolving as grow in positive ways.

Another way to look at sustainability is to look at it like an ethos. If it’s inscribed into the socio-cultural mindset itself, then it can go on to provide long term benefits that go a long way in improving life in a country.

The fact that Norway realises this fact makes them stand apart. Sustainability studies are popular in the country, with a wide variety of Masters Programs available that attract students in large droves from both within the country and abroad. Students in themselves seem to be inspired

FEATURE ENERGY

by the cause. The younger generation of norwegians have been active in campaigning for the causes they’re passionate about and have not been shy of publicly putting the

government’s reliance on Oil and Gas under scrutiny. Nature and Youth, a youth group with around 8,000 members aged 1325, even filed a lawsuit against the Norwegian government, along with Greenpeace and various other independent activists, over a decision to open up the Barents Sea for oil exploration.

Even schoolchildren in the country have taken up the cause—despite being in their early years.

Interbridge organised “my city, my responsibility”, a social enterprise project that aims to empower citizens to

In a time when precious wildlife across the globe is disappearing at a dangerous rate, Norway has put its foot down and made a stand towards protecting the wild reindeer the roam its mountains."

participate in global issues.

19 school children were given a platform to make their demands of politicians.

After four weekends of workshops and discussions ,their ideas were presented to them. These included making greater use of renewable energies, reducing meat and dairy consumption and making bicycles more easily available to the general public.

business in the region. Norway has nearly 35,000 reindeer in its southern mountains. The country simply did not want to endanger a species that was already on its last legs in Europe.

To think that they chose this over sparking business in the sparselyinhabited region speaks volumes.

The country has also been proactive about protecting its fauna. In a time when precious wildlife across the globe is disappearing at a dangerous rate, Norway has put its foot down and made a stand towards protecting the wild reindeer the roam its mountains. It outright rejected the construction of a wind farm in a Bygland municipality that originally was conceived to spark

The UN has consistently ranked Norway as having the highest standard of living in the world, based largely on average levels of education, income and expected length of lifetime.

While this envied position has no doubt allowed them the leeway to embark on sustaining measures such as these, few will argue or debate on just how incredibly worthy they are of it overall. 

Did you know?

Aside from its own sustainability measures, Norway has also actively sought out to improve other parts of the world in similar regard: •

It is part of an agreement to protect the Congo Basin, and signed a letter of intent for $200mn to address deforestation and forest degradation in the country with The Central African Forest Initiative.

•

It has also pledged up to $357mn to help save the world’s tropical forests and improve the lives of those who live around them.

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ENERGY FEATURE

THE STILL SLOW

PACE OF THE CLIMATE FIGHT

The climate change fight has been recognised as a global responsibility and yet, countries have been falling short of the required pace. Let’s look at it closely

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s the UN climate talks in Bangkok wrapped up on Sunday ahead of COP24 in Katowice in December, Taehyun Park, the Greenpeace East Asia Global Climate Political Advisor said in its statement: “We need to make faster progress.

Climate change is no longer a far off threat, it is something we’re all facing in the real world today, with devastating effect.” He went as far as to criticise the ‘leadership deficits’ that were singularly responsible for the ‘slow pace’ of the climate change fight—stating further that “In a couple of

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weeks the IPCC will remind us of the frightening impacts we’ll all experience if we fail to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. There is no time to waste.”

While such grandiose statements cannot be classified as newer developments, and there have been many of the made over the course of a long period of time. They can be classified as urgent. Countries all over the world, with diverse populations and even their leaders have firsthand faced the devastating effects that global warming and a shift in temperatures have affected

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their way of life, natural cover, health and sanitation, general psychological well-being and yes, even the economy as well.

Combating climate change has been recognised as both a collective global responsibility and an important individual priority of every nation.

However, the pace at which it has progressed has unfortunately not been fast enough.

A 2018 study by the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs identified the serious shortcomings in the global

FEATURE ENERGY

goal of reducing emissions— pointing out that there had been in fact, a 1.4% increase of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2017—something which it credited to a combination of increasing economic growth, usage of relatively cheap fossil fuels and overall weak efforts towards energy efficiency and conservation.

The authors of the report stated in clear and concise terms: “While recent evidence points to progress in decoupling emissions growth from GDP growth in some developed economies, it is still manifestly insufficient. The rate of global energy efficiency gains has been slowing since 2015, reaching 1.7% in 2017—half the rate required to remain on track with the Paris Agreement.”

Speaking of the Paris Climate Agreement , it has also been found this year that countries worldwide have not been able to keep up with the pace that is essential to meet their promises .

The latest Climate Action Tracker (CAT) analysis directly identified countries like Japan, Indonesia, Philippines and Turkey, whose overreliance and unwillingness to phase out coal as a major crutch.

Turkey in fact was predicted to double its emissions by 2030, due to of course—its reliance on coal. Similarly, Poland was also criticised for relying on the fossil fuel too heavily, despite it holding the COP conference.

While the report did credit countries like UK in removing a significant amount of coal from its energy mix, lowering its contribution to emissions to a 7% from previously 20%, it stated that in the big picture of things,

a lot more work was required.

Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in England stated: “It’s not fast enough. It’s not big enough.

There’s not enough action.”

There are also weaknesses and gaps in many other countries that have been identified as the reason for the slow pace. These include the like of Brazil, which has struggled to rein in deforestation, Germany (otherwise identified as being an icon of global progressivism), which is struggling in its goals to generate 80% of energy from renewable sources, and is in fact undergoing a rise in emissions due to rapid coal burning, especially in the transportation sector. The EU in general, faces a serious quandary.

Third after China and the US in total emissions, the bloc had pledged a 40% cut below 1990 levels by 2030—something that it's well on track to fall short of.

While it isn’t all bad of course— with China and India,

nations which together produce about 24% of the world’s emissions, having rapidly growing renewable energy markets in their respective countries, the elephant in the room of course, remains the US. The decision of the Trump administration to withdraw from the agreement entirely, reject Obama’s emission reduction plans and instead ramping up its operations with coal. This was one of the most significant blows to the historic accord and to climate fight in general.

The world in short, has fallen behind. By 2020, countries were actually supposed to ramp up the promises they made in Paris, but now everyone seems to be lagging a bit behind the curve.

There is still time till 2030, where many countries have a deadline to meet their initial targets—so there is an urgent need for their respective leaders and policymakers to buckle up. 

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REALTY NEWS

Singapore beats Hong Kong in luxury home price gains Singapore has nudged out Hong Kong to top a luxury real-estate ranking in spite of an array of cooling measures aimed to tame its property market.

Luxury home prices in Singapore rose 13% in the quarter ended September 30 from a year earlier, according to Knight Frank’s Prime Global Cities Index. Gains were driven in part by the limited availability of high-end properties.

Hong Kong fell to 14th place with third quarter YoY price gains of just 5.5%.

For those with less cash to splurge, there is also good news. The price of luxury properties rose globally by 2.7% on average across the 43 cities tracked—marking it the weakest

performance in annual terms in almost six years.

steady with gains of 5.6% and 5.4% respectively.

European cities had a rather mixed performance. Some, such as Edinburgh and Madrid did quite well, and placed in the top five. Other like London moved into negative territory, with luxury prices dropping 2.9% amid continuing uncertainty regarding Brexit. Paris and Berlin, also held

Dubai joined London among the decliners with prices falling 3.8%, making it the fifth-worst performer.

Tying for second-worst place were Stockholm, Istanbul and Taipei, all registering 6.3% declines in Q3 from a year earlier.

Malaysia Airports fall 12% after government proposed airport REIT Shares in Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) fell to 12% after Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng announced the world’s first “airport real estate investment trust (REIT)” during Malaysia’s budget 2019 tabling.

"The investors of the airport REIT will receive income arising from user fees collected from MAHB which has the concession to operate these airports," Lim stated.

At Bursa Malaysia, KLCI-linked MAHB shares were undergoing transactions at $1.80 at 10:28 among the largest decliners on the stock exchange.

Approximately 1.53 million shares were traded.

In the short term, analysts stated the federal government's proposed airport REIT may be neutral for MAHB. Quoting CIMB research, The Edge Financial Daily reported today that for now, there is no immediate impact on MAHB. The only change is in who receives the user fees from MAHB. "It is important to note that the government's proposed airport REIT will not benefit MAHB's shareholders, but neither will it change the economic value of MAHB in any way," CIMB stated.

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NEWS REALTY

Asteco launches direct debit system for rent payments in UAE The leading property services company has launched a digital payment service that allows its tenants to pay their rent through direct debit.

It will eliminate the need for post-dated rent cheques, boost efficiencies, enhance ease of doing business, save time and positively impact the real estate market.

Asteco has partnered with National Bank of Fujairah and Direct Debit System FZ LLE, a UAE-based provider of alternative low-cost payment systems, to leverage direct debit as an easy-to-use digital solution for all parties involved in real estate transactions.

Operationally, the tenant signs a Direct Debit Authority (DDA) document with Asteco as a one-

time step. Payments are then debited from the tenant’s current or savings account or credit card at the agreed date and frequency, and deposited into the landlord’s account.

Elaine Jones, the executive chairman of Asteco, stated: "As our world becomes increasingly digital, Asteco is working closely with its partners to embrace

innovation and contribute to creating an efficient and secure financial environment in Dubai for long-term residents and newcomers alike."

"In line with the Smart Dubai 2021 strategy, we aim to become a paperless entity by the end of 2019 and this initiative is the first step in the journey," she concluded.

Northern England house prices to rise at faster rate than London Over the next five years, house prices are forecasted to rise strongly in northern England, the Midlands, Wales and Scotland--far outstripping London’s single-digit rate and reversing the trend of previous decades, stated a report.

Other areas where Savills forecasted aboveaverage growth are Yorkshire & Humberside (20.5%), followed by the east and west Midlands and Wales (19.3%), Scotland (18.2%) and the northeast (17.6%).

Savills, the upmarket estate agent, predicted that prices will increase fastest in north-west England over the next five years, at 21.6%.

By contrast, London prices are forecasted to rise 4.5%, although prime central London is set for 12.4% growth. This is during the time where the top end of the housing market bounces back from the price declines that are seen in recent months.

House prices across the UK are expected to climb by 14.8% on average between 2019 and 2023. This increase would add about $41,529(£32,000) to the average house price by the end of 2023, taking it up to £248,086 ($321,966).

Savills stated that stricter mortgage lending rules introduced in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis would limit price increases but would also protect the market from a possible crash.

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REALTY NEWS

UK to extend scheme to assist first-time property buyers till 2023 The UK government gave its clearest signal so far, indicating that first-time buyers will remain its housing priority. Landlords on the other hand, will remain in the cross hairs.

Despite speculation that the generous Help to Buy policy might meet its demise - originally sparked by a review into the programme - the government will actually extend its interestfree loans to 2023, with some modifications what will focus the policy. More specifically on debut home buyers.

Those that are currently taking advantage of the programme, which is due to end in March 2021, can buy a property up to £600,000 ($1mn) in England and benefit from a maximum

40% government loan in London and up to 20% in the rest of the country.

From April 2021, a two-year scheme will be introduced, which will have regional caps on the value of the property which can be bought, all of which

will be lower than the current $775,182 (£600,000) rate, except in London, according to the government.

Only properties where the owner remains in occupancy and rents out a room will be exempt from it.

Germany-based firm enters UAE with $327million worth of projects Real estate developer Meilenstein has announced its foray into the UAE’s real estate market with eight projects with a development value exceeding $327mn.

The projects are to be built in several locations across Dubai, including Mohammed Bin Rashid City (MBR City) within Meydan City, Al Furjan, Dubai Studio City and Dubai Sports City.

The company has already invested $136mn in a company formation, office set-up, talent acquisition, land acquisition, infrastructure and

other ground works, according to the statement.

“We are going to invest a further $544mn in developing projects in 2018 and 2019 and the numbers will then go up once we start building the projects and selling the properties,” Jawad Azizi, managing director of Meilenstein Developments, said.

“Meilenstein Developments is entering in the UAE market at a time when the real estate sector achieved a high level of maturity backed up with a regulatory environment that protects property buyers, investors, developers and brokers and with a high level of transparency and accountability.”

He continued.

“Meilenstein is a developer with a difference whose management has vast experience in real estate development and project management. We will bring German quality in building management to ensure durability and longer life in each project that we build that will strengthen the investor appetite for quality homes.” He concluded.

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NEWS REALTY

Dubai property brokers earned $229mn commissions so far this year Dubai Land Department (DLD) announced that the real estate brokerages made commissions totalling $229mn in the first nine months of 2018.

