Dubai Financial Market (DFM) has announced the listing of Kuwait’s HITS Telecom Company. The company shares commenced trading on Wednesday, December 23rd 2009, under the trading symbol “HITSTELEC”, which appears on DFM screens, trading systems and publications within the telecommunication sector.
The new listing of HITS Telecom, which is the first non-UAE telecom company to join DFM, brings the total number of securities listed on the exchange to 88, including 66 public shareholding companies and further increases the number of Kuwaiti companies listed on DFM to 17.
Essa Kazim, Executive Chairman, Dubai Financial Market; Dr. Sultan Bahberi, Chairman of HITS Telecom Holding and senior representatives from both sides attended the listing ceremony.
Commenting on this development, Kazim said: “We are delighted to welcome HITS Telecom to DFM, which offers greater opportunities for our investors and further strengthens the telecommunications sector on the market.. Today’s listing reinforces DFM’s position as the market of choice for Kuwaiti companies seeking a dual listing, it reflects the high level of confidence businesses have in our exchange and the role DFM plays to support the growth story 0f successful companies.”
“Dubai Financial Market is constantly looking to expand and diversify the opportunities available to investors by encouraging and partnering with companies from around the region, active in different sectors to benefit from trading on the region’s leading stock exchange. Undoubtedly, regional companies look upon DFM as an attractive exchange with a proven track record of professionalism and state-of-the-art facilities. These companies are keen to capitalize on their growth through a trading and fundraising channel by listing on DFM.” Kazim added.
Khalid Al-Mutawa, Vice-Chairman, HITS Telecom company, said: "The listing of HITS Telecom on DFM has many positive implications supported by the strong economy in the UAE in general, and Dubai in particular, as the emirate’s leadership has a clear vision for the economic path. Furthermore, listing on a highly regulated, active and liquid exchange constitutes unlimited value-added benefits including the expansion of our shareholders base by attracting new partners, not only from the local market but also from other regional markets.”
“HITS Telecom is actively involved in a strategic plan to target new markets in line with its goal to grow within the telecommunications sector. Undoubtedly, this expansion will have significant benefits for the company, as some of its regional subsidiaries will be operational in the near future,” he added.
Founded in Kuwait in 1999, HITS Telecom has been listed on the Kuwaiti Stock Exchange since 2004 with its main activity focused on managing its various companies and subsidiaries across the group. Currently, HITS Telecom owns and operates companies across four continents, with a focus on the emerging/developing markets . The company’s business in Africa and Latin America is mainly concentrated on the mobile network operations (MNO), while its activities in the Middle East and Europe are focused on the virtual networks (MVNO).
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Community Bankers Meet With Obama as Regulation Fight Heats Up
WASHINGTON—Community bankers got their first exclusive meeting Tuesday with President Barack Obama amid an intensifying fight within the industry over legislation that would tighten federal financial regulation.
Mr. Obama used the White House parley with executives from smaller banks to reiterate his push for bankers to do more lending to small businesses. "The pendulum may have swung too far in the direction of not lending," Mr. Obama said, adding that the White House is working on ways to cut "red tape" that banks complain is making it harder to lend. He suggested the White House wouldn't intervene with federal regulators though, which many bankers complain are being too strict.
"We don't have direct influence over our independent regulators," Mr. Obama said. A top focus for the White House in the coming months will be to push for more lending, he said, and that can only be done with the cooperation of financial institutions.
But getting bankers to sing from the same hymnal won't be easy. Two bankers' groups, the American Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America, are challenging each other, and delivering competing messages on Capitol Hill as Congress weighs a wide-ranging overhaul of financial industry regulation. The ABA and ICBA both claim to speak for "community banks," but they took starkly different positions on a recent House bill. The ICBA supported it, while the ABA opposed it.
The spat among bankers promises to become nastier as the Senate takes up the bill.
"The name-calling is really partly a strategy to build their brands against each other, and I think it's foolish," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. PIRG, a coalition of consumer groups that frequently fights against the banking industry. "To the extent that it hurts them, it's great that they are fighting with each other and using up their bandwidth."
