Qatar banks face headwinds; Tech shares keep falling; 'No' as the new key to success

1 Qatar banks face headwinds (Issac John in Khaleej Times) The sanctions imposed on Qatar by the UAE and several other Arab countries might result in an outflow of external funding for Qatari banks, which are already under mounting pressure amid worsening cash crunch, lower credit rating and hike in cost of funding, financial analysts said.

Following the recent breakup of diplomatic, trade and transport links with Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, the creditworthiness of the Gulf state has became vulnerable to a potential risks. These include domestic political risks, a spike in government debt, significantly higher contingent liabilities, and scarce external funding sources, credit analysts said.

S&P Global Rating, however, noted that Qatari banks' current liquidity profiles should help them absorb a moderate drop in external funding. Overall, Qatari banks' net external debt totalled about $50 billion at the end of April 2017.

Garbis Iradian, chief economist, Mena, at the Washington-based Institute of International Finance, said while the Qatari banking sector is well positioned, with a capital adequacy ratio of 16.1 per cent and non-performing loans to total loans of 1.2 per cent at the end of 2016, risks and uncertainty from the sanctions by neighbouring countries could have serious repercussions.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/banking-finance/qatar-banks-face-severe-headwinds

2 Tech shares keep falling (Dominic Rushe in The Guardian) Shares in technology companies – the driver behind recent record stock market gains – has kept falling as investors worried the sector was running out of steam.

Technology stocks have done far better than the rest of the market this year and they were trading close to all-time highs before Friday’s drop. The S&P 500 technology index shed 2.7% on Friday for one of its worst days of the year.

The climb has made fortunes for investors, and for tech entrepreneurs. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has seen his net worth soar by almost $20bn in the past five months to $85.2bn. Bezos’s fortune is closing in on that of Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, whose net worth is $89.3bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/12/tech-industry-stock-market-nasdaq

3 ‘No’ as the new key to success (Lucy Kellaway in Straits Times/Financial Times) No is the new yes. It is the most fashionable answer for successful people. There is even a How To Say No colouring book for adults, as well as books of more niche interest, like Say No To Arthritis.

Yet last week "no" reached cult status. In a blog post for the Harvard Business Review, a management coach suggested that it is not enough simply to say no, we must also start celebrating whenever we do so.

No is thus granted the same giddy status as failure, which everyone has been doggedly celebrating for a decade at least. The Museum of Failure was opened last week in Sweden; give it a year or two and the Museum of No is bound to follow.

On the Entrepreneur website is a blog post that argues saying no is good, as it creates space for junior people to step up. And declining things at work allows you to spend more time at home tending to your family.

I can think of something even better about it. If enough people were to say no to pointless things often enough it would lead to a more efficient allocation of resources. If we all refused boring meetings and events, eventually the penny would drop and people would stop arranging them.

The main difference between yes and no is that one is easy and the other hard. Yes can be said by any old fool, while no requires character, commitment and courage. Saying no gets easier as you get older.

http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/oh-yes-saying-no-is-the-new-key-to-success

Global growth headed for six-year high; UK poll unnerves investors; Trump points finger at Qatar

1 Global growth headed for six-year high (Khaleej Times) The global economy is on course this year for its fastest growth in six years as a rebound in trade helps offset a weaker outlook in the US, the OECD has forecast.

The global economy is set to grow 3.5 per cent this year before nudging up to 3.6 per cent in 2018, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said, updating its forecasts in its latest Economic Outlook.

That estimate for 2017 was not only a slight improvement from its last estimate in March for 3.3 per cent growth, but it would also be the best performance since 2011. Yet despite this brighter outlook, growth would nonetheless fall disappointingly short of rates seen before the 2008-2009 financial crisis, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said.