The brokers in total concluded 18,121 transactions in that period, stated DLD in a statement.

The report stated that brokers earned $116mn from land sales, $19.8mn from building sales, and $92.5mn from residential unit sales. The report also revealed high activity among women as real estate brokers in the market, where 1,901 female brokers registered 5,617 transactions with commissions totalling $71mn.

Yousif Al Hashimi, deputy CEO of the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA), stated: “Brokers play an important role in attracting international investors to Dubai’s real estate market, highlighting the market’s unique characteristics. DLD developed a comprehensive system to protect the rights of brokers in every successfully concluded transaction between the selling and buying parties.”

Al Hashimi added: “Brokers are among our most important partners, especially as they exercise

their duties with the highest degree of honesty and integrity while adhering to the procedures and standards set by DLD.” The number of accredited permits issued by DLD to real estate brokers — representing 2,436 offices — amounted to 4,686.

Default risks rise in $355 billion China builder bond market Investors are bracing for more debt defaults among China’s cash-strapped real estate developers, as funding costs surge and refinancing pressure continues to mount.

Borrowing costs in dollars for China’s high-yield issuers, most of whom are property developers almost doubled this year to 11.2%--the highest in about four years, according to ICE BofAML indexes show. To make matters worse, the sector faces a

record $18bn bond maturities in both onshore and offshore markets in the first quarter of 2019.

The number is expected to double if investors demand early repayment on some of these notes, according to Bloomberg.

China’s property developers have been caught in a storm of a funding crunch facing the nation’s private sector due to a two-year long clampdown on shadow financing. Although authorities have rolled out measures to ease funding for non-state firms, the existing property control policies won’t loosen up, according to the official Xinhua New Agency.

At least four property-related firms defaulted on notes this year.

"Funding conditions may not improve until sentiment changes," stated Clement Chong, a Singapore-based senior credit analyst at NN Investment Partners Ltd. "Defaults are happening more frequently onshore. I believe some developers will be caught up in this if funding cost keeps rising."

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GLOBAL HOUSING BOOM:

WHEN THE BUBBLE IS ABOUT TO BURST Global investors reaped the benefits of years-long surge in global capitals – but now property prices are heading lower, what gives?

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eal estate was for a long while, the most desirable commodity for those across the globe with big pockets. They had the freedom and choice to invest in some

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of the most prominent cities in the world and as a result— increase both their portfolio and net worth. Due to booming economies, and repeatedly increasing prices of real estate

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over the last year, they found themselves on a forward curve of growth and prosperity.

Prices were beating records that were set during the previous decade’s housing bubble – as buyers were willing to buy whatever was available at above the asking price. Home and property owners as well, were confident that prices would keep rising—and held out for the next big sale.

Now, it increasingly appears that the tide has began to shift the other way, as major metropolises and property investment hubs across the globe that once attracted rapid attention from all over – now find themselves on the backfoot.

To start with, let’s examine the case of London. Once the No. 1 property hotspot on the globe, it has seen a large hit to its luxury real estate buying.

The overall completed sales

of newly- constructed flats in prime central London areas fell 41.4% in 2016, with the average prices for new builds also falling 8.7% in the same year. The very top end, for houses worth $6.3 million (£5million), was the worst affected – with a 57% fall in new build sales. In a research done by Savills Plc, one of the world’s largest real estate firms, it was observed that properties in central London’s best districts have fallen almost 18% since their peak in 2014 – with some home losing as much as 33% of their value. This was at around the same time when developers began working on a record number of pricey apartments – and inadvertently created a glut of multimillion pound penthouses in a city that had a chronic shortage of affordable housing.

As of 2018, the British housing market is facing uncertainty created by Brexit. London, where

house prices are twice of what they are in the rest of the country, experienced another 0.5% drop in prices. This was noted as a “sign of a weaker market” by Mark Shipside, the director of property services firm Rightmove. Most regions in the UK still have higher house prices than a year ago, the property services firm said—and added that there were more sellers than buyers at present.

It’s status as the #1 place to invest property in also got challenged, as it got beat by LA in the Schroders Banks’ third annual Schroders Global Cities 30 Index, released on June 26.

In Beijing, the capital of China – and the third most populous city in the world, the story is completely different.

While investors would assume that owning real estate in such a prominent global city, with deeply concentrated population would spell further dividends

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for the future. However, the reality at the present, is much different than the perception. As of now, the Chinese government is actively involved in taking measures to keep cooling down the property market. They are committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure that the country’s housing bubble doesn’t burst.

It has taken measures to restrain the sale of both commercial and residential property. In case of residential properties, the government placed more than 30 restrictions – from buying thresholds to mortgage curbs – that helped see the sales by area towards a historical low. Newer homes that are being built—are being offered for lesser than existing ones by developers, who themselves have been burdened with heavy financial concerns.

After Chinese president Xi Jinping openly declared that houses are “for living in, not for speculation” last year, a total of 28 real estate agencies were shuttered for driving up prices." developed commercial plots are only being sold to enterprises, public entities and social organisations, said a statement issued by Beijing’s banking, industry and commerce, housing and urban planning authorities.

When it comes to commercial property, the government has placed restrictions in the purchases.

Newly

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The statement also said that that personal loans for buying commercial property have also been suspended.

Nothing makes this policy as clear as the statement by the Chinese president Xi Jinping who openly declared that houses are “for living in, not for speculation” last year.

A total of 28 real estate agencies were shuttered for driving up prices, according to The Beijing News – a marked indication of how serious the country is about keeping the bubble under control.

Meanwhile over in Sydney, things seem to be quite drastic as well. The country recorded its biggest annual drop in house prices since the global financial crisis. The city wide median fell 4.5% over the year to June, something that Domain Group data scientist

FEATURE REALTY

Dr Nicola Powell called : “a stark difference to what was occuring just a year ago. Sydney hasn’t experienced this level of fall in over a decade.”

The slumping home prices in Australia’s biggest city are a result of a combination of credit curbs, stretched affordability and “fear of missing out.” Regulators have progressively clamped down on riskier lending, alarmed by lending standards that were eroding in the rush for market share – and have made the banks toughen-up previously lax expenses and income verification.

This move has made credit harder to come by, especially for investors who had been driving the market.

to just over 2600. Developers though, are still pumping newly built luxury units onto the sales market – 4600 new apartments are expected to be listed across the entire borough this year.

The median value though, of a home that sole in the three months through June slid 7.5% to $1.1million.

In Manhattan, which stands as New York’s most expensive borough—house prices have been falling for three straight quarters.

This has allowed buyers to be picky as inventory has risen, and there is a rapid fear that prices have climbed too high. There were almost 7000 apartments on the market at the end of the second quarter, which was 11% more than a year ago. Sales fell 17%

As for overall, House sales have also declined in the US, with rising prices through the year. In may, house prices experienced a sharp surge – a move that helped throttle sales and demoralising would-be buyers. With sales of newly-built homes tumbling 5.3% this year and the increased mortgage rates pushing up monthly costs for home buyers even further. Overall, there has also been a record drop in foreign

buyers buying US homes – with sales falling 21%.

So what can be the root cause of all this?

Well, the justification for this is described as the “Reverse wealth effect”. Put it simply, house prices and mortgage rate both rose to the point where they became unapproachable to everyone, except the seriously affluent. Since higher prices , and in China’s case –government restrictions, will cause overall less demand from prospective buyers – owners of exclusive properties will have to deal with the cold, harsh reality that their prized possessions have no guarantee of yielding the sort of returns that they had once hoped they would.

To use a famous quote by Warren Buffet himself, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” 

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CHINESE BILLIONAIRES

SUFFERING REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

The Asian economic powerhouse, often regarded as a mecca of wealth creation, has seen some of its prominent elites being hit by a depreciation in net worth. It’s time to take a closer look

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hina has over the years become the world’s most vaunted destination for Entrepreneurs to create wealth. Nothing demonstrates the fact better than the country going from having being only 16 billionaires in the country in 2016—to having a staggering 373 till 2018. According to the BBC, China creates “two billionaires a

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week”—which makes it a region of unmatched wealth creation..

While the country has no doubt enjoyed an uninhibited wave of prosperity, recent events have bought things a bit back down to earth. The unstable economic landscape, due to the country’s tumbling stock market, a falling renminbi,

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alongside worries escalated by the credit and the current trade war, seemed to have taken a chunk out of the collective prosperity of the country’s elite business crowd. Not to mention, current government regulations that are curbing the country’s property market, have directly affected its wealthiest real estate developers—who are now feeling

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No matter how you slice it, this is not an ideal position to be in for the biggest drivers of the secondbiggest economy on the planet.

Some of the country’s most prominent tycoons have seen their overall fortunes take some extremely significant hits.

Hui Ka Yan, the real estate magnate who was No.1 on last years list, now finds himself slipped to No. 3, with a fall in net worth equal to $11.7 billion, making it a 28% loss in overall net worth. Tencent’s Ma Huateng aka ‘Pony Ma’ held out on to the No. 2 spot despite a $6.2 billion drop.

Wang Wei of S.F Holding, also known as the Fedex of China, also experienced dwindling fortunes, with a 33% drop in net worth, which now totalled at $7.4 billion.

the pinch.

Nearly three quarters of the top 400 listees on last year’s Forbes China rich list have experienced a deterioration in wealth—with 93 of them being dropped out of the list entirely.

Out of those that remain, 229 are poorer than a year ago and nearly one-thirds saw more than 20% of their overall net worth decline.

Other major developers, who are still among the country’s top 10 richest people saw their personal wealth take a dip, include Yang Huiyan, who is the owner of a 57% stake in Country Gardens Holdings. Her overall net worth plummeted 17% to $17.1bn.

Dalian Wanda Group chairman also suffered a big setback—with his wealth dropping to $22.7 billion from $25.2 billion.

On the flip side of the coin, Jack Ma, the famous founder of Alibaba climbed back to No. 1 on the country’s rich list, with a current personal net worth of $34.6 billion.

When you’re one of the world’s biggest and most important economies, such trends do not go unnoticed across the globe.

Russell Flannery, the editor-inchief of Forbes China took note of this trend, stating: “The world has come to associate China with wealth creation, and it is startling to see the extent of wealth destruction this year.”

He also added that: “China’s economy is more globalized than ever, and changes in the international landscape and business expectations had a big impact on the list.”

It wasn’t all bad news, of course. Two in the borader tech and e-commerce sector saw their fortunes rise. Wang Xing climbed to $5.1 billion from $4.05 billion a year ago on a Hong Kong IPO in September, via his groupbuying and meal-ordering app Meituan. Likewise, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun’s fortune rose to $11.9bn from $6.8 billion a year ago after a July IPO. Still, there is no doubt that nearly all industries in the country dropped in total wealth.

Manufacturing, the biggest industry and the single-biggest source of all fortunes got hit the hardest as the number of listees falling to 72 from 79—with an average drop in net worth to $1.8bn from $2.1 billion. Economic conditions continue to remain tense, and with the ongoing unpredictability of the trade war, no one’s quite sure which port the ship will eventually end up in.

This makes it without a doubt, a testing time for the elite growth agents for the world’s second largest economy. 

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BRANDS NEWS

Apple downgraded by Bank of America Merrill Lynch after earnings Bank of America Merrill Lynch downgraded shares of Apple following the company’s disappointing earnings report.

Apple shares traded sharply lower in premarket trading, a day after the company reported disappointing data on shipments of iPhones for the last quarter and revenue guidance that also fell short of Wall Street expectations.

Four reasons was cited for the downgrade: •

Slower growth in app store revenue, especially in China

•

Guidance for the December quarter that implies weaker-thanexpected iPhone unit sales

•

Investors will likely interpret ending iPhone

unit sales figures as negative •

Weaker growth in emerging markets due to stronger dollar

"We see increased risk from a weaker macroeconomic environment," analyst Wamsi Mohan stated in the note.

"Post results we are

incrementally concerned that not all the weakness is capture in N/T [near term] and we are likely to see further negative estimate."

He added.

The analyst also lowered his 12-month price target to $220 from $235.Apple shares dropped 5.7% to $209.41 in premarket trading Friday.

Amazon to roll out free shipping to everyone during 2018 holiday season The retail juggernaut announced that it will offer free shipping on all holiday orders in time for Christmas, and do away with a minimum purchase price — even if you aren't a Prime member.

Previously, the company had set a threshold of $25 for orders to qualify for free shipping. Amazon now will waive that requirement and hundreds of millions of items will therefore become eligible or free shipping.