ABA officials say ICBA officials have been too willing to throw their support behind controversial legislation in exchange for modest changes in the bill. ICBA officials counter that the ABA is conflicted because it represents both small community banks and large Wall Street firms that are often at odds with each other.
Conflicting messages from the industry "will invite the enactment of a bill that will truly hurt us badly for years to come," ABA Chairman Art Johnson wrote in a letter to chief executives earlier this month.
ICBA officials bristled at the letter, and Chief Executive Cam Fine said he felt it attacked his group's "leadership personally." He had his own criticism of his group's rival.
"ABA represents both the very largest financial firms and some smaller institutions whose best interests are not always the same," he said.
The ICBA backed a provision in the House bill that would allow the government to go in and break up big banks if regulators believe the company could pose a risk to the broader economy. The ABA opposed this measure. ICBA has also argued for stricter limits on the amount of deposits banks should be able to control, an idea the ABA has fought.
Community banks are traditionally held in higher esteem in Washington than are large banks, in part because community bankers are in each lawmaker's district and the group collectively wields considerable influence. After the House passed its bill earlier this month that would raise fees and impose new limits against large financial companies, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) said large banks didn't wield as much influence.
"It's not the big banks that have the clout," he said. "It's the community banks and the credit unions."
The financial crisis has exposed cracks in part of the financial system, with several large companies getting bailed out by the federal government. In addition, 165 banks have failed since January 2008. There are more than 8,000 banks in the country, and most are small, with less than $10 billion in assets.
The ABA, created in 1875, says its members represent 95% of the total assets within the banking system, though it won't disclose exactly how many banks pay dues.
The ICBA, created in 1930, says it speaks for more than 5,000 dues-paying banks. Combined, the groups spent close to $10 million lobbying Congress in the first nine months of the year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Mr. Obama used the White House parley with executives from smaller banks to reiterate his push for bankers to do more lending to small businesses. "The pendulum may have swung too far in the direction of not lending," Mr. Obama said, adding that the White House is working on ways to cut "red tape" that banks complain is making it harder to lend. He suggested the White House wouldn't intervene with federal regulators though, which many bankers complain are being too strict.
"We don't have direct influence over our independent regulators," Mr. Obama said. A top focus for the White House in the coming months will be to push for more lending, he said, and that can only be done with the cooperation of financial institutions.
But getting bankers to sing from the same hymnal won't be easy. Two bankers' groups, the American Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America, are challenging each other, and delivering competing messages on Capitol Hill as Congress weighs a wide-ranging overhaul of financial industry regulation. The ABA and ICBA both claim to speak for "community banks," but they took starkly different positions on a recent House bill. The ICBA supported it, while the ABA opposed it.
The spat among bankers promises to become nastier as the Senate takes up the bill.
"The name-calling is really partly a strategy to build their brands against each other, and I think it's foolish," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. PIRG, a coalition of consumer groups that frequently fights against the banking industry. "To the extent that it hurts them, it's great that they are fighting with each other and using up their bandwidth."
ABA officials say ICBA officials have been too willing to throw their support behind controversial legislation in exchange for modest changes in the bill. ICBA officials counter that the ABA is conflicted because it represents both small community banks and large Wall Street firms that are often at odds with each other.
Conflicting messages from the industry "will invite the enactment of a bill that will truly hurt us badly for years to come," ABA Chairman Art Johnson wrote in a letter to chief executives earlier this month.
ICBA officials bristled at the letter, and Chief Executive Cam Fine said he felt it attacked his group's "leadership personally." He had his own criticism of his group's rival.
"ABA represents both the very largest financial firms and some smaller institutions whose best interests are not always the same," he said.
The ICBA backed a provision in the House bill that would allow the government to go in and break up big banks if regulators believe the company could pose a risk to the broader economy. The ABA opposed this measure. ICBA has also argued for stricter limits on the amount of deposits banks should be able to control, an idea the ABA has fought.
Community banks are traditionally held in higher esteem in Washington than are large banks, in part because community bankers are in each lawmaker's district and the group collectively wields considerable influence. After the House passed its bill earlier this month that would raise fees and impose new limits against large financial companies, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) said large banks didn't wield as much influence.
"It's not the big banks that have the clout," he said. "It's the community banks and the credit unions."