The improvement would also not be enough to satisfy people's expectations for better standards of living and reduce growing income inequality, he said. Among the risks to the OECD's outlook, it warned that the growing divergence between monetary policy rates among the major central banks raised the chances for financial market volatility.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/economy/global-growth-headed-for-six-year-high-oecd

2 UK poll unnerves investors (BBC) Fears that political uncertainty will hurt consumer spending have hit shares in UK retailers and housebuilders. The prospect of a hung parliament and speculation about the election result's impact on Brexit saw the value of sterling slide against the dollar.

"Disposable incomes will be stretched," said analyst Nicholas Hyett The weakening pound makes imported goods' prices higher and squeezes consumers' ability to spend.

Mr Hyett, from Hargreaves Lansdown, ran through the affected sectors: "Housebuilders are down across the board, but they're joined by restaurants, high street banks, fashion retailers and media outlets. Investor sentiment was not helped by the latest UK industrial production figures, which showed output rose by less than had been expected.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40212594

3 Trump points finger at Qatar (David Smith, Sabrina Siddiqui & Peter Beaumont in The Guardian) Donald Trump has accused Qatar of sponsoring terrorism at the highest levels, in an extraordinary escalation of the diplomatic row with one America’s most important military partners in the Middle East.

Trump said he had decided “the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding … and its extremist ideology.” His comments marked his most forthright intervention in a crisis triggered on Monday when Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies launched a co-ordinated diplomatic and economic campaign to isolate Qatar.

Trump’s intervention came after Saudi Arabia and its allies on Friday sanctioned a dozen organisations and 59 people it accused of links to Islamist militancy – a number of them Qataris or with links to Qatar. The Qatari government said in a statement: “We do not, have not and will not support terrorist groups.”

US relations with Qatar have long been complicated by Doha’s promotion of a conservative form of Sunni Islam, but the tiny Gulf state is also a close military partner. More than 11,000 US and coalition forces are at al-Udeid air base outside Doha, which is the centre for US air operations over Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/09/trump-qatar-sponsor-terrorism-middle-east

UK economy at bottom of EU growth league; Softbank buys Google robot-maker; Oil stabilizes but glut stays

1 UK economy at bottom of EU growth league (Katie Allen in The Guardian) The UK economy was the worst performer in the European Union in the opening months of 2017 as the Brexit vote took its toll, according to official statistics that underscore the challenge facing the next British government.

With economic growth of just 0.2% in the first three months of this year, the UK was well behind its European neighbours. Official EU figures showed the growth for the whole of the EU was 0.6% in the first quarter. The eurozone single currency bloc also grew 0.6% in the opening quarter, buoyed by strong domestic demand.

The Eurostat figures showed every nation in the 28-member bloc reported first-quarter GDP figures growing faster than the UK. The strongest expansion was in Romania at 1.7%, followed by Latvia at 1.6% and Slovenia at 1.5%. The closest countries to the UK’s weak pace of growth were France and Greece, with GDP growing 0.4% in both.

However, in year-on-year terms the UK was closer to the EU performance and ahead of the 19-nation eurozone. After a strong second half to 2016, when the economy defied predictions of a post-referendum slump, UK GDP was still 2% bigger in the first quarter of 2017 than a year earlier. The EU’s economy was 2.1% bigger on the year while the eurozone was up 1.9%.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/08/uk-economy-falls-to-bottom-of-eu-growth-league

2 Softbank buys Google robot-maker (BBC) Shares of Japan's Softbank have surged to their highest in nearly two decades after the firm bought robot-maker Boston Dynamics from Google's Alphabet. Boston Dynamics, known for its robots such as Atlas and BigDog, has struggled to commercialise its inventions and was put up for sale more than a year ago.

Softbank also announced it is buying robotics group Schaft. The terms of the deals were not disclosed. Softbank shares rose by more than 7% in Tokyo. Softbank began as a Japanese telecoms company but moved into robotics and developed the human-like Pepper in 2014.