Prime members, who are already entitled to free two-day shipping, will also receive a new perk: More than 3mn items will be available for same-day delivery during the holiday season.

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The move comes after the company’s recent earnings report where revenue rose 29% to $56.58bn, but was below the $57.05bn analysts had expected. Sales were $43.7bn in the year-earlier period.

For the current quarter ending in December, Amazon stated it expects revenue in the range of $66.5bn to $72.5bn. Analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research had expected revenue of $73.87bn.

Retailers can expect a robust holiday shopping spree this year.

Sales in November and December — excluding automobiles, gasoline and restaurants — are expected to increase between 4.3 % and 4.8% over 2017 for a total of $717.45bn to $720.89bn.

NEWS BRANDS

Manchester United extend Medical System Partnership with Canon Canon Medical System Europe will continue to be the official Medial System Partner of elite Premier League club Manchester United—which has officially announced the multiyear partnership renewal with the company.

The continued collaboration is supposed to maintain access to state-of-the-art equipment that examines injuries and undertake pre-emptive screening for preventable injuries. As part of the extension, the club is also supposed to benefit from product and technology upgrades that will strengthen cardiac and general health screenings, stated a press release.

top-of-the-range medical imaging including CT, MRI, and Ultrasound into a dedicated Medical Centre at the Aon Training Complex. The extended agreement will continue the diagnostic imaging partnership benefiting players and staff at Manchester United by improving player welfare and career longevity.

The agreement was first signed in 2013. Canon had installed

Manchester United’s Group Managing Director, Richard

Arnold stated: “We are delighted to extend what has been an excellent partnership with Canon Medical Systems over the past six years. At Manchester United, just like at Canon Medical Systems, we pride ourselves on innovation.

Our world-class medical team at Manchester United, partnered with the world-class team at Canon has helped us provide our players with the best possible medical care.”

Nintendo may bring ‘The Legend of Zelda’ and ‘Donkey Kong’ to mobile The gaming juggernaut may bring two of the company’s most popular franchises to smartphones.

This was hinted at by trademarks that the company filed this month, reported gaming website Destructoid, citing Japanese Nintendo.

The two trademarks are for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and Mario vs. Donkey Kong, filed as “program for home video game machine, downloadable video game program, and program for smartphones.”

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks was first released for the Nintendo DS in 2009, and re-released for the Wii U Virtual Console in 2016. Mario Vs. Donkey Kong, meanwhile, first appeared on the Game Boy Advance in 2004, with subsequent versions gracing the Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U. Rumors of a The Legend of Zelda smartphone game have been making the rounds since last

year, after the success of Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes. The report mentioned The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which is primarily controlled through the Nintendo DS stylus, as a possible version of a mobile game.

Shuntaro Furukawa, the new Nintendo president stated earlier this year that he is planning to turn the company’s mobile gaming division into a nearly $1bn business, after Fire Emblem Heroes made almost $300mn in its first year from microtransactions.

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BRANDS NEWS

PewDiePie breaks Youtube record as he beats Bollywood music label The famed Youtuber, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg – looked set to lose his spot as the most subscribed channel on the platform, but he put up a stiff fight. The Swedishborn Youtube star was on track to beat rival Bollywood record label T-Series – who at one point were tipped to overtake him – following an extensive campaign to defend his spot.

The online movement, backed by other notable vloggers, has seen a remarkable surge in followers for the video star in the past week. Last Saturday, T-Series had 67.23mn subscribers, just a mere 140,000 short of the PewDiePie’s 67.37mn.

One week and an intense

marketing campaign later, PewDiePie now sits almost 700,000 subscribers ahead. Some of Felix’s biggest support comes from fellow Youtuber Mr. Beast, who has dedicated an inordinate amount of time and money into making sure PewDiePie stays on top. In a peculiar reversal of the physical and digital, the creator

has been using billboards and radio adverts to advertise Felix’s channel.

He tweeted: ‘I bought a bunch of billboards, did radio ads, bought a newspaper page, bathroom ads, airport ads, interviews, and much more to advertise PewDiePie and stop T-Series.’

Pharrell Williams to design a capsule collection for Chanel The famed pop musician has revealed that he is designing a capsule collection with Chanel.

While attending a repeat of the fashion house's 2018 Cruise show in Bangkok-- Williams sat front row alongside his wife Helen Lasichanh and son Rocket Williams, wearing a yellow hoodie festooned with sparkly Chanel logos. The item was later revealed as his own design with Williams confirming that the collection was soon to arrive.

The 45-year-old musician has worked with Chanel numerous times before. He starred in a number of the houses’s campaigns, wrote a song for an original film by Karl Lagerfeld and even walked the runway at the Metier d’Arts pre-fall 2017 show.

In 2017, Williams also brought sportswear giant Adidas and Chanel together with the launch of the Hu NMD sneaker; a limited edition designer shoe.

Fashion fans are also eagerly awaiting another designer collection.

On November 8, Moschino will be launching its

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highly-anticipated collection with high street store H&M. The collaboration is expected to have a much lower price point than is typical of the brand with pieces starting from $32—making it an attractive alternative for fans of Moschino who can afford pieces from its standard range.

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NEWS BRANDS

Real Madrid and Adidas have signed a $1244 million euro sponsorship deal While Real Madrid’s poor performances have led to a sporting crisis and the sacking of coach Julen Lopetegui, the brand has still retained its commercial appeal.

The club has renewed its sponsorship deal with Adidas, which would lead in $1244mn coming in over the next ten years—making it a groundbreaking deal in sports marketing in Europe, the contract of the century and make the shirt the most expensive in the world. The agreement was the brainchild of club president Florentino Perez.

The 2017/18 budget was also given the go ahead by the club's General Assembly with a budget of $850mneuros, 11% more than

the previous year.

The commercial area grew by 16% to $336mn and indications remain that the income will grow to $345mn euros this season. The sponsorship and licencing stand at $270mn euros—marking an increase of 18.2%.

With a guaranteed income each year of $124mn and another variable part depending on merchandising that could see the figure rise to $169mn-- the club would double the $58mn that they currently get from the German company.

The world’s most searched car brands revealed Google data, analysed

by British insurer Veygo has revealed what the world’s most desired car brands are.

The data also showed a lack of interest among homegrown brands in countries like France, Germany and Sweden.

The Germans were keen on Mercedes-Benz while the French were most interested in Renault and Sweden rooted for Volvo.

In the US, the most searched brand was Toyota with local brands Ford and Chevrolet off the pace. In the UK, MercedesBenz reigned supreme. BMW seemed to dominate Japan and South Korea, where buyers eschewed home brands in

favour of the German marque.

In Italy the locals have ditched the hometown brands in favour of Volkswagen while the Chinese aren’t paying attention to politics and are really keen on Tesla.

In Australia, Toyota took the crown for the most searched for

car brand. Toyota dominated the Australian sales charts with the HiLux ute and Corolla small car regularly featuring at the top of the yearly sales charts.

On a global scale, Toyota is the most searched for brand, topping 57 countries with about 7.8 mn searches a month.

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BRANDS FEATURE

HOW TENCENT DOMINATED

THE GLOBAL GAMING MARKET The global gaming scene has seen unprecedented growth and has attracted millions of opportunistic eyes—but Tencent has always been one step ahead of everybody. Let’s dive in a bit further

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FEATURE BRANDS

to “games now catering to a wide variety of interests”.

According to the report, there are about 2.2 billion active gamers in the world, of which 47% (or 1 billion to be exact) will willingly spend money on them. In fact, gamers this year are estimated to spend $138 billion this year on them—making it a 13% increase on the revenues of last year – and a safe bet for investors to pool in and get lucrative returns. And as is well known, the mobile gaming market counts for the biggest chunk of the industry – with it in itself generating $46.1 billion worth (or 42%) of the global market—and displaying a steady year-to-year growth of 19%.

Tencent, the world’s biggest investment corporation, and one of the largest internet and technological companies – has managed to become the biggest game in gaming. While all this was known for a while, the exact nature of it was more clearly revealed in an April 2018 report

by Digi-Capital, which revealed some startling figures .

T

he global gaming scene is a behemoth now, valuated at $116 billion.

What was once thought to be a niche, hobbyist activity – is now a legitimate form of mainstream entertainment.

Over the years, consumers have spent increasingly more on games—which in themselves have gotten more expensive and sophesticated in design. A 2017 Newzoo analysis on the gaming industry credit this rapid expanse

To start with, Tencent was directly involved in 40% of all money invested in games company funding rounds over the last year. It was found to be heavily involved in over threequarters of all games' M&A deal value in the same period—both on the sell-side and buy-side. All of this was in context of record totals over $2.1 billion investment in games and over $14.4 billion games M&A in the first quarter of this year alone. The vast majority of that figure came as a result of Naspers’ sale of its 2% share

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BRANDS FEATURE

in Tencent, which it sold for $10 billion—marking a 60,000% return on investment.

A lot of Tencent’s staggering success can be attributed to its globally renowned investment savviness. It has managed to succeed in the gaming industry by acquiring an enviable and diverse portfolio that makes all its contemporaries pale in comparison—and solidifies it as an unstoppable gaming juggernaut.

The company has all but dominated the Chinese mobile gaming market – the biggest gaming market in the world, with 25% of global revenue – one that experienced a growth of 250% in revenue in two years , from $3 billion to $11 billion, and is expected to grow to $40 billion by 2022. Tencent owns almost half of the entire market, with a 51.1% market share as of 2018. This not

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only puts it leagues ahead of any competition, but makes the rest of the companies strangle for the remaining market share—which makes things incredibly difficult for them.

western world as well. As of now, it’s involved in being directly behind quite literally the most popular games on the planet— ones that generate 100’s of millions of revenue each year.

The company has also looked outward, with extreme savviness – and has not limited itself to China or Southeast Asia. It has had staggering successes in

The company acquired southern California based Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends – one of the most popular, widely played and most watched games on the planet—in a majority stake worth $350 million. Currently, the game has a player base of over 100 million. It also owns an 84% stake in Softcell, the finnish company behind Clash of Clans, also one of the most recognised games on the planet with a similarly massive 100 million plus player base.

The company has all but dominated the Chinese mobile gaming market – the biggest gaming market in the world, with 25% of global revenue.

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It also owns a 40% stake in Epic Games, creators of the Unreal and Gears of War franchises but most importantly Fortnite- the f2p battle royale shooter, which

FEATURE BRANDS at the moment stands as the most popular game on the planet and a cultural phenomenon-- with a player base exceeding 125 million and reportedly hundreds of millions of dollars per month in generated revenue. Alongside that, it owns a minority 5% stake in Ubisoft, one of the biggest AAA game developer-publishers, and an undisclosed one in Activision Blizzard – a company with a similar prestigious reputation.

The company is not just limited to acquisitions ,though. It has committed itself to building products as well. It launched WeGame in 2017, which acted as the Chinese counterpart to Steam—currently the world’s most popular PC games distribution platform, which is owned by Valve. Ironically, the company has also sought out a partnership with Valve itself—to bring Steam to the massively popular Chinese games market, despite this move potentially putting it in direct competition with WeGame – which will

also undergo an attempted international expansion soon.

While sceptics may criticise such a furious push towards expansion and growth, the results speak for themselves. Tencent shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. In the first quarter of 2018, the company blew past

all earnings expectations with a net profit of $3.7 billion on revenue of $11.5 billion. Net profit overall was up 61% year-on-year, while revenue increased 48% over the same period. All signs point to Tencent maintaining its reputation as a global gaming giant for a long time to come. 

Did you know?

Despite gaming’s dominance in China, the country’s regulators have been extremely tough on the industry, due to concerns over children’s health: •

Chinese regulators halted the sales of Capcom’s popular title “Monster Hunter: World” on Tencent’s WeGame PC-gaming platform, due to them receiving a large number of complaints, despite the game being a global smash—with 8 million copies sold.

•

The regulatory body, known as General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) gets to make the calls on which games get approved in the country—especially in terms of online gaming.

All games, even those are being offered for free will need to obtain a license to get published in the country. To demonstrate how rigorous it is in real life, authorities have not approved any new licenses since the end of March this year.

•

China now has the most rigorous game approval process of any major market,–an extension of its broader restrictions on television, newspapers and the internet.

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BRANDS FEATURE

INTERBRAND 2018

BEST GLOBAL BRANDS REPORT OVERVIEW

The 2018 version of the global brand consultancy report touched on some of the biggest, most important and fastest-growing brands in the world. Here are some key observations and figures

B

rands act as signifiers of the entire customer experience, as well as identifiers of the customers’ tastes and preferences themselves.

