Economy and Politics
Egypt’s bourse hit a two-week high on Thursday after Qatar and Libya pledged $5 billion in funding to the cash-strapped Arab country, while most Gulf markets also gain in earnings anticipation.
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services affirmed the long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings of Lebanon at B/B, meaning the outlook remains negative.
The cost of bailing out Cyprus has swollen to €23bn ($30bn), with the crisis-hit country having to take on the lion's share of the measures needed to avoid bankruptcy, according to a draft document by the country's international creditors.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has offered to resign because of an increasingly bitter dispute with President Mahmoud Abbas over the extent of his authority.
Companies and Business
Arabtec Holding climbed to the highest in a month on investor bets the shares of the Gulf's largest publicly traded builder are cheap compared with Dubai-based property developers.
Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi investment fund with a mandate to boost the emirate’s local economy, swung to a net profit in 2012, helped by improved margins at some of its core businesses and lower impairments, it said on Thursday.
Lebanon needs to generate around 20,000 additional jobs per year over the next decade, the World Bank said in a highly critical study released Thursday.