Founder Masayoshi Son has since built the Japanese firm into a massive technology conglomerate through some big deals. They range from buying UK chip firm ARM Holdings for $32bn) investing $1bn in satellite startup OneWeb, to setting up a venture fund with Saudi Arabia. Mr Son is known to have an eye for potentially transformative industries and trends. He was an early investor in Alibaba.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40211163

3 Oil stabilizes but glut stays (Straits Times) Oil prices stabilised on Friday following steep falls earlier this week, but they were still pressured by evidence of an ongoing fuel glut despite efforts led by OPEC to tighten the market by holding back production.

Brent crude was at $47.86 per barrel, unchanged from its last close. It still puts Brent almost 12 per cent below its opening level on May 25, when an Opec-led pledge to cut production was extended into 2018. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was at $45.63, also virtually unchanged from the last close, but almost 11 per cent below May 25.

The slump was a result of oversupply despite the effort led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to cut almost 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) of production until the first quarter of 2018. US Energy Information Administration data showed a surprise build in commercial crude oil stocks to 513.2 million barrels this week.

http://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/oil-prices-continue-to-slide-as-supply-overhang-prevails

Diplomatic crisis as Qatar is isolated; India launches heavy rocket; One in five Singapore staff fears automation job loss

1 Diplomatic crisis as Qatar is isolated (Patrick Wintour in The Guardian) The Gulf has been hit by its biggest diplomatic crisis in years after Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of destabilising the region with its support for Islamist groups.

The countries said they would halt all land, air and sea traffic with Qatar, eject its diplomats and order Qatari citizens to leave the Gulf states within 14 days. Shoppers in the Qatari capital, Doha, meanwhile packed supermarkets amid fears the country, which relies on imports from its neighbours, would face food shortages after Saudi Arabia closed its sole land border.

The small but very wealthy nation, the richest in the world per capita, was also expelled from a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen. The coordinated move dramatically escalates a dispute over Qatar’s support of Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and its perceived tolerance of Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival, Iran.

Qatar’s foreign affairs ministry said the measures were unjustified and based on false claims and assumptions. As the Qatari stock market tumbled and oil prices rose, it accused its fellow Gulf states of violating its sovereignty.

In a sign of Qatar’s growing isolation, Yemen’s internationally backed government – which no longer holds its capital and large portions of the country – joined the move to break relations, as did the Maldives and the government based in eastern Libya

Monday’s diplomatic moves came two weeks after four Arab countries blocked Qatar-based media over the appearance of comments attributed to the Qatari emir that praised Iran. Qatar said hackers had taken over the website of its state-run news agency and faked the comments.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/05/saudi-arabia-and-bahrain-break-diplomatic-ties-with-qatar-over-terrorism

2 India launches heavy rocket (BBC) India's space agency has successfully launched its heaviest rocket. The 640-tonne rocket blasted off from a launching site off the Bay of Bengal in Sriharikota.

The rocket will reduce the Indian Space Research Organisation's (Isro) reliance on European vehicles to launch heavy satellites. The coverage of the launch has been euphoric, and often colourful, with websites comparing the rocket to the weight of 200 elephants, or five jumbo jets.

Such comparisons highlight the importance of the launch for the country, which is aggressively competing to get a bigger share of the global commercial satellite launch market. The GSLV Mark III can carry put a payload weighing more than three tonnes into the high altitude orbit occupied by the spacecraft that relay TV, telephone calls and broadband connections.

But it's far from being the world's heaviest rocket because Nasa's Saturn V, which was used between 1967 and 1973, still holds that record, with total mass at lift-off about four times that of India's GSLV Mark III. Experts say the rocket gives India more flexibility in launching different kinds of satellites.

Isro hopes that the rocket, called the "monster" by one newspaper, will be able to carry an astronaut to space by 2024. India wants to become the fourth country after the US, China and Russia to send a person into space.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40158889

3 One in five Singapore staff fears automation job loss (Straits Times) Nearly one in five employees in Singapore fears that automation will take away their jobs, a survey by recruitment firm Randstad found.