In short, they drive the world and dominate people’s thoughts across the globe. They form an indomitable part of the crux

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of modern living, and chances are that whoever you are, in whichever part of the globe– there definitely are some brands that you identify with personally, follow and allow to become an inseparable with your personal identity.

FEATURE BRANDS

Interbrand, the famed global brand consultancy is actively involved is measuring the power of brands worldwide. It is well known for publishing its annual brand report called Best Global Brands where it is prone to measure some of the leading, most powerful brands in the world—and the position they occupy in terms of their domination across the globe.

In the worlds of Interbrand itself, to be included in the list: “A brand must be truly global, having successfully transcended geographic and cultural boundaries. It will have expanded across the established economic centers of the world and entered the major growth markets.” Now in its 19th year in 2018, the report was named Activating Brave— and focused on examining the role that brand strength played in transforming the world’s leading businesses. Key trends that are noted include customer-centricity, positive utility, luxury, and successful subscription models.

Apple, Google and Amazon were voted the three most valuable brands in the world, a fact that is perhaps not all that surprising, considering how much they dominate in terms of global usage. Apple and Google in general, have managed to hold top positions for the last six years.

Apple’s brand value grew by 16% percent to USD $214 million, and Google’s brand value by 10% $155.5 million. Amazon on the other hand, achieved 56% growth, and is the third brand to achieve a $100 billion brand valuation, as well as the top performer among

Apple, Google and Amazon were voted the three most valuable brands in the world, a fact that is perhaps not all that surprising.

28 brands with double-digit percent growth.

Following them are Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Toyota, Mercedes- Benz, Facebook, McDonald’s—which round out the Top 10 list of global brands.

This years list also featured two new entrants, as well as three re-entrants. The popular music service Spotify joined in at #92.

The automobile manufacturer Subaru entered the list for the very first time at #100. Luxury fashion brand Chanel re-entered at #23. Japanese video game giant Nintendo also re-entered at #99, along with Cognac brand Hennessy at #98.

Charles Trevail, Global Chief Executive Officer of Interbrand offered a concise statement regarding the brands and their growth, stating that : “A decade after the global financial crisis, the brands that are growing fastest are those that intuitively understand their customers and make brave iconic moves that delight and deliver in new ways.”

In terms of brand growth, Amazon, Netflix, Gucci, Salesforce and Louis Vuitton was voted as the top growing brands—with growth rates of 56%, 45%, 30%, 23%, and 23% respectively.

Facebook on the other hand, declined 6%, after five years as the top growing brand in the world.

More than half of the best global brands were observed to come from five sectors: Automotive (16 brands), Technology (13 brands), Financial Services (12 brands), Luxury (9 brands) and FastMoving Consumer Goods (9 brands). These covered almost every aspect of what constitutes the pillars of modern consumerism.

Luxury however, was the top growing sector in percentage terms—with a noted 42% growth.

It replaced the retail sector, which despite falling behind second, continues to chart an impressive growth percentage (36%). The electronics sector came in #3 at 20%, with Sporting Goods and Financial Services sectors at #4 and #.5 respectively – with growth rates of 13% and 10% respectively.

Brands are an unstoppable juggernaut and occupy a position that is inseparable from consumer psychology and spending habits. This fact was nailed home in the report, which mentioned that the combined total value of the top 100 brands in the world, crossed the two trillion dollar threshold—the total amount being $2.01 trillion to be exact.

If this figure sounds a bit staggering, its important to note that it was a 7.7% increase from the previous year, meaning that the power brands possess is only growing stronger with time, and more consolidated in the minds of the consumers. 

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EDUCATION NEWS

China’s Yuanfudao raises $250 million from Tencent at $2.8 billion valuation Yuanfudao, a Beijingbased online tutoring platform has raised $250mn from Chinese internet juggernaut Tencent in a deal that values the education company at $2.8bn. Tencent also participated in for Yuanfandao’s $120mn fundraise in 2017.

Founded in 2012, Yuanfudao currently offers live tutoring services covering K-12 school subjects and courses for adult learners. According to The Information, the company earned an estimated $101mn last year.

Nine-figure funding rounds for Chinese education startups are quickly becoming a regularity. During summer, English-tutoring start-up VIPKID closed a $500mn investment. Zuoyebang, an

online homework-help tool, raised $350mn in July. And K-12 online education start-up 17zuoye nabbed $250mn in Series E funding this March.

leading players. Yuanfudao’s existing investors include Tencent as well as Warburg Pincus, Matrix China Partners and IDG Capital.

Due to online education services becoming the norm in China, internet giants and other global tech investors are all doubling down on the sector’s

SoftBank, meanwhile, is in talks to invest $500mn in a competing education app called Zuoyebang, a spinoff from search engine Baidu.

Germany to introduce sexual education classes for refugees Germany’s ministry for Migration, Refugees and Integration announced it will introduce sexual education classes for refugees. This news comes after street protests over a gang rape allegedly committed by Syrian asylum seekers in the city of Freiburg, according to local media.

Up to 500 protesters took to the streets of Freiburg on Monday to demonstrate against the gang rape of an 18-year-old student allegedly committed by eight men. Seven of the suspects

are Syrian men aged 19 to 29 while one is a native German aged 25.

Annette Widmann-Mauz, the Federal Integration Commissioner and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party (CDU), called for asylum seekers to be more educated about sexual ethics and equality rights in the country.

She stated: "All asylum seekers must – immediately after their arrival in Germany, still in the initial reception centre – receive guidance on living together in Germany and this includes zero tolerance for sexual abuse and other acts of violence."

In addition, Widmann-Mauz stated that she wasn’t going to meet associations that include no women.

The demonstration organised by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) sparked the reaction of about 1,500 counter-protesters- some of whom accused the party of exploiting the crime to spur anti-migrant sentiment.

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NEWS

EDUCATION

Malaysia’s new government sets budget for next year with education as priority Malaysia’s Pakatan Harapan government announced a federal budget that prioritises institutional reform, promotion of entrepreneurship and the socio-economic health of Malaysians.

The 2019 budget, which happens to be the first to be tabled by a non-Barisan Nasional government in close to 60 years, pledged close to 20% of the budget on education, with funding of $14.5bn In the process, the second Mahathir administration pushed its budget deficit to the highest in five years, which upended expectations of modest spending growth.

It will close the gap by doubling the reliance on oil revenue from state oil company Petronas, which is a stark contrast to the efforts of the previous administration.

However in what may be seen as an effort to avoid over-dependence on a primary commodity, it also emphasised the importance of building an entrepreneurial state and boosting the performance of the SME sector, which comprises 98.5% of

Malaysian business. The government also vowed to ease the budget deficit to 3% by 2020, down from 3.7% of GDP this year.

Other highlights included the slashing of the defence budget by 10.2% to curb “reckless megaspending” that will accrue massive amounts of debt.

Foreign educational institutes still waiting 8 years for an India campus nod could provide students with an opportunity to get a degree from abroad at a cheap cost.

Despite the Foreign Educational Bill proposed to allow international institutes to enter India and set up campuses, the failure of lawmakers to come to a consensus so far has not led to any new progress in the area.

There is also fear that existing staff from local institutes would move to international school campuses in India.

During the formation of the Bill, it was anticipated that some of the Ivy League educational institutions from the United States would be keen to set up campuses in India.

However, they clarified that they were not interested in setting up campuses outside their home location.

Despite the bill never seeing the light of the day, the government has been unable to get a consensus on this law since some MPs have stated that this will lead to students preferring international school campuses compared to local institutes.

While several large institutions from Europe and Southeast Asia were keen to enter India, and the demographic dividend and the fact that they

About 30 foreign institutes that had firmed up plans to enter the country have changed their focus to the other markets.

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EDUCATION NEWS

Tuition fees in UK universities could be cut to $8,403 and higher Tuition fees in England's universities could be cut to $8,403. Some subjects like medicine or science can get cuts up to $17,454.

That's an idea that seems to be under serious consideration by the prime minister's review of post-18 education, headed by Philip Augar.

This isn’t a conclusive decision, however. This won't be known until the review reports back next year - so this remains the territory of leaks, speculation and self-interested kite-flying.

This feeds into the idea that studies in sciences, maths or engineering will lead to likely future higher earnings, as compared to arts and humanities subjects—which are much cheaper to teach than sciences.

It also comes at a time when a government being suffocated by Brexit wants to show its ability to make a difference on the domestic front.

The university sector is expected to explore the idea of

such a plan for different levels of fees. A lot of briefings, counterbriefings and pre-emptive strikes on changes to tuition fees are expected, as the decision approaches in the next few months.

Pakistan education planners urged to learn from the Japanese model Speakers emphasised the need during the two-day 10th National Convention of Students Quality Circles that concluded at Modern Age College in Abottabad, Pakistan.

Student exchange programmes with developed countries were encouraged to hone the talents of students so that they could play their role in sustainable development in various fields in their country.

Researchers in different fields presented their papers at the event attended by over 1,000 students from different parts of the country, in a convention organised by EQUIP-Pakistan; a non-profit organisation striving for uplift of quality education in the country.

EQUIP-Pakistan director Wahid Mir stated that countries like Pakistan needed changes in their curriculum according to the present day requirements, and outlined the failure of the old

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education system to compete with the world— identifying it as the reason why the country lagged behind in many sectors.

Arshad Ali, quality consultant from Karachi, stated that the planners needed to learn from the education system of Japan and other countries where primary students were not burdened with the heavy load of books and bags and they only focused on character building of the students at that stage

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NEWS

EDUCATION

Teacher training to fill gaps in special needs education in UAE A workshop was held in Dubai to train teachers of UAE-based Pakistani schools on methods of creating and operating departments for students that require special education.

Pakistani schools currently are community schools with low tuition fees and lack the resources to establish departments for people with determination, according to Samina Nasir, head of the education committee at the Pakistan Association Dubai (PAD).

To resolve the issue, the educators were provided training during the workshop, organised by PAD, on how teachers can still be trained in order to help the students.

Nasir has called on Pakistani schools to seek help from the association, in case it is short on resources or needs guidance on how to help students that require special needs education (SNE).

Seemab Chaudhry, a teacher at the Pakistan Islamia Higher Secondary School Sharjah, stated: "I think it should be implemented in all schools. Many

children with determination come to our classes and we try to manage them in our own away, but we need to provide special training to teachers."

KHDA launched the Dubai Inclusive Education Policy Framework in 2017, which aims to ensure that determined students would be admitted in all educational institutions in the emirates.

US universities to reconsider their ties with Saudi Arabia colleges and universities in the United States have received more than $350mn from the government of Saudi Arabia over the past 10 years.

However, some of these schools are reconsidering their ties with the government following the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi—which spurred criticism of the oil-rich nation.

The Associated Press examined US federal records for information about the flow of Saudi money to American higher education. The news agency discovered that at least $354mn from the Saudi government or organizations it controls has gone to 37 American schools since 2011.

Much of the money was provided though a special scholarship, which paid tuition for Saudis studying in the United States. However, AP researchers found that at least $62mn came through deals with or gifts from Saudi Arabia’s nationally owned companies and research centres.

Two of the US schools that received the most

money did so through contracts with a top Saudi research centre. It is called the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology. It has provided $14mn to Northwestern University and $6mn to The University of California, Los Angeles.

In addition, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, has given $20mn to US colleges and universities.

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EDUCATION FEATURE

FINLAND’S

PEERLESS EDUCATION SYSTEM The country’s remarkable education system stands as an icon of radical, forward thought and the crown jewel amongst developed nations. But how?

T

he global education system has been under a lot of scrutiny and debate in recent years. The world is moving at a rapid pace, and that has led to the creation of both a wide array of opportunities and an escalating series of challenges.

The young minds of now have

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to be shaped for what lies ahead tomorrow. While education used to be one of modern life’s biggest benchmarks, both its effectiveness and capability has been doubted, scrutinized and challenged—over and over again.

The world bank itself warned of a ‘learning crisis’ in global

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education in a 2017 report. An excerpt from which stated that: “without learning, education will fail to deliver on its promise to eliminate extreme poverty and create shared opportunity and prosperity for all.”

World Bank Group President

FEATURE EDUCATION

facing challenges of its own.

For example, GCSE’s were made harder in the UK, in order to combat what were thought to be rapidly declining educational standards and “relative stagnation compared to the world’s best education systems”. This is a sheer contrast even from the United States’ education system where time and again, American students have continually ranked near the middle or bottom among industrialised nations when it comes to performance.

