Leading a decline in Dubai stocks, Emaar Properties PJSC shares slid their most in two weeks over concern a fire on New Year’s Eve that ripped through a hotel the firm owns would curb earnings. Abu Dhabi shares also fell.
Emaar dropped as much as 4.4 percent, before paring its slide to 2.6 percent at 11:01am in Dubai trading.
The developer of the world’s tallest tower was the biggest contributor to the DFM General Index’s 1.2 percent loss. Abu Dhabi’s ADX General Index retreated 1 percent. The fire is covered by insurance and Emaar sees “no material impact” to the company because of the blaze, according to a company statement to the stock exchange issued yesterday.
“Emaar’s statement helped halt some of the panic selling we saw at the beginning of the session, but investors still have questions,” Menacorp Dubai-based institutional business head Samer Al-Jaouni said. “The company needs to clarify the amount and percentage of cash flow that this hotel was contributing to Emaar’s hotel portfolio.”
Emaar developed, owned and operated the Address Downtown Dubai hotel, which on Thursday caught fire as Dubai prepared for its New Year’s Eve fireworks display. The blaze capped a challenging year for the real-estate industry in the emirate, which saw prices decline with oil. The dirham’s peg to the US dollar made properties more expensive for buyers from Europe and emerging markets, where some currencies weakened last year.
The DFM Real Estate Index retreated 2.8 percent, the most in two weeks, before trading 1.9 percent lower. The gauge sank 25 percent last year, the most since 2008. Emaar Malls Group PJSC, which is about 85 percent owned by Emaar Properties, fell 1.8 percent.
Fifteen people sustained light to moderate injuries in the incident, while one person suffered a heart attack, the Dubai media office said on Thursday. The blaze comes almost one year after a fire at the Dubai Marina Torch, one of the world’s tallest residential buildings. In 2012, the Tamweel Tower in the Jumeirah Lake Towers district neighboring the marina was wrecked by fire.
Abu Dhabi’s First Gulf Bank PJSC led the index’s retreat with 2.8 percent drop, the biggest decline in two weeks. Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank slid 3.6 percent, the biggest drop since Dec. 20.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
RSS