The poll also showed that workers in Singapore (19 per cent) and Hong Kong (20 per cent) held the highest fears of losing their jobs to automation. Malaysian employees, on the other hand, were more relaxed with only 13 per cent fearing automation will hurt their job security.

About three in four, or 72 per cent, of Singapore employees were open to retraining for a new role - provided that their salaries would remain the same or higher than before. The remaining 8 per cent would rather move to another company than retrain. Despite fears of automation taking jobs away, a large group of employees feel that automation will in fact make their jobs better.

http://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/nearly-1-in-5-singapore-employees-fear-losing-their-jobs-to-automation

South Korea launches stimulus package; A world of crypto-anarchists; Global beer sales drying up

1 South Korea launches stimulus package (Straits Times) South Korea's new government has announced a 11.2 trillion won fiscal stimulus package, increasing social welfare subsidies and taking the first steps to deliver on President Moon Jae-in's key election promise - to create 810,000 public sector jobs.

The stimulus package allocates 5.4 trillion won to create public sector and social services jobs, including places for fire fighters, teachers and postal workers, the finance ministry said. Another 2.3 trillion won will be used to provide subsidies for maternity leave and for elderly people needing medical care.

The government estimates the extra spending will boost economic growth by 0.2 percentage point this year, which may raise its 2017 outlook from the current 2.6 per cent. It expects to the extra budget to add 71,000 jobs to the public sector workforce and 15,000 jobs to the private sector.

Unemployment among those aged 15-29 soared to 11.2 per cent in April, even though the economy posted the fastest growth in six quarters in the January-March period. Addressing a widening income gap and sluggish domestic demand is a major challenge for policymakers, especially as exports have only just begun to turn around after falling for almost two years.

Calls for government subsidies will only increase as more than 35,000 workers are expected to be laid off by the end of this year from the shipbuilding industry alone. From December 2015 to February this year, about 41,000 workers lost their jobs at shipbuilders as a broad global downturn in demand and plunging commodity prices sapped the industry.

http://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/south-korea-launches-s138b-stimulus-package-to-create-810000-public-sector-jobs

2 A world of crypto anarchists (Jamie Bartlett in The Guardian) Crypto-anarchists are mostly computer-hacking, anti-state libertarians who have been kicking around the political fringes for two decades, trying to warn a mostly uninterested public about the dangers of a world where everything is connected and online.

They also believe that digital technology, provided citizens are able to use encryption themselves, is the route to a stateless paradise, since it undermines government’s ability to monitor, control and tax its people. Crypto-anarchists build software – think of it as political computer code – that can protect us online.

Julian Assange is a crypto-anarchist, and so perhaps is Edward Snowden. Once the obsessive and nerdy kids in school, they are now the ones who fix your ransomware blunder or start up unicorn tech firms. They are the sort of people who run the technology that runs the world.

Crypto-anarchy is taking over the world, since millions now unwittingly rely on it for online security, and more are scrambling after blockchain and bitcoin ideas, desperate not to be left behind. That governments, businesses and friendly liberal types are falling over themselves to import exciting new tech that has been explicitly designed to undermine them is a bit of an inside joke.

At some point, and probably sooner than we think, the current left and right offerings of the major parties, including the populist, will start to appear ludicrous and unworkable. New political movements and ideas will arrive before long for this industrial revolution, especially once the majority of the population will soon have grown up online.

Perhaps there will be some back-to-the-earth, off-grid thinking reminiscent of the 1970s. More likely is that groups who will embrace the changes and experiment with entirely new forms of governance and society, will emerge. After all, they were right about digital technology, about surveillance and bitcoin and most of us ignored them. And for better or worse, I think they’re probably right about this too.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/04/forget-far-right-populism-crypto-anarchists-are-the-new-masters-internet-politics

3 Global beer sales drying up (BBC) People are drinking fewer alcoholic drinks, according to a new industry report tracking consumption worldwide. Beer sales continued to slide last year and the trend towards cider sipping stalled.