And that is just the start of it. The education gap between developed and developing countries was found to be more than 100 years, and costing the entire world a total of $129 billion each year, according to UNESCO figures.

On the surface, this may be a problem that seems too complex and impossible to beat—but in reality, one country has managed to find a turnaround within itself, and is showing the world how to do it. That country is Finland.

Jim Yong Kim himself had stated in the report: “the children whom societies fail the most are the ones who are most in need of a good education to succeed in life.” While it is easy to deflect these problems to undeveloped and/or developing countries – the developed world is also

Regularly touted as having the best education system on the planet, it has managed to inculcate its pupils with a startling degree of educational and academic capability. In a nutshell, the country has vastly improved in “reading, math, science and literacy” over the last decade—ranking as one of the consistently highest performing countries on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) , which acts as an important tool for measuring education systems worldwide.

However to get an accurate measure, it’s important to look at the impressive overall statistics.

The country has vastly improved in “reading, math, science and literacy” over the last decade—ranking as one of the consistently highest performing countries on the PISA." In school, homework is much less in Finland --2.8 hours compared to the usual 6.1 hours in the US—allowing room for more hobbies and recreational activity; Recess in Finland is also much longer – 75 minutes compared to 27 minutes in the US. Both of these activities are implemented in part to ensure that students do not have “deficit of play” and building of additional anxiety. Things get even better in college, when bachelor degree, masters degree and post doctoral programs are completely free of tuition fees—allowing students to pursue high-quality education without the crushing student debts that are a huge burden for many American and foreign students. Teaching as a career, is also viewed a prestige profession with a high barrier for entry, instead of a stigma – with only one in 10 students who apply to teacher education programs being admitted, according to the Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB). Teachers in the country are given elite status, are paid more, and are allowed to work less hours.

The whole approach to the process of teaching in itself is

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EDUCATION FEATURE

radically different. Schools are smaller in size, allowing for teachers to focus on a students' individual strengths and weaknesses – helping to avoid instances of naive, inexperienced children being lost in the shuffle.

Teachers in Finland seem to relish the challenges. In the article Why are Finland’s schools so successful? published in The Smithsonian, it’s mentioned that nearly 30% of Finland’s children receive some kind of special help during their first nine years of school. Instead of reprimanding low-performing students, efforts are made to single them out and build on their strengths. In the same article, Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive

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30% of Finland’s children receive special help during their first nine years of school. Instead of reprimanding lowperforming students, efforts are made to build them up."

School mentions: “We try to catch the weak students. It’s deep in our thinking.” It is also important to note that despite Finland’s reputation for ethnic homogeneity, more than half of

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its 150 elementary-level students are immigrants, from countries like Somalia, Iraq, Russia, Bangladesh, Estonia and Ethopia.

It begs notice that this radical approach to education was ingrained in the reforms that were introduced in the country after it recovered from the recession that came about after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The country seemed to have correctly calculated that education reform would act as the key to both the country’s socioeconomic and moral recovery.

The full effect of it though was not fully realized until 2000, when the first results from the programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

FEATURE EDUCATION

revealed Finnish youth to be the best young readers in the world. Three years later, they were leading in math—and by 2006, Finland was number one in science. This incredible over performance acted as a measure of surprise to the country’s educators as a whole. Arjariita Heikkinen, principal of a Helsinki

comprehensive school was quote in the same article as saying: “I’m still surprised. I didn’t realize we were that good.”

Finland’s remarkable education successes stand as a testament for the capability of futuristic, critical thinking. The fact that they regard education as an ethos towards overall progress,

and nurturing young minds as a priority instead of just a system in place to build the country in economical terms, says volumes about who they are. Just how incredibly successful they are at it, also inspires thought on how things could have been so much different and better for the world overall. 

Did you know?

Despite Finland’s education reformed being vaunted across the globe, it endured its own rocky journey to become what it is today: • It was extremely strict and inflexible in the early the 1970s. Teachers had to follow the curriculum in an extremely rigorous manner. In 1974, a reform took teacher-training colleges to universities.

The grip on it was tightened even more, especially in 1979- where it made having a Masters’ degree a prerequisite for teaching.

•

The decentralisation that started in 1985 took a long while to spread over and work. The inspection and control systems weren’t abolished until 1991, and the National Board of Education didn’t design its broader curriculum till 1994.

•

The total time period it truly took to transform the education system from a mediocre one to a great one, is noted as being around 20 years.

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EDUCATION FEATURE

SINGAPORE SCHOOLS AND A DUBAI UNIVERSITY

ABANDON EXAMS

The modern education system has been under a long period of scrutiny, due to its regressive nature, refusal to evolve and inability to produce results. Two countries however, have started to make bold moves in bringing about change in the system. Let’s explore.

S

tanley Kubrick once quoted : “I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying

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with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”

To be honest, the gaps in education systems across the world have been acknowledged.

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But mere acknowledgement and putting into effect the procedures required to fill them up are two different things altogether. It’s a monumental task that requires modification of systems and processes that

FEATURE EDUCATION

have been put in place since multiple decades. Not to mention, transforming education also requires the modification of mindsets – something that has been universally acknowledged and yet still remains an unsolved problem.

The rigid, exam-based, educational structure, which is (and has been) the norm since time memorial was once savagely criticized by Noam Chomsky who called it “guaranteed to destroy any meaningful educational process.” He further lambasted it for killing the creativity and imagination of both teachers and individual students, as well as the ‘bureaucrats designing this’— calling them not necessarily ‘evil people’, but ones working under ‘ideologies and doctrines’, which he thought was really harmful to the education process.

Chomsky though, would no doubt be pleased with recent events. The increased scrutiny that the education sector has been put seemed to finally began to yield some results. Some of the world’s most prominent countries have began to realise that there is a need for a dramatic overhaul in their education system–if they are to raise the next generation of bright individuals that will lead their countries to prosperity in the future.

Singapore made news this month, when it finally decided to do away with school exam rankings, with the country’s education minister Ong Ye Kung proudly declaring that ‘learning should not be a competition’. The country’s Ministry of Education also put its full support behind this move by pledging to focus on the

learning process of each student as an individual and not being focused overtly on competition and results. It has also committed to acquiring more knowledge about its students through discussions, homework and quizzes—and then using it to enhance their learning.

Very inspiringly, Kung also stated that his hope is that children will understand that “learning is not a competition, but a self-discipline that they need to master for life.” This statement acts as an inspiring reminder of the multi-faceted nature of learning, and how restricting it can be at a younger age, and have adverse effects on the growth and development of children.

Singapore wasn’t the only nation making strides towards changing the game. A university in Dubai has also been proactive in ensuring it remains on the right side of history by making bold moves– that it hopes lead to a change in established trends.

The Mohamad bin Rashid school of Government has dropped exams altogether and is now focused on helping students to train to solve ‘real

world problems’ via challenging assignments instead. The university has involved personalities from the corporate world and the government to be pro-actively involved in this new, bold form of system—which is the brainchild of the associate dean Dr. Martin Spraggon, who has gone on record in criticising the modern education system in playing its part in “killing the individuality and destroying the uniqueness of people.”

“With the support of faculty, corporations and the government, we are going to mentor students in a consulting journey where they will be solving a real problem through the course and learning real skills.” Said, also adding that: “The main goal is to make you great at what you’re great at.”

These two together act as an inspiring example to others. Being economically strong nations who have not let their pride get in the way of recognizing their gaps, and have been proactive in finding solutions of the uncertainty that lies ahead in the future. 

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AWARDS 2018

in recognition of your ongoing commitment to excellence The Global Business Outlook awards aim to recognise and reward excellence in business to companies all over the globe, both in the public and private sector. Our goal is to make sure that innovation, creativity and the drive to create value gets its due recognition.

The awards are open to companies of all sizes, based anywhere in the world, and in both broad and niche sectors. Our goal is to offer recognition to both smaller market participants as well as larger firms adapting international models to unique geographies from all over. Whatever the size of your company , if you feel that it has performed in exceptional terms, created great value, business edge and market recognition – we would love to hear from you.

The Global Business Outlook awards are not just for companies that conduct business globally. Companies that operate nationally or regionally only, are every bit as applicable for them. These companies will compete against organisations or individuals based out of their own country. When submitting your application for these awards, kindly be specific about the region of your operations.

The jury will consider all entries during the first two weeks of the month and winners will be notified personally within six weeks. We pride ourselves on an efficient, fair and prompt judiciary process and intend to announce the outcome of these results as soon as possible.

All award winners are entitled to their winnings for a period of 12 months.

Business Outlook Media Ltd Winston House, 2 Dollis Park, London - N3 1HF | Tel : +44 207 193 3740 E-mail: info@gbomag.com | media@gbomag.com | Web: www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

2018 | AWARDS

Best Mobile Bank Armenia 2018

Most Innovative Islamic Equity Fund Bahrain 2018

Ardshinbank CJSC

GFH Financial Group

“Ardshinbank” CJSC was founded in December, 2002. In February 2003 it received a banking license no. 83 (dated 25.02.03). Initially the bank was named "Ardshininvestbank". In 2003 it has also acquired a significant portion of the assets and liabilities of OJSC "Ardshinbank" and "Armagrobank" CJSC together with their branch networks. In November 2014 it was rebranded into "Ardshinbank" CJSC. The bank is included in the TOP-3 of the Armenian banking system.

GFH is a dynamic financial investment group with a clear vision to develop a high growth, diversified investment and commercial portfolio. GFH actively seeks unique opportunities to grow the value and potential of its investments.

To achieve industry-leading performance, GFH deploys its deep market insight, innovative thinking and investment intelligence, which are hallmarks of the brand and its approach. Boursa Kuwait and Dubai Financial Market.

Best International Trade Finance Bank Armenia 2018

Fastest Growing Retail Bank Bahrain 2018

AraratBank OJSC

Eskan Bank

ARARATBANK was established as a result of the reorganization of Haykap Bank, operating in the Armenian financial market since 1991. On September 2005 It was reorganized into a closed joint stock company and in August 2007 into an open joint stock company. In 2008, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) acquired 25%+1 share stake, thus, becoming a new partner of the Bank.

Eskan Bank was established in 1979 with a unique social role to provide mortgages for citizens of the Kingdom of Bahrain on low-to-medium incomes, and also to engage in community- related property development activities.

Eskan Bank is the Kingdom’s leading provider of residential mortgages, and a significant player in the property development market. community projects and commercial projects.

Best Digital Bank Armenia 2018

Best Foreign Bank Bangladesh 2018

Evocabank CJSC

Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC

Evocabank, known as Prometey Bank until September 2018, is an Armenian innovative commercial bank, which is headquartered in Yerevan. It was founded in 1990 by Simon Gevorgyan.The bank is jointly owned by Prometey City LLC and Vazgen Simon Gevorkyan.Evocabank is a multi-profile financial institution with no specific financial service concentration.The strategy of Evocabank aims at providing fast, simple, and innovative services.

Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC (CBC) is one of the leading commercial banks in Sri Lanka with 250 branches and 625 ATMs. The bank has operations in Bangladesh, Maldives and soon to open in Myanmar.CBC can trace its history back to 1920 when Eastern Bank, a British overseas bank, opened a branch in Ceylon. In 1957, Chartered Bank (another British overseas bank; see below) acquired Eastern Bank but ran it separately.

Best Investment Bank Armenia 2018

Best Investment Bank/ Best Corporate Bank Egypt 2018

Arab African International Bank Ameriabank CJSC Ameriabank CJSC is a universal bank offering corporate, investment and retail banking services in a comprehensive package of banking solutions. It was established in 1910 as a branch of Caucasian Trade Bank. In July 1992, Armenian Import-Export Bank CJSC was founded, which received a banking license from the Central Bank of Armenia on September 8 of the same year. In April 1995, a foreign investor, Computeron Industrials Establishments.

In 2014, Arab African International Bank established MOSTADAM platform; the first platform in Egypt and the MENA region to enact and promote sustainable finance through capacity building, policy advocacy and promoting sustainable products and services. AAIB is championing Sustainable Finance in the global scene. In this essence, AAIB participated in the G20 Green Finance Study Group that issued its seminal “Synthesis Report for Green Finance” in 2016.

Best Online Bank Bahrain 2018

Most Innovative Corporate Bank Ghana 2018

Bahrain Islamic Bank

Zenith Bank PLC

Incorporated in 1979 as the first Islamic bank in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the fourth in the GCC. Bahrain Islamic Bank (BisB) has played a pivotal role in the development of the Islamic banking industry and the Kingdom’s economy. At the end of 2017, the Bank’s paid up capital was BD 101 million, while total assets stood at BD 1,229 million. A steadfast focus on continuous innovation, strong corporate governance and risk management, the leading Sharia’a – compliant Bank.

