Saturday 13 March 2021

#Dubai Sees Population Surging 76% on Lure of Beaches, Greenery - Bloomberg

Dubai Sees Population Surging 76% on Lure of Beaches, Greenery - Bloomberg

Dubai unveiled an urban plan for the next two decades that envisages the population growing by 76% and focuses on boosting waterfront acreage with the view of making the city’s quality of life the best in the world.

“The length of our beaches will increase by 400% during the next 20 years and 60% of Dubai’s area will be nature reserves,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, ruler of the emirate known for man-made islands, wrote on Twitter.

The Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan projects a population surge of 76% to 5.8 million people by 2040. It envisages 55% of the people will live within 800 meters (0.5 miles) of public transport, according to another tweet by the city’s crown prince.

Dubai grew at a breakneck speed into a global metropolis from a small fishing village in the 1960s. The Middle East’s tourism and business hub is doubling down on expansion despite economic challenges that gave it the Gulf’s steepest population decline last year, according to S&P Global Ratings. The double whammy of lower crude prices and the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the Gulf, resulting in job losses and exit of expatriate workers across the region.

Jet-Leasing Mega-Deal Could Herald Consolidation Wave in Sector - Bloomberg

Jet-Leasing Mega-Deal Could Herald Consolidation Wave in Sector - Bloomberg

AerCap Holdings NV’s $30 billion deal to buy General Electric Co.’s plane-leasing arm is spurring talk of further consolidation in the sector just as air travel is poised to begin a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

The transaction could be followed by more mergers and acquisitions, according to analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Cowen Inc.’s Helane Becker said its valuation should give investors comfort around book values, while a firm the size of the enlarged AerCap will be able to dictate jet design and purchase terms to manufacturers.

Fly Leasing Ltd., led by former Aer Lingus chairman Colm Barrington, has been exploring a sale, according to people familiar with the matter. Hong Kong’s billionaire Cheng family has also gauged buyer interest in Goshawk Aviation over the past year, the people said, asked not to be identified because deliberations are private.

How a Hasty Move to Change the World’s Key Oil Price Unraveled - Bloomberg

How a Hasty Move to Change the World’s Key Oil Price Unraveled - Bloomberg

How do you measure the value of the world’s most important commodity?

It’s a conundrum that brought uproar in the oil market over the past few weeks after S&P Global Platts, the company that publishes the world’s key crude price, announced on Feb. 22 that it was going to radically change the very nature of that benchmark, known as Dated Brent.

Just nine days after announcing its ambitious overhaul, which had been meant to begin in June 2022, Platts was forced to apologize to the market for the suddenness of the move. A week later it went a step further: the changes would be shelved for an as-yet-undefined period.

“It is not surprising that it caused such an uproar in the market,” Adi Imsirovic, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and an experienced oil trader, said in a paper on the reform. The proposal was “nothing short of revolutionary.”

While Platts may have hit pause on the plan, what the saga really highlighted was a more fundamental problem facing the global oil market. Volumes of Brent oil -- which gets its name from a Scottish oil field whose production peaked in the 1980s -- have slowed to a trickle. Platts widened what constituted ‘Brent’ to include four other grades -- Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk and Troll -- but even those are slowly running out.