The global market for all alcoholic drinks contracted 1.3% in 2016, driven by a 1.8% fall in beer sales, the International Wine and Spirits Record found. Cider sales went in reverse, down 1.5% after several years of growth. The overall contraction of international alcohol sales is far greater than the average dip of 0.3% in the previous five years.

The IWSR market report for 2016 found global wine sales to be relatively flat, down 0.1% and spirits consumption grew 0.3%. UK gin makers could be boosted as the so-called gin revival continued, with sales of the iconic British tipple up 3.7% globally.

Although global GDP increased 3.5% in 2016, according to the IMF, and economic growth usually correlates with increased alcohol consumption several major economies, China, Russia and Brazil all faced an economic slowdown or recession. Beer sales in China fell 4.2%, were down 5.3% in Brazil and dipped 7.8% in Russia.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40149648

Brazil emerges from recession; Jeff Bezos, the world's next richest man; India looks to GST for a lift

1 Brazil emerges from recession (BBC) Brazil's economy has grown 1% in the first three months of 2017, putting an end to the country's longest recession in history, officials have announced. The GDP increase came after two consecutive years of negative growth, during which the Brazilian economy shrank by almost 8%.

A record harvest of soybeans, one of Brazil's main exports, gave the economy a boost. But analysts warned Brazil could go back into recession in the near future. A record 14 million people are unemployed according to official figures released earlier this week.

Uncertainty over the future of President Michel Temer has also rattled the markets. Stock markets plummeted last month after a taped conversation was leaked in which the president seemed to discuss the payment of hush money to a jailed politician. Mr Temer has denied the allegations.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40120364

2 Jeff Bezos, the world’s next richest man (Graham Ruddick in The Guardian) Just a few dollars more on the Amazon share price and the world will have a new richest man. Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder, is on the brink of overtaking Bill Gates to become the wealthiest person on the planet.

Bezos, 53, has been having a very good year. His net worth has risen by almost $20bn (£16bn) in the past five months to $85.2bn, putting him just behind Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, who is valued at $89.3bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The man who changed the way we shop is not a johnny-come-lately internet billionaire. Amazon was founded in 1994, when people still referred to the web as the information superhighway. But it is now the fourth most valuable company in the world behind Microsoft, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Apple.

The business began with Bezos selling books from his garage in Seattle. Since then, Amazon has expanded into other retail categories, such as food, clothing and electricals, and developed a formidable cloud computing service, its own television shows and an electronic personal assistant for people’s homes.

Bezos has repeatedly told shareholders, analysts and staff that it is still “day one” for the company, despite the fact that it accounts for 43% of all online sales in the US, and his office at Amazon’s headquarters is located in a building called “day one”. The best way to protect the company, he said, is “obsessive customer focus”.

Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen to Jorgensen and Jackie Gise, who married as teenagers. Gise filed for divorce from Jorgensen when Bezos was 17 months old. In 1968, she married Miguel Bezos, who legally adopted Bezos as his son. Gise asked Jorgensen to stay out of their lives. In an interview in 2014, Jorgensen said he was desperate to see his biological son, but Bezos had not been in contact.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/02/jeff-bezos-amazon-founder-worlds-richest-man-bill-gates

3 India looks to GST for a lift (Khaleej Times) India's economy should get a lift from the launch of a new sales tax, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said, putting a brave face on a slowdown in growth that followed a government crackdown on "black money". Jaitley's comments came after data showed that annual economic growth unexpectedly slipped to 6.1 per cent in the January-March quarter, its lowest in more than two years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's shock decision last November to outlaw high value old banknotes took 86 per cent of currency out of circulation virtually overnight. Asia's third-largest economy had clocked annual 7.5 per cent growth in July-September before Modi removed the oxygen of cash.