Zenith Bank (Ghana) Limited (“Zenith”), a financial services provider, was incorporated in April 2005 under the Banking Act 2004 (Act 673) as a private limited company and commenced universal banking operation in September 2005.Since inception, the Zenith brand has been synonymous with its cutting edge ICT platform, passionately innovative staff and devotion to the development of top of the range products and services to meet customer needs.

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AWARDS | 2018

Best IT Banking Solution Jordan 2018

Best Digital Bank/ Most Innovative Retail Bank Kazakhstan 2018

Pio Tech

Alfa-Bank

Pio-Tech was born in 2003 with a small, dynamically motivated team of seven who were set to shape and inspire the Jordanian tech scope. The year 2006 had witnessed an evolutionary turn for the company, spreading its outreach to additional sectors beyond technology solutions, introducing vertical business solutions for financial sectors. This had gained Pio-Tech and its consultants much focused expertise, newly acquired business ventures throughout the Middle East and Africa.

JSC SB Alfa-Bank is a subsidiary of the Russian JSC Alfa-Bank and is part of ABH Holdings SA, represented in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Netherlands. Alfa-Bank has an impeccable business reputation and has been operating since 1994, being the first Russian bank in Kazakhstan. The head office of the bank is located in Almaty. Alfa-Bank is a universal financial institution and provides all types of banking services.

Best SME Bank Jordan 2018

Best Core Banking Solution Provider / Most Innovative ICT Company Kenya 2018

Capital Bank of Jordan

Tangazoletu Limited

Since its inception in 1995, Capital Bank has grown to become one of the top financial institutions in Jordan, offering the Jordanian market a comprehensive set of commercial and investment banking services tailored to the needs of individuals and corporate clients alike. Specialized in trade finance activities.

Capital Bank offers its corporate clients a wide variety of services from corporate finance, the Bank's investment arm.

Tangazoletu is a client-centric, Kenyan ICT firm that develops ICT solutions that automate business processes in every sector of the economy to promote efficiency, sustainable innovation, and best practice. They are also a trend setter in mobile solutions used by millions of Kenyans, every day and are licensed

by Communication Authority to provide premium rate and content services. transform different business.

Best Insurance Company Jordan 2018

Best Turnkey IT Solution Provider & Integrator (Banking & Non-Banking) Kenya 2018

Jordan Insurance Company Jordan Insurance Company is a full-service insurance company in Jordan.

JIC offers the following insurance: Marine Insurance, Motor Insurance, Life Insurance, Casualty insurance, Health Insurance Property insurance.

Supplementary products include the "Sehtak Kanz" discount card, and a roadside assistance program. The company is listed on the Amman Stock Exchange's ASE Weighted Index with the symbol "JIC".

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Apex Banking Software

Best Jordanian Takaful Operator Jordan 2018

Best Corporate Bank Kuwait 2018

Solidarity First Insurance Co

Warba Bank

Established in 2007, Solidarity - First Insurance Company is a relatively fresh face on Jordan's crowded insurance market. However, in a short period of time the Company has gone from newcomer to market leader, climbing from 25th place in 2008 to fourth place today in terms of market share. This marked a major turning point. The deal, which was finalized in 2016, proved crucial for FIC’s expansion.

Established in 2010, Warba Bank’s mission is to be a world-class bank that offers the entire gamut of banking & investment services in compliance with Sharia principles. It aims to achieve growth by continuously innovating on product quality, offering customized solutions and service excellence thereby gaining the confidence of customers from various walks of life.Warba Bank offers a wide range of customized Sharia-compliant services.

Best CSR Bank Jordan 2018

Best Real Estate Advisory Firm Kuwait 2018

Safwa Islamic Bank

Dimah Capital

Safwa Islamic Bank (Jordan Dubai Islamic bank previously ) began its operations on 17/1/2010 according to Islamic Sharia principles and the instructions of the Central Bank of Jordan and The Banking Law of Jordan. it was registered as a Public Limited Company in the registry of companies on 23.06.1963 under number 8 as legal successor of “The Industrial Development Bank” which was established under the Law No. 5 for the year 1972.

Established with a strong capital base in 2007, Dimah Capital entered the market with a powerful presence. The company possesses the strength to sustain regional and international financial challenges and is proud of its team of financial experts, technology structure and impeccable track record. These strengths all make Dimah Capital a competitive force among Sharia compliant investment banking and wealth management corporations.

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

2018 | AWARDS

Best Customer Support Insurance Provider Kuwait 2017

Best Digital Insurance Company Kuwait 2018

GIG

Warba Insurance Company

Gulf Insurance was established in 1962.It is a public shareholding company listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange and a consistent market leader in Kuwait in terms of premiums written. The Group is amongst the largest and most diversified insurance groups in the Middle East and North Africa region. Gulf Insurance Group is one of the leading private insurers (By Gross Premium Written) with a strong competitive market position in Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain and Egypt.

Warba Insurance was established in 1976, with Kuwait’s heritage and values at heart. The company has since provided insurance services to individuals and companies in utmost integrity and security. With 40 years of experience, Warba Insurance continues to provide the highest standards and service quality in insurance policies that meet the needs of the segments it serves, never losing sight of the communities we serve.

Best Investment Management Company Kuwait 2018

Best Asset Management Company Kuwait 2018

KAMCO Investment Company

Markaz

KAMCO Investment Company specialize in helping high net worth individuals and institutions reach their personal and professional targets. They understand that people who achieve great success are devoted to hard work, and sacrifice much to achieve their successes and do not view targets and goals merely in financial terms. In many cases, their needs and goals may be intricate and involve numerous factors.

Since its humble beginning in 1978 as a college of Islamic studies and Orphanage, Jamia Markaz (The Markaz Academia) has gradually grown to become the flagship of Islamic and modern education for the Muslims in India, which later took a decisive role in shaping an ideal culture for them by creatively blending education, charity and national consciousness. People from all walks of life, the elite, the poor, the educated and the common man, joined Markaz in its progressive journey of social change.

Best Mobile Banking Kuwait 2018

Best Financial Service Provider Malaysia 2018

Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait

Infinity Financial Solutions Ltd

Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait K.S.C.P. provides corporate, retail, and international banking services. The company offers current and savings accounts, as well as term deposits; consumer, installment, auto, and mortgage loans; and asset based financing, term loans/working capital finance, trade finance related products, structured cash financing, mergers and acquisitions financing, short-medium term and long-term loans, overdraft facilities, credit facilities on a bilateral or syndicated basis.

The Archipelago story brings us back to the significant era of the Indian Ocean Trade that has gained an important role in history and played a key factor in East West exchanges. The geographical and historical convergence of East and West, Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans and Europeans interacted over a period of many centuries, participating in a sophisticated structure of commerce and politics.

Best Insurance Company Kuwait 2018

Most Innovative Financial Advisory Brand Malaysia 2017

Kuwait Insurance Company Kuwait Insurance Company was established in 1960 by Amiri Decree No. 7 of 1960 as the first insurance company in Kuwait and the GCC. The company enjoys a stable and strong financial foundation and maintains a leading position in the local and regional insurance market by providing reliable and innovative insurance products and services and professional team of experts at the level of Kuwait and GCC. They engage in the general insurance business in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Kuwait, and internationally.

Standard Financial Adviser Sdn Bhd

Best CSR Bank Kuwait 2018

Best Investment Bank Malaysia 2017

The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK)

Kenanga Investment Bank Berhad

The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) was established in 1952 when a prominent Kuwaiti merchant went to the British Bank of the Middle East to open a letter of guarantee for the amount of 10,000 Indian rupees, (which is equivalent today to 750 KD). Much to his surprise, his request was rejected, on the condition that he provide a guarantor. This well-known merchant was shocked and appalled by the treatment that he had received, and news of this was all over town.

Kenanga Investment Bank Berhad is a Malaysian financial services company which provides investment banking, stockbroking and investment management services. The company was founded in 1973 by Tengku Noor Zakiah Tengku Ismail, the first Bumiputera female stockbroker in Malaysia, with her business partner and is one of the first stockbroking houses in Malaysia.[2] It was listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange in 1996.

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AWARDS | 2018

Best CSR Bank Malaysia 2018

Best Credit Card Offerings Mozambique 2018

Bank Muamalat Malaysia Berhad Bank Muamalat Malaysia Berhad started its operations on 1 October 1999 with a combined assets and liabilitiesbrought over from the Islamic banking windows of the then Bank Bumiputra Malaysia Berhad, Bank of Commerce (M) Berhad and BBMB Kewangan. Bank Muamalat Malaysia Berhad, the second full-fledged Islamic bank to be established in Malaysia after Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad, is poised to play its role in providing Islamic banking products and services to Malaysians.

First National Bank

Fastest Growing SME Bank Malaysia 2018

Most Innovative Bank/ Best Mobile Banking App Nigeria 2018

Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad

First Bank of Nigeria Ltd

Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad is a banking group offering end-to-end banking and financial solutions through its consumer banking, business banking, Islamic banking, investment banking and stock broking businesses as well as unit trust and asset management, having served the financial community over the past five decades. The banking group is involved in the provision of financial services through its principal subsidiaries, Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad.

First Bank of Nigeria Limited provides various retail and corporate banking products and services in Nigeria and internationally. The company operates through Retail Banking, Corporate Banking, Commercial Banking, and Public Sector segments. It offers savings, current, fixed deposit, diaspora, and domiciliary accounts; term deposits; automobile, personal home, household equipment, and secured term and office equipment loans.

Best New Mobile Banking Application Mozambique 2018

Most Innovative Investment Bank Nigeria 2018

Banco Único Banco Único, SA provides banking services. The bank was founded in 2010 and is based in Maputo, Mozambique.

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First National Bank Mocambique SA provides conventional and Islamic banking services including loans, deposits, and credit cards. The company was founded in 2001 and is based in Maputo, Mozambique. First National Bank Mocambique SA operates as a subsidiary of FirstRand EMA Holdings Limited.

FBN Quest Merchant Bank

Best Internet Bank Mozambique 2018

Fastest Growing Retail Bank Nigeria 2018

Millennium BIM

Guaranty Trust Bank Plc

BIM - Banco Internacional de Moçambique, S.A. provides various banking and financial products and services for individuals and companies in Mozambique.

It offers current accounts, term deposits, negotiated deposits, savings plans, home loans, and credit and debit cards. The company also provides auto leasing, real estate leasing, and bank guarantee services, as well as factoring, payroll, trade finance, treasury management, and payment and collection services.

Guaranty Trust Bank Plc. provides commercial banking services to its customers. The Bank's services include retail banking, granting of loans and advances, equipment leasing, corporate finance, money market activities, and allied services, as well as foreign exchange operations. The bank's only subsidiary is involved in funds and portfolio management services.

Most Innovative Investment Bank Mozambique 2018

Best Investment Bank Nigeria 2018

Standard Bank

Coronation Merchant Bank

Standard Bank S.A. provides various banking products and services. The company offers personal banking products and services, including credit and debit cards; home loans; bancassurance products; investment products and services, including investment deposits, offshore investments, and notice and fixed deposits; and Internet banking services. It also provides business banking products and services, such as deposits; short, medium, and long-term floating rate deposits.

Coronation Merchant Bank was initially founded as Associated Discount House Limited (“ADHL”) in 1993 by a consortium of reputable financial institutions.

ADHL, which was licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria to provide liquidity for sovereign debt notes and money market instruments, became a leading financial services institution, thriving throughout the tough period of the Nigerian economy.

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

2018 | AWARDS

Best Islamic Bank Oman 2018

Best Forex Bank Philippines 2018

Bank Nizwa

Security Bank Corporation

The formation of Bank Nizwa came about with the Central Bank of Oman granting its initial approval to the licensing of the Bank to Sheikh Saud bin Ali Al Khalili. Sheikh Saud and a further 92 other Omani individuals, companies and pension funds constitute the founder shareholders of the Bank. Bank Nizwa is Oman’s first dedicated Islamic bank, with fully Shari’a compliant products and services.

Security Bank has always prioritized two elements: our customers and our people. Our new symbol, “Perfect Harmony”, is a modernized yin-yang symbol depicting these two parts working and coming together. The blue is the renewed Security Bank. A shade more vibrant than the bank’s original color, it represents our change as a company while acknowledging the values that have brought us all our success so far.