The financial crisis has exposed cracks in part of the financial system, with several large companies getting bailed out by the federal government. In addition, 165 banks have failed since January 2008. There are more than 8,000 banks in the country, and most are small, with less than $10 billion in assets.
The ABA, created in 1875, says its members represent 95% of the total assets within the banking system, though it won't disclose exactly how many banks pay dues.
The ICBA, created in 1930, says it speaks for more than 5,000 dues-paying banks. Combined, the groups spent close to $10 million lobbying Congress in the first nine months of the year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Twitter finally in the money with Google link
Biz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter, was in the audience at the launch this week of Google’s new weapon in the search engine wars.
He was looking remarkably cheerful, as well he might. The announcement of a stream of millions of Twitter updates in Google’s results pages marked the moment when the faddish micro-blogging site truly entered the mainstream and started to make real money.
Now Google’s millions of users can see a scroll of updates, many from Twitter, in their results pages when they do a search for a vast number of popular queries.
A search for “Tiger Woods” produces a page with a new “Latest Updates” box. In it there is a constantly refreshing and scrolling list of tweets, blog posts and news stories, all flowing on to the page in real-time within seconds of their publication to the web. Designarchives tweets: “Holiday shopping is officially in full swing, kinda like Tiger Woods was.”
While not everyone will want up-to-the-second delivery from the globe’s virtual water-cooler, Twitter’s partnership with Google, and a similar deal struck with Microsoft and its Bing search engine, give the three-year-old company a solid revenue stream.
The deals are each worth several million dollars a month to Twitter, industry insiders said. The cash marks the first tangible evidence that the service can make money after months of monetisation promises from Twitter executives.
Twitter has seen explosive growth in the past two years to more than 50 million users, driven in part by celebrity endorsements but also by the service’s ability to deliver breaking news, sometimes ahead of traditional media, such as the plane crash on the Hudson river in New York. The Treasury used the service this week to deliver summaries of the Pre-Budget Report as Alistair Darling was addressing the Commons.
But while Twitter has become established as a cultural phenomenon, critics have pointed to the lack of a business model and questioned its longevity. Analysts said that Google’s exposure of tweets to a wider audience — the search engine processes billions of search queries a day — will help the company to cement its position as a window into the world’s conversations.
Greg Sterling, analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence, said: “The value is the institutionalisation of Twitter that comes from the deal with Google. The inclusion in the search results will make it more visible.”
He said that Twitter was difficult for many people to get started on. “Twitter can seem ridiculous to those who are not using it to get commercial offers or information from sources that they value. There will be some education for parts of the market from this,” he added.
Twitter’s real-time insight into what people are discussing has huge value to marketeers and companies that want to reach consumers and understand how their brands are perceived, according to experts.
That potential has seen venture capitalists pile into the company. Twitter has gathered $100 million in funding to finance its operations, valuing the company at $1 billion.
The latest stakes were sold in October to three of Twitter’s existing investors — Benchmark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and Spark Capital — and two new shareholders, Insight Venture Partners and T Rowe Price.
The cash has given Twitter breathing space. Executives have said they are in no hurry to introduce advertising to the site, which may put off users. They have also said they will remain independent despite rumours of overtures from Google and Microsoft. Last year they turned down a $500 million offer from Facebook.
Mr Stone said last month that 2010 would be Twitter’s “revenue year”. The company will capitalise on corporate use of the service by introducing fees on accounts primarily used for commercial purposes. A report from NeXt Up Research forecast that Twitter would have about $140 million in revenue a year by 2014. A new poll of 1,200 UK businesses using Twitter found that 22 per cent would be prepared to pay for additional services. Nearly half the companies surveyed by Accredited Supplier said Twitter would be the world’s largest social media property by 2020.
Computer maker Dell said it had pulled in more than $6.5 million from its (free) Twitter accounts.
Tweets will push up profits: Analysis by Murad Ahmed
Google’s desire to obtain real-time information — such as the deluge of messages that come out of services such as Twitter every second — is in keeping with its mission: “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
These tweets are a cash cow waiting to be milked. Google executives have never been shy in explaining why they want more and more information to be searchable. The better and more relevant data that they can offer its users, the more advertising they can sell next to these search results.