Economic expansion in the latest quarter, lower than China's 6.9 per cent, was hurt by a slowdown in farming, manufacturing and services. Construction activity contracted from a year earlier. The biggest disappointment was a sharp fall in capital investments.

Saddled with $150 billion of sour debts, banks have been slow to grant loans, especially to businesses perceived as riskier. Jaitley said the planned July 1 launch of a new Goods and Services Tax (GST) would boost economic growth and the government was "in a state of preparedness" for the rollout.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/economy/india-looks-to-gst-for-a-lift

US quits Paris climate deal; Dutch setting up hyperloop test centre; Diarrhoea deaths down by a third

1 US quits Paris climate deal (Oliver Milman, David Simith & Damian Carrington in The Guardian) Donald Trump has confirmed that he will withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, in effect ensuring the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases will quit the international effort to address dangerous global warming.

The US will remove itself from the deal, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not party to the Paris agreement. There will be no penalty for leaving, with the Paris deal based upon the premise of voluntary emissions reductions by participating countries.

“In order to fulfil my solemn duty to the US and its citizens, the US will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accords or a really entirely new transaction, on terms that are fair to the US,” the president said.

But Italy, France and Germany issued a joint statement shortly after Trump’s speech saying they believed the treaty could not be renegotiated. Trump said at the White House: “The fact that the Paris deal hamstrings the US while empowering some of the world’s top polluting countries should expel any doubt as to why foreign lobbyists should wish to keep our beautiful country tied up and bound down … That’s not going to happen while I’m president, I’m sorry.”

He added: “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, issued a rare statement saying the new administration had joined “a small handful of nations that reject the future”. But he said that US states, cities and businesses “will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got”.

In 2015, nearly 200 countries agreed to curb greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent the runaway climate change that would occur should temperatures spiral 2C or more above the pre-industrial era.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/01/donald-trump-confirms-us-will-quit-paris-climate-deal

2 Dutch setting up hyperloop test centre (Khaleej Times) The Dutch team that won this year's edition of the competition held by entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX to develop superfast hyperloop transport technology is setting up a full-scale testing centre for the technology.

A hyperloop is a shuttle that travels on magnetic rails, somewhat like a train, but which runs in a tube with little or no air. In theory, hyperloops could allow travel faster than the speed of sound. "People were dreaming already of transporting humans and cargo (in hyperloops) from the 1860s, so the concept is not that new," said Tim Houter, co-founder of Hardt Global Mobility, the company set up to commercialise the Dutch team's technology.

Hardt grew out of the competition team from the Technical University of Delft (TU Delft), which beat teams from MIT and the Technical University of Munich to win the all-around design and construction award in January.

With the help of several investors, among them TU Delft, the Dutch national railway NS, and construction company BAM, Hardt has built a 30 metre tube and is preparing to fit it with rails and the shuttle it has designed. Hardt has $675,000 in funding for the initial rounds of testing, with plans to raise more to build a high-speed test line by 2019. Houter's ambition is to break ground on a commercial hyperloop between Amsterdam and Paris by 2021.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/technology/hyperloop-test-centre-set-up-in-netherlands

3 Diarrhoea deaths down by a third (BBC) The number of children dying worldwide of diarrhoea fell by a third between 2005 and 2015, researchers have found. The Lancet study says better access to clean water and sanitation is key, with fewer weak and malnourished children becoming infected. New vaccines have also had a positive impact.

However, diarrhoea is still the fourth-biggest killer of children globally, with almost 500,000 a year dying before their fifth birthday. This figure could well be a significant under-estimate because of the lack of data in sub-Saharan Africa, where most cases occur.

Diarrhoea is also indirectly responsible for large numbers of deaths, through exacerbating the effects of other diseases, such as pneumonia and measles. The US researchers, who analysed data from the new Global Burden of Disease study, found well over a third (42%) of deaths happen in Nigeria and India.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-40123726