Best Mortgage Loan Offering Bank Oman 2018

Best Internet Bank Philippines 2018

NBAD Oman

Philippine National Bank

As of March 30, 2017, National Bank of Abu Dhabi PJSC was acquired by First Gulf Bank PJSC. National Bank of Abu Dhabi PJSC provides various banking products and services to individuals, corporates, and institutional clients. The company offers current and call, savings, and deposit accounts; personal, mortgage and property, and car loans; credit, debit, and prepaid cards; wealth management services; life, car, travel, property.

Philippine National Bank (PNB) is one of the country’s largest private universal banks in terms of assets and deposits. It provides a full range of banking and other financial services to large corporate, middle market, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and retail customers. It maintains significant account relationships with the Philippine Government, national government agencies, local government units, and government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs).

Most Innovative Foreign Bank Oman 2018

Best CSR Bank Russia 2018

Bank of Beirut Oman

Alfa-Bank

Bank of Beirut S.A.L. provides banking services to individual and corporate customers in Lebanon, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Australia, North America, and internationally. The company’s deposit products include current, checking, savings, and time deposit accounts. It also offers personal, motor, educational, housing, and small business loans; project finance services; overdrafts, short-term advances, term loans, and discounting of commercial bills; and trade finance facilities.

Joint Stock Company Alfa-Bank provides various financial products and services to corporate and retail customers. It offers retail banking services; corporate banking services, such as corporate lending, settlement, liquidity management, factoring, leasing, trade finance, and foreign exchange control services; cash clearing and overdraft facility services to financial institutions; and investment banking services covering equities, fixed income products.

Best Digital Bank Philippines 2018

Best Mobile Banking Russia 2018

Union Bank of the Philippines

UniCredit Bank

Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) is a publicly-listed universal bank.

The Bank distinguishes itself through superior technology, unique branch sales and service culture, and centralized backroom operations. UnionBank’s superior technology allows delivery of online, real time business solutions to meet the customers’ changing and diverse needs through innovative and customized cash management products and service offerings.

UniCredit is and will remain a simple successful pan-European Commercial Bank, with a fully plugged in CIB, delivering a unique Western, Central and Eastern European network to its extensive client franchise: 26 million customers. UniCredit meets the evolving needs of its clients with a full commercial offer which harnesses strong synergies between the different business divisions, including CIB, Commercial Banking, and Wealth Management.

Best Foreign Retail Bank Philippines 2018

Best Digital Bank Saudi Arabia 2018

CTBC Bank

Bank Albilad

CTBC Financial Holding Co., Ltd. is the most international financial institution in Taiwan. It has nine subsidiaries including CTBC Bank, CTBC Securities, CTBC Life Insurance, CTBC Insurance Brokers, CTBC Venture Capital, CTBC Asset Management, CTBC Investments, CTBC Security and Taiwan Lottery. CTBC Holding’s key subsidiary, CTBC Bank, was established in 1966. It is the biggest credit card issuer, and also the most well-established and international privately-owned bank.

Bank Albilad provides various banking products and services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It operates through Retail Banking, Corporate Banking, Treasury, Investment Banking and Brokerage, and Other segments. The Retail Banking segment offers deposits, financing, remittances, and currency exchange products and services to individuals. The Corporate Banking segment provides deposits, financing, and trade services.

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AWARDS | 2018

Best Islamic Equity Fund Company Saudi Arabia 2018

Fastest Growing Life Insurance Company Taiwan 2018

MEFIC

Taiwan Life Insurance Company

MEFIC Capital is a complete financial services company with a paid capital of SR 400 Million. The incorporation of MEFIC took place on Shaban 2, 1428 (August 15, 2007), after the Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia granted MEFIC to operate as a full service investment bank in the Kingdom with the following licenses: Dealing, Custody, Managing, Arranging, Advising. In line with our full service license, MEFIC Capital is active in all five pertinent financial areas such as Asset Management, Corporate Finance & Advisory.

Taiwan Life Insurance Co., Ltd. operates as a life insurance company in Taiwan. It offers guarantee type, investment type, annuity type, additional/endorsements, group insurance, travel insurance, and micro-insurance products, as well as review of electricity sales; and housing loan, car loan, and interest rate and exchange rate services. The company was founded in 1947 and is based in Taipei City, Taiwan.

Taiwan Life Insurance Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of CTBC Financial Holding Co., Ltd.

Best Commercial Bank Sri Lanka 2018

Best Non-Life Insurance Company Taiwan 2018

Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC

Fubon Insurance

Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC provides various banking products and services in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It operates through five segments: Personal Banking, Corporate Banking, International Operations, Investment Banking, and Dealing and Treasury. The company offers current and savings accounts, fixed and call deposits, money market accounts, foreign currency accounts, treasury bonds and bills, pensions plans, and credit and debit cards. It also provides loan products.

Fubon Insurance Co., Ltd. provides property and casualty insurance products in Taiwan, Vietnam, and China. It also provides insurance brokerage services.

The company was formerly known as Cathay Insurance Co., Ltd. and changed its name to Fubon Insurance Co., Ltd. in 1992. The company was founded in 1961 and is based in Taipei, Taiwan. Fubon Insurance Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of Fubon Financial Holding Co., Ltd

Most Innovative Takaful Company Sri Lanka 2018

Most innovative SME Bank Taiwan 2018

Amana Takaful PLC

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First Commercial Bank

Amãna Takaful PLC, together with its subsidiaries, primarily engages in the general insurance business in Sri Lanka and Maldives. The company’s products include accident, travel, fire, home, marine, business, life, family, medical, motor, and miscellaneous insurance products. It operates through 34 branches.

The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

First Commercial Bank, Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides various banking products and services in Taiwan. It operates through six segments: Loan Business, Deposit Business, Wealth Management Business, Treasury Business, Overseas Business, and Other Businesses. It offers various deposits, including checking, demand, time, savings, and time savings deposits, as well as certificates of deposit; various loans; leasing services; wealth management and trust services.

Best SME Bank/ Best Islamic Retail Bank Sri Lanka 2018

Best Private Bank Taiwan 2018

Amãna Bank

Chinatrust Commercial Bank Limited

Amãna Bank PLC provides commercial banking services in Sri Lanka. It operates through Consumer Banking, Business Banking, and Treasury segments. The company offers current, savings, term investment, and foreign currency accounts, as well as savings plans and pension savers accounts. It also provides leasing, easy payment plan, and emergency cash, as well as home, apartment, education, and solar financing services; and corporate financing services for raw materials, inventory, equipment.

CTBC Bank Co., Ltd. provides various banking products and services. It offers current deposits, time deposits; institutional banking products and services, including loans, trade financing, cash management, corporate trust, and proxy services; offshore private banking services, such as investment and financial planning; capital Markets services that include syndicated lending, structured finance, and financial advisory services; domestic and cross-border remittance services.

Best Life Insurance Company Taiwan 2018

Best Commercial Bank Taiwan 2018

Nan Shan Life Insurance

Mega International Commercial Bank Co.,Ltd.

Incorporated in July 1963, Nan Shan Life Insurance Co., Ltd. (“Nan Shan”) has been running its business in Taiwan for half a century. Nan Shan is highly regarded for its professional management and financial soundness and is well recognized for its leadership role in quality agents, professional training and education, technology solutions, and customer services. In August 2011, Ruen Chen Investment Holding Co., Ltd. (“Ruen Chen”) became the largest shareholder of Nan Shan.

Mega International Commercial Bank Co., Ltd. (Mega ICBC) has come into being as a result of the merger of The International Commercial Bank of China and Chiao Tung Bank, effective on August 21, 2006. Both banks have been proud of their longtime histories of outstanding track records in our country. With a view to enlarging the business scale and increasing the market share, ICBC and CTB formally merged into one bank under the name of Mega International Commercial Bank Co.

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

2018 | AWARDS

Best Commercial Bank/ Best CSR Bank Tanzania 2018

Most Innovative Bank UAE 2018

CRDB Bank

Ajman Bank

CRDB Bank Plc, together with its subsidiaries, provides various corporate and retail banking, microfinance, and insurance services for individuals, small and medium enterprises (SME), corporates, and high net worth individuals in the United Republic of Tanzania and in the Republic of Burundi. It operates in three segments: Treasury, Retail banking and Microfinance Services, and Corporate Banking.

Ajman Bank is a young, agile Islamic commercial bank built on the values of integrity, trust and transparency. The first Islamic bank incorporated in the Emirate of Ajman, the Bank was established in 2007. Its shares were listed on the Dubai Financial Market in February 2008 and the Bank opened officially and started operations in 2009 from two branches in Ajman. The Bank now has branches and ATMs across the UAE.

Best Customer Service Retail Bank Tanzania 2018

Best Mobile Banking App UAE 2018

Exim Bank

Mashreq

Exim Bank (Tanzania) Limited, together with its subsidiaries, provides retail and corporate banking products and services in the United Republic of Tanzania, the Union of Comoros, the Republic of Djibouti, and the Republic of Uganda. The company operates through three reporting segments: Corporate Banking, Retail Banking, and Others. The Corporate Banking segment provides loans and other credit facilities; deposit and current accounts for corporate and institutional customers.

Mashreqbank psc provides banking and financial services to customers and businesses. The company’s Domestic Corporate segment offers corporate and commercial banking services, such as trade finance, contracting finance, project finance, investment banking, corporate advisory, and cash management services.

Its Domestic Retail segment provides current accounts, savings accounts, fixed deposits, investment products, and Mashreq Millionaire deposits.

Best Trade Finance Bank Thailand 2018

Best Working Place in the Banking Sector Vietnam 2018

Krungthai Bank

NCB Bank

Krung Thai Bank Public Company Limited provides commercial banking products and services to individuals, businesses, organizations, institutions, and government and state agencies primarily in Thailand. The company operates through three segments: Retail Banking, Wholesale Banking, and Treasury and Investment. It offers deposit products, including savings accounts, fixed deposit accounts, current accounts, zero tax max accounts, term deposits, and netbank accounts.

The National Commercial Bank provides various banking products and services. It offers non-special commission based banking products in compliance with Shariah rules, which are approved and supervised by an independent Shariah Board. The company operates through Retail, Corporate, Treasury, Capital Market, and International segments. The Retail segment provides banking services, including lending and current accounts.

Best Health Care Investment Management Firm Best Educational Investment Management Firm UAE 2018

Best Customer Service Bank Vietnam 2018

Sai Gon Joint Stock Commercial Bank Foundation Holdings

Foundation Holdings is a principle investment firm specializing in the highgrowth companies. It seeks to invest in healthcare, education, and consumer sectors. The firm prefers to invest in India and the GCC region. It prefers to invest in the companies that have differentiated products and services.

Foundation Holdings is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

On 26th December 2011, The Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam officially issued the license No. 238/GP-NHNN for establishment and operation of the Sai Gon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB) on the basis of consolidating of the three (03) banks: Sai Gon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), First Joint Stock Commercial Bank (Ficombank), and VietNam Tin Nghia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TinNghiaBank).

Best Credit Card Offering UAE 2018

Most Innovative Bank Vietnam 2018

United Arab Bank

Standard Chartered Bank

UNITED ARAB BANK, P.J.S.C. (UAB) was incorporated on 21 January 1975 as a joint venture between diverse UAE investors and the French international financial conglomerate, Société Générale (SG). Based in Sharjah and operating with 14 branches throughout the UAE, the Bank offers its clients tailor-made financial services in both corporate and retail banking, and has mainly established itself as a leading solutions provider for a growing commercial and industrial base across the seven emirates.

In Vietnam, Standard Chartered’s history can be traced back to 1904 when the Bank opened its first branch in Saigon (now is Ho Chi Minh City). On August 1, 2009, They commenced operations in their locally incorporated entity – Standard Chartered Bank (Vietnam) Limited, an important milestone of Standard Chartered’s development in Vietnam. The bank currently has four branches (two in Hanoi and two in Ho Chi Minh City).

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AWARDS | 2018

Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Vietnam 2018

Best Education Management Programme Applying Best Practices in L&D Oman 2018

Vietnam International Bank Vietnam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank, abbreviated as Vietnam International Bank (VIB), was founded on 18th September 1996, with its head office based at 16 Phan Chu Trinh, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi. Until December 31, 2017, VIB has become one of the leading commercial joint stock banks in Vietnam, with total assets of VND123.2 trillion. The bank’s charter capital is now VND5,644 billion while its shareholders’ equity is nearly VND9,000 billion.

Best Savings Bank Vietnam 2018

VietABank Viet A Bank was established on 04/07/2003 on the basis of merging two credit institutions operating in the financial market of Vietnam: Saigon Bank and Ngan Financial Joint Stock Company Da Nang Rural Trade Joint Stock Company.