This billion-dollar revenue stream is the driving force behind almost everything Google does. Whether that is Street View, which gives people a pedestrian-eye view of roads around the country, or Google Books, an attempt to scan and digitise millions of texts — the aim is simple: make Google the indispensable holder of the world’s information.
Realising this, Microsoft, with its Bing search engine, and this week, Yahoo, have also announced similar deals to contain real-time search information within search results.
But why is real-time search valuable? Because it is instant. Whereas news articles take hours and days to prepare, and blog posts take minutes, tweets and micro-blogs can be tapped out and published in seconds.
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, once explained that he first saw the power of the service when the first he heard about an earthquake a few miles away was through people tweeting about it. He felt the tremors a few minutes later.
Some worry that people will tweet less, or more privately, now that these messages are just a Google search away from being discovered.
Yet analysts said there is little evidence of that happening. Twitter has thrived because of its openness, just like other social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. People seem happy to trade in privacy to be part of these communities. Tweets will continue to grow. Google, Microsoft and others believe that their profits can follow suit.
He was looking remarkably cheerful, as well he might. The announcement of a stream of millions of Twitter updates in Google’s results pages marked the moment when the faddish micro-blogging site truly entered the mainstream and started to make real money.
Now Google’s millions of users can see a scroll of updates, many from Twitter, in their results pages when they do a search for a vast number of popular queries.
A search for “Tiger Woods” produces a page with a new “Latest Updates” box. In it there is a constantly refreshing and scrolling list of tweets, blog posts and news stories, all flowing on to the page in real-time within seconds of their publication to the web. Designarchives tweets: “Holiday shopping is officially in full swing, kinda like Tiger Woods was.”
While not everyone will want up-to-the-second delivery from the globe’s virtual water-cooler, Twitter’s partnership with Google, and a similar deal struck with Microsoft and its Bing search engine, give the three-year-old company a solid revenue stream.
The deals are each worth several million dollars a month to Twitter, industry insiders said. The cash marks the first tangible evidence that the service can make money after months of monetisation promises from Twitter executives.
Twitter has seen explosive growth in the past two years to more than 50 million users, driven in part by celebrity endorsements but also by the service’s ability to deliver breaking news, sometimes ahead of traditional media, such as the plane crash on the Hudson river in New York. The Treasury used the service this week to deliver summaries of the Pre-Budget Report as Alistair Darling was addressing the Commons.
But while Twitter has become established as a cultural phenomenon, critics have pointed to the lack of a business model and questioned its longevity. Analysts said that Google’s exposure of tweets to a wider audience — the search engine processes billions of search queries a day — will help the company to cement its position as a window into the world’s conversations.
Greg Sterling, analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence, said: “The value is the institutionalisation of Twitter that comes from the deal with Google. The inclusion in the search results will make it more visible.”
He said that Twitter was difficult for many people to get started on. “Twitter can seem ridiculous to those who are not using it to get commercial offers or information from sources that they value. There will be some education for parts of the market from this,” he added.
Twitter’s real-time insight into what people are discussing has huge value to marketeers and companies that want to reach consumers and understand how their brands are perceived, according to experts.
That potential has seen venture capitalists pile into the company. Twitter has gathered $100 million in funding to finance its operations, valuing the company at $1 billion.
The latest stakes were sold in October to three of Twitter’s existing investors — Benchmark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and Spark Capital — and two new shareholders, Insight Venture Partners and T Rowe Price.
The cash has given Twitter breathing space. Executives have said they are in no hurry to introduce advertising to the site, which may put off users. They have also said they will remain independent despite rumours of overtures from Google and Microsoft. Last year they turned down a $500 million offer from Facebook.
Mr Stone said last month that 2010 would be Twitter’s “revenue year”. The company will capitalise on corporate use of the service by introducing fees on accounts primarily used for commercial purposes. A report from NeXt Up Research forecast that Twitter would have about $140 million in revenue a year by 2014. A new poll of 1,200 UK businesses using Twitter found that 22 per cent would be prepared to pay for additional services. Nearly half the companies surveyed by Accredited Supplier said Twitter would be the world’s largest social media property by 2020.
