المقالات

With the growing conversion of intellectual ideas and human creativity into commercial business, the need to protect human efforts at least for a specified period of time increased. The increasing problems of piracy, commercialization and cross border trade pressed the...

Until the issuance of the Mortgage Law (prior to 2012), the finance sector regulations in Saudi Arabia, in particular the home finance segment was underdeveloped. The lenders were hesitant to provide financing due to ambiguous regulations and challenges associated with...

Islamic finance industry has evolved and grown considerably since its inception in a rudimentary form during 1960s. The focus of the Islamic finance industry during its initial stage of inception was to create customer awareness and product development. However, the...

At the end of Q2 2015, GCC region witnessed 31 completed M&A deals (Markaz GCC M&A Report – Q2 2015). Though the number of transactions completed increased by 11% in Q1 2015, there was a decline by 9% compared to...

Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) assumes importance in corporate finance decision making. In the GCC, unlisted companies outnumber listed companies by miles and hence most of the deals involve unlisted companies in one way or other. Corporate finance professionals...

On July 14, 2015, it was announced that the P5+1 -- the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia and Germany -- along with the European Union (EU), had achieved a long-term nuclear deal with Iran . According to...

Shale will decline   Shale will be resilient Oil price has dropped from over $100 a barrel last year to $57 today   The Saudis misjudged or underestimated the growth of the shale industry leading up to 2014, from 2005...

Traditionally in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), SMEs have found it difficult to access funding from banks. In the GCC countries, the share of SME loans in total bank loans has tended to be around 2%, as the...

In July 2015, the UAE announced that, effective from August 1, 2015, it was moving from a system of fixed and subsidized fuel prices to a system of adjusting prices monthly, in line with global price trends . Though the...

The blazing summer heat encouraged the yearly migration of GCC tourists to cooler locations. These past few years this “summer hibernation” has coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, which acts as a double whammy for stock markets in the...