Best Consumer Finance Company South East Asia 2018

VP Bank Finance Company Limited (VPB FC)

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Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) Orpic is one of Oman’s largest and most rapidly growing businesses in the Middle East oil industry. Orpic’s refineries in Suhar and Muscat, as well as the aromatics and polypropylene production plants in Suhar, provide fuel, chemicals, plastics and other petroleum products, to Oman and the world. Owned by the Government of the Sultanate of Oman and Oman Oil Company SAOC, Orpic’s impressive integration of refinery and plant operations coupled with its ambitious growth plans, has cemented its position as one of the industry’s most forward-thinking companies. The company currently recruits around 2,600 employees who work towards the common goal of an integrated Omani refining and petrochemicals business expected to increase to 3,000 by 2020.

Best Corporate Governance Oman 2018

Dhofar Generating Company

Developing from The Consumer Credit Division under Viet Nam Prosperity Joint – Stock Commercial Bank ( VP Bank), after nearly 6 years of operation, FE CREDIT has grown to be a leading financial company, with over 15,000 employees and partners operation around 63 provinces and cities nationwide, serving millions of Vietnamese people through the mortgage loan of products and service.

Dhofar Power Company S.A.O.C., together with its subsidiary, Dhofar Generating Company SAOC, engages in the generation, transmission, distribution, and supply of electricity in the Salalah region of the Sultanate of Oman. The company’s generation plant comprises six gas turbines and one aero-derivative gas turbine; and transmission system includes four substations of 132/33kV and 110 kilometers of double circuit 132kV overhead lines.

Best Fund Management Company Vietnam 2018

Best Corporate Governance Thailand 2018

VCBF

BCPG Public Company Limited

Vietcombank Fund Management ("VCBF") is a joint venture between the JointStock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam ("Vietcombank") and Franklin Templeton Investments ("FTI"). The strategic alliance between these two well recognized financial institutions means that VCBF benefits from local know-how and relationships as well as an understanding of the requirements of both institutional and private investors

BCPG Public Company Limited (BCPG), is one of Asia-Pacific’s leaders in renewable energy with solar power, wind power and geothermal power businesses in Thailand, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. While committed to investing and operating green power plants, BCPG further seeks to enhance fulfillment of consumer’s needs by diversifying into more types of renewable energy and seeking innovative products and services.

Best New Solar Energy Company Kenya 2018

Best Domestic Electricity Retailer Plans Singapore 2018

Pawame

Senoko Energy

Pawame, Headquartered in UAE and with operations in Kenya, is an off-grid home solar company aiming to electrify the 150 million households (70% of the population) in sub-Saharan Africa that don’t have access to grid power. Our solar home systems are capable of leapfrogging traditional power lines and offer an innovative, affordable rent-to-own, pay-as-you-go business model.

Our goal is to use our PAYGO platform.

Senoko Energy Pte Ltd., a power generation company, engages in producing and supplying electricity from natural gas in Singapore. The company also provides natural gas supply and shipping services to gas users; and oil storage tank leasing and terminal services through its subsidiaries. Senoko Energy Pte Ltd. was formerly known as Senoko Power Limited and changed its name to Senoko Energy Pte Ltd. in January 2010. The company was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Singapore.

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

2018 | AWARDS

Fastest Growing Mobile Tower Operators Best Implementation of HSE Practices – Wireless Tower Operation Indonesia 2017

Best Implementation of QHSE Practices Oman 2018

GlassPoint Solar, Inc GlassPoint delivers the lowest-cost solar energy to power industrial processes.

We are currently operating and developing some of the world’s largest solar projects, on oilfields in the United States and Middle East. We’ve forged partnerships with energy leaders and strategic investors including Royal Dutch Shell, Aera Energy, Petroleum Development Oman and the State General Reserve Fund of Oman, the country’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

Best Investor Relations Thailand 2018

PROTELINDO (PT Profesional Telekomunikasi Indonesia)

Loyz Oil Loyz Oil Thailand Pte Ltd (“Loyz Oil”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Group holds a 20% participating interest in three producing concessions – SW1, L44/43, and L33/43 (the “Thailand onshore oil concessions”) located in the Phetchabun Basin, which currently generates a steady income stream from its existing oil producing wells.

PT Sarana Menara Nusantara Tbk. ("SMN") was established in June 2008 with a primary focus to invest in operating companies that specialize in owning and operating telecommunication towers for wireless operators. SMN's activities are conducted through its subsidiary, PT Profesional Telekomunikasi Indonesia ("Protelindo"). Protelindo was established in 2003 and has become the largestindependent owner and operator of towers for wireless operators in Indonesia.

Protelindo's primary business is leasing space at its multi-tenant tower for all major wireless operators in Indonesia under long term lease agreements.

Protelindo owns and operates over 15,000 towers in Indonesia. On March 8, 2010, SMN completed an initial public offering of its shares and is now listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) under the ticker symbol "TOWR".

Digital Transformation of the Year – Telecom Sector Qatar 2018

Best Digital Transformation Telecom Company Best Customer Service Company in Telecommunication Bahrain 2018

Ooredoo Ooredoo Q.P.S.C., together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunications services and related products to small companies, start-ups, and enterprises worldwide. The company operates through six segments: Ooredoo Qatar, Asiacell, NMTC, Indosat Ooredoo, Ooredoo Oman, and Ooredoo Myanmar. It offers cellular, wireless, mobile and fixed telecommunication, multimedia, data communication, broadband, Internet leased lines, intra city and inter city leased lines, MPLS IPVPN, and Internet services.

5G Innovator of the Year Best Wholesale Carrier UAE 2018

VIVA Bahrain VIVA Bahrain is a fully owned subsidiary of the Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) and launched its commercial services in March 2010 with the aim of transforming the telecommunications landscape in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Backed by unrivalled experience, knowledge and vision, VIVA has experienced phenomenal growth in its six years of operations and continues to perform exceptionally well. Since entering Bahrain’s telecom market, VIVA has become the market leader. Through its HSPA+ network upgrade in 2011, VIVA became the first operator in Bahrain to provide speeds of up to 42 Mbps to its broadband subscribers and to test successfully and showcase its 4G/LTE network in early 2012, officially launching 4G/LTE services to customers in January 2014.

Best Telecommunication Company Bahrain 2018 Etisalat

Batelco Batelco (Bahrain Telecommunications Company) the leading digital solutions provider in the Kingdom of Bahrain continues with its commitment to enhance customer experience. Batelco serves both the corporate and consumer markets through the delivery of cutting-edge fixed and wireless telecommunications solutions. The Company’s digitisation and connectivity goals are in line with those of the Kingdom of Bahrain to transform how businesses operate as well as transform.

Etisalat has deployed many innovative technologies and services to remain at the leading edge of customer experience. Etisalat’s senior leaders understands the need to continue its investments in building the networks of the future because the positive effects filter down to the rest of the economy. Today, the UAE boasts of an excellent telecoms ecosystem, capable of driving successes across industries and sectors. Etisalat currently has the widest coverage of 3G and 4G mobile technologies in the country. In 2011, Etisalat rolled out the UAE’s first and currently the region’s widest 4G+ LTE network, providing mobile broadband speeds of up to 300Mbps and covering nearly 93 percent of the country’s populated area. Our extensive network reaches more than 735 international networks in over 200 countries.

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AWARDS | 2018

Most innovative real estate loans Armenia 2018

Fast Credit Capital UCO CJSC On April 1, 1994, the first branch of "Fast Credit" LTD was opened at 37 Abovyan str., Yerevan, operating as a pawnbroker. Then another 9 branches opened in Yerevan and in RA regions. On October 14, 2011 "Fast Credit Capital" Universal Credit Organization Closed Joint Stock Company was registered and accredited by the Central bank of RA (license of Central Bank #37) after which the Company's network was replenished with 11 branches.

Best Property Brokerage Company Ghana 2018

Fastest Growing Real Estate Finance Company Qatar 2017

First Finance First Finance Co. was founded in November 1999 as the first finance company in the State of Qatar regulated by the Central Bank of Qatar; we started with a capital of 50 million Qatari Riyals in 1999, to reach a capital of 639 million Qatari Riyals in 2009. In 2010, 100% of the company's shares were acquired by Barwa Bank, a step that aims to establish the company as a prominent player in the local market.We, at FFC.

Best Real Estate Investment Company Saudi Arabia 2018

CBC Properties

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CBC Properties Ghana (CBC Global Limited) is a registered Property Brokerage company. It is a fast growing property management, property leasing, property sales, property development and property consulting firm based in Ghana with the vision of offering its services across Africa. They also offer marketing services of large pieces of undeveloped land for commercial and residential purposes void of litigation.

SEDCO Capital

Fastest Growing Real Estate Fund Kuwait 2018

Best Real Estate Development Company UAE 2018

Boubyan Capital

Five Holdings

Boubyan Capital Investment Company (Boubyan Capital) was established in 2011 as a Sharia compliant company and the sole investment arm of Boubyan Bank; the youngest and fastest growing Islamic Bank in Kuwait. In 2010, Boubyan Capital received an official registration and license by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to operate as a subsidiary of Boubyan Bank, following official regulation measures taken by the Capital Markets Authority.

FIVE Holdings, a Dubai-based real estate group, offers a wide range of services across four key verticals – development, hospitality, restructuring and investment – designed to leverage the different cycles of the real estate industry. Our philosophy is based on the five elements: Earth, water, fire, air and consciousness. Earth represents trust and strong foundations; water represents fluidity and adaptability; fire represents passion and execution; air represents freedom and growth.

Best Property Investment and Management Company Kuwait 2017

Most Innovative Real Estate Development Company UAE 2018

United Real Estate Co

Palma Holding

United Real Estate Company (URC) is one of the Middle East’s leading real estate development companies with total assets of KD 584 million (US$ 1.9 Billion) as of 30 September 2017 KD. Headquartered in Kuwait, URC was founded in 1973 and was listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange in 1984. The majority shareholder is Kuwait Projects Holding Company, commonly known as KIPCO.

Founded in 1998 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Palma focuses on Dubai’s premium real estate areas, with an unmatched reputation for offering quality, professional service and developments. Palma’s main divisions are: Real Estate Development, Sales & Leasing, Property Management. Its flagship projects include Silverene Towers and Infinity Cayan Tower, in Dubai Marina Our firm commitment to offer.

Sustainable Project of the Year – QSTP Tech 4 Qatar 2018

Best Real Estate Company – Commercial UAE 2018

ASTAD

Bloom Holding

Working across a diverse range of sectors, we remain committed to continue delivering excellent outcomes and innovative solutions for your projects. Our people are committed to being open, honest and transparent. A willingness to collaborate with you to create a working relationship built on trust has enabled us to provide our expertise in delivering some of the regions most iconic landmarks.

Over the past seven years, Bloom Holding has transformed and enriched the lifestyle of its customers by building distinctive integrated communities, providing premium education close to home, offering luxury hospitality and easing and embellishing day-to-day living with facilities management and landscaping services.

SEDCO Capital is a global asset management firm that offers attractive investment opportunities across global markets through carefully engineered public and private funds and special instruments. Established in 1976, SEDCO Capital has crafted a three-decade long track record of robust performance combined with prudent investment strategies.

Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

GLOBAL BUSINESS OUTLOOK AWARDS 2019

Global Business outlook awards aim to recognize and reward business excellence across all sectors, private and public. These awards are open to companies regardless of their size and individuals, based anywhere in the world, entries are invited from those that feel they have performed exceptionally well than their competitors to create a business edge and market recognition.

the road to gbo awards: how does it work?

STEP 1 - nominations >> Invite companies for nominations >> Confirmation on category

STEP 2 - evaluation >> Submission of supporting documents >> Questionnaire to be filled by nominee

STEP 3 - announcement >> To be announced on website >> To be announced in online quaterly magazine

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Global Business Outlook | Issue 02 2018 | www.globalbusinessoutlook.com

Global Business Outlook is a UK-based publication dedicated to covering vital industry sectors shaping our globe including Global Banking, Insurance, Finance, Technology, Finance, Brands and Education. The magazine follows key market trends and winning business strategies from around the globe, and has a readership comprising of C-suite managers, directors of some of the world’s top companies, and driven, passionate entrepreneurs from all over.

Business Outlook Media Ltd Winston House, 2 Dollis Park, London - N3 1HF | Tel : +44 207 193 3740 E-mail: info@gbomag.com | media@gbomag.com | Web: www.globalbusinessoutlook.com