Computer maker Dell said it had pulled in more than $6.5 million from its (free) Twitter accounts.
Tweets will push up profits: Analysis by Murad Ahmed
Google’s desire to obtain real-time information — such as the deluge of messages that come out of services such as Twitter every second — is in keeping with its mission: “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
These tweets are a cash cow waiting to be milked. Google executives have never been shy in explaining why they want more and more information to be searchable. The better and more relevant data that they can offer its users, the more advertising they can sell next to these search results.
This billion-dollar revenue stream is the driving force behind almost everything Google does. Whether that is Street View, which gives people a pedestrian-eye view of roads around the country, or Google Books, an attempt to scan and digitise millions of texts — the aim is simple: make Google the indispensable holder of the world’s information.
Realising this, Microsoft, with its Bing search engine, and this week, Yahoo, have also announced similar deals to contain real-time search information within search results.
But why is real-time search valuable? Because it is instant. Whereas news articles take hours and days to prepare, and blog posts take minutes, tweets and micro-blogs can be tapped out and published in seconds.
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, once explained that he first saw the power of the service when the first he heard about an earthquake a few miles away was through people tweeting about it. He felt the tremors a few minutes later.
Some worry that people will tweet less, or more privately, now that these messages are just a Google search away from being discovered.
Yet analysts said there is little evidence of that happening. Twitter has thrived because of its openness, just like other social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. People seem happy to trade in privacy to be part of these communities. Tweets will continue to grow. Google, Microsoft and others believe that their profits can follow suit.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Bankers Say Financial Overhaul Bill ‘Over-reacts to the Crisis’
A trade group of the nation’s largest banks sent a letter to each member of the House Financial Services Committee on Sunday urging them to vote against a bill that would give the government more power to break up a failing financial services firm. (Read letter to HFSC.)
Amendments to the bill would also allow the government to potentially break up healthy financial company, if the government determined its potential collapse could imperil the broader economy. The House panel is scheduled to vote on the bill Wednesday.
The Financial Services Roundtable, whose members including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., wrote in an 11-page letter “the bill will have a significant impact on our fragile economic recovery and the long-term growth of the economy.”
The letter says “the bill damages the ability of financial institutions, especially larger financial institutions, to finance the economic recovery and facilitate long-term economic growth.”
The trade group says higher capital requirements for banks and a requirement that banks pay into a fund to handle future financial collapses would “reduce lending and other activities by large financial companies.” For example, the bankers said requiring banks to finance in advance a $150 billion would equate to a loss of $3 trillion in new loans.
Large financial companies will have higher costs of funding “and may accelerate the failure of a troubled institution,” the Financial Services Roundtable said.
Many of the bills that have passed through the House Financial Services Committee to overhaul financial regulation have gone with little Republican support, but the measure to be voted on Wednesday could be different. The bill includes an amendment championed by Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas) that would subject the Federal Reserve to much more scrutiny. Some Republicans might vote for the broader bill because it includes Rep. Paul’s amendment.
Amendments to the bill would also allow the government to potentially break up healthy financial company, if the government determined its potential collapse could imperil the broader economy. The House panel is scheduled to vote on the bill Wednesday.
The Financial Services Roundtable, whose members including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., wrote in an 11-page letter “the bill will have a significant impact on our fragile economic recovery and the long-term growth of the economy.”
The letter says “the bill damages the ability of financial institutions, especially larger financial institutions, to finance the economic recovery and facilitate long-term economic growth.”
The trade group says higher capital requirements for banks and a requirement that banks pay into a fund to handle future financial collapses would “reduce lending and other activities by large financial companies.” For example, the bankers said requiring banks to finance in advance a $150 billion would equate to a loss of $3 trillion in new loans.
Large financial companies will have higher costs of funding “and may accelerate the failure of a troubled institution,” the Financial Services Roundtable said.
Many of the bills that have passed through the House Financial Services Committee to overhaul financial regulation have gone with little Republican support, but the measure to be voted on Wednesday could be different. The bill includes an amendment championed by Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas) that would subject the Federal Reserve to much more scrutiny. Some Republicans might vote for the broader bill because it includes Rep. Paul’s amendment.
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