France could sell 60 Rafale combat jets to UAE

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France is finalising the sale of 60 Rafale combat jets made by France's Dassault Aviation to the UAE in a deal worth €6-€8 billion (US$8-US$11 billion), a newspaper reported on Saturday.

France has so far failed to find a foreign buyer for the Rafale jet. Newspaper Le Parisien said President Nicolas Sarkozy would personally push the talks in a visit to Abu Dhabi on Monday and Tuesday.

"An enormous contract, concerning the sale of 60 planes for a total amount of 6 to 8 billion euros - over the space of several years - is being finalised with the United Arab Emirates," the newspaper said.

French official stresses the importance of Sarkozy's visit to UAE

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Shedding light on cultural relations between UAE and France Levitte said that the strong cooperation between the two countries in this field is unparalleled. The Paris-Sorbonne University-Abu Dhabi will start awarding diplomas for the fist time from October this year. Projects are on the anvil to set up partnership between UAE and France in the field of school level education with the participation of Louis-le-Grand of Paris; Levitte said.

The UAE, known for its keenness for openness to the world, is bringing world's cultures to its people through the project for opening a branch of the Louvre Museum (Paris, France) on its land in Abu Dhabi. It can be named as the world country, as it stands as a model of openness to the world. A country that lives in the twenty first century, and knows how to take control of globalisation on its lands, as well as in its relations with the outer world, said Levitte.

In the field of defence, half of the UAE's armament is French, and discussions are going on for striking new deals.

Qatar fashions financial oasis to go toe-to-toe with East and West

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As Dubai’s opera buffa ends in a mangle of half-built towers and unpaid debts, regional leadership is shifting along the Gulf coast to the seriously rich gas sheikdom of Qatar – where more intellectual rulers are creating a cross between Sweden and Switzerland in the sands.

Qatar is already the world’s wealthiest country with a per capita income near $75,000. It will soon be much richer. By 2012 it will be producing 5.5m barrels a day of oil-equivalent: half Saudi Arabia’s output, for a population smaller than greater Glasgow.

They could perhaps hope to live as rentiers for a hundred years, but wealth corrodes the soul and they learned from the 1970s oil shock that petro-dollars are fickle.

IPO Green Shoots? Or a False Spring?

There are two types of people in this world: Those who see “green shoots” and those who don’t.

Economic optimists say that little bits of positive news,/a> reflect a sign that the broader economy is about to turn. The “antishooters” (for lack of a better term) call this merely noise. Things are bad and will stay bad.

So where do you come out on the latest data from the IPO market? So far this quarter, seven companies sold shares to the public for the first time, including solar-technology concern SolarWinds and restaurant reservations service OpenTable just this week. The shares of both companies jumped with SolarWinds climbing 10%, OpenTable surging 59% on the first day of trading.

The trick is not to lose sight of value stocks

Needless to say, investor confidence plummets when volatile markets experience historic cyclical lows like the one witnessed over the last one year. The major domestic markets were not an exception.

The Dubai Financial Market (DFM) lost around 70 per cent of its value in the last one year and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) lost half of its value in the same period. But such periods provide good bargains for long-term investors, particularly if they are looking for picking value stocks that have simply hit historic lows in the momentum frenzy without much loss in their fundamental values.

Value investing is all about actively looking for stocks of companies that the market has undervalued. The strategy involves investing in companies that are trading significantly below their historic averages and below the market. Thus, it involves hunting for bargains on stocks trading for less than their intrinsic or true values.

Challenges await for Opec

A near-doubling of oil prices since the end of last year should give Opec the chance to take a bow next week for its disciplined output cuts, but there is likely to be discontent in the wings of the producer group’s meeting.

With oil rising this week to $62 a barrel from $33 in December, most analysts expect Opec to stop short of a new cut in output after agreeing to remove 4.2 million barrels per day – 5 per cent of world demand – to counter the recession. The group will maintain its supply target of 24.845 million barrels a day when it meets on May 28 in Vienna, many analysts believe.

That is just as well, because Opec “malcontents” Venezuela, Angola and Iran are questioning individual supply targets or output figures. Analysts say the issue could complicate any change in overall supply and undermine efforts to present a unified front to the wider world.

UAE may rejoin union ‘if the terms are different’

The UAE would consider rejoining the Gulf monetary union “if the terms are different,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, strongly implying that GCC nations would first need to agree to base the future joint central bank in Abu Dhabi.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed’s statement was more explicit than his comments in Latvia the day before, when he simply left the door open to future participation without elaborating on the conditions.

Speaking yesterday in Lithuania, he said: “If the terms are different, we will look positively to that. At the moment the terms are unacceptable for the UAE, and that’s why we decided not to join.”

Turkish mills reduce rebar offers to UAE to USD 450 CFR levels

It is reported that the import prices of the rebars are on slide in UAE.

As since last 30 days Turkish mills could not succeed to book any rebars parcel at targeted levels of USD 500 CFR levels, market sources inform that the some rebar parcels by UAE buyers have been now booked from Turkey at USD 450 per tonne on theoretical weight.

This shows that UAE market is interested to import but they need right price levels.

First lady hopeful embodies Iran's reformist voice

There are four candidates in Iran's presidential election - all male - but the person who has emerged as the most intriguing on the campaign trail so far is a woman: the wife of MirHossein Moussavi, the reformist candidate.

The concept of first lady has not existed in Iran since the 1979 revolution put an end to the ceremonial role occupied by the last Queen, Farah. Since then Iran's presidents have largely avoided public appearances with their wives.

But Zahra Rahnavard is determined to change that should her husband be elected after the June 12 poll. She has already set aside years of tradition to campaign and accompany Mr Moussavi, prime minister between 1981 and 1989, at election rallies.

MGM Mirage wraps up $2.6 billion restructuring

MGM Mirage completed its $2.6 billion corporate restructuring effort Tuesday, the same day the company announced it would be involved in a $4 billion project to build and operate smaller, nongaming versions of the Bellagio and MGM Grand in Dubai.

The casino operator's restructuring plan is part of its efforts to help dig the company out from under its debt and leveraging issues.

The Strip casino giant sold 164.7 million shares of the company's stock at $7 a share on the New York Stock Exchange to raise $1.1 billion. The stock sale reflected 143 million shares placed on the open market and more than 21 million shares purchased by the company's underwriters.

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