Business

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo’s quarterly profits shot up by more than double to $163 million even as it prepares for a takeover by Verizon.

“We remain very confident, not only in the value of our business, but also in the value Yahoo products bring to our users’ lives,” the company’s Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in the earnings release, which beat expectations despite only a slight rise in revenue.

Yahoo skipped its usual quarterly earnings call with analysts due to the pending takeover by the US telecommunication company, for which Mayer said Yahoo is busy preparing despite recent revelations about a major data breach that may affect the deal.

Shares were up 1.3 per cent to $42.22 in after-market trades following the earnings report release, reflecting confidence the breach is not prompting a significant number of users to abandon Yahoo.

Revenue for the quarter that ended on September 30 came to $1.3 billion, up from $1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Mobile revenue during the quarter reached $396 million, up from $271 million the previous year.

“We launched several new products and showed solid financial performance across the board,” Mayer said.

The Internet pioneer agreed in July to sell its core assets to Verizon for $4.8 billion, ending a 20-year run as an independent company.

The deal would separate the Yahoo Internet assets from its more valuable stake in the Chinese online giant Alibaba.

However, Verizon said last week that a recently revealed hack affecting 500 million Yahoo customers worldwide could have a “material” effect on the $4.8 billion deal.

The comments from Verizon general counsel Craig Silliman suggest the telecom company could seek to reduce the purchase price or walk away from the deal.

Although the hack took place in late 2014, Yahoo announced it only last month, dealing the faded Internet star a fresh blow.

The attack was probably “state sponsored”, the company said, although some analysts have questioned the source.

“We’re working hard to retain their trust,” Mayer said of Yahoo’s users, “and are heartened by their continued loyalty as seen in our user engagement trends”.

The company has made several attempts to refocus after falling behind Google and Facebook in key segments of online advertising.

AMMAN — Arab banks are capable of solving economic problems in the Arab world with their "huge financial assets”, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and Minister of State for Investment Affairs Jawad Anani said on Tuesday. 

Speaking at a forum, titled "Financial Inclusion: Towards Strategic Economic and Social Stability”, Anani said banks are meant “to share benefit, not to monopolise it”. 

The two-day forum, in which several bankers are participating, highlights the importance of financial inclusion to achieve economic development and financial and social stability.

Addressing the participants, Anani commended recent measures taken by the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), backed by the government, to provide for further financial inclusion. 

He noted that representatives of shareholders should be on the board of banking entities, saying “board monopoly will adversely affect credit offering and lead to poor credit distribution”.  

Under these measures, young people and women, in particular, should benefit from financial tools at a low cost so as to empower these segments and contribute to combating poverty and unemployment, he explained. 

CBJ Governor Ziad Fariz said that the latest global financial crisis revealed a structural shortcoming in the global financial and banking systems, noting that more than half of the world’s population does not get to benefit from banks’ services. 

He explained that the majority of the population in Arab countries are young people, and those who are below the age of 18 cannot start their own bank accounts to save for the future.

The CBJ governor added that small- and medium-scale enterprises in Arab countries, especially the ones that receive large numbers of refugees, go through great hassle to access appropriate funding at a reasonable cost.

“Information asymmetry represents a huge obstacle for a group of the population and for small enterprises to obtain credit,” he told the forum. 

Other speakers, including Association of Banks in Jordan President Musa Shehadeh, underscored the importance of having a stable financial system in order to achieve financial inclusion.

Organised by the Union of Arab Banks, in cooperation with the Council of Arab Economic Unity, the CBJ and the Association of Banks in Jordan, the forum is scheduled to also examine the role of Islamic banks. 

Participants will also deal with ways to combat money laundering and eliminate the funding of terrorism, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

CAIRO — Borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbour has rarely been so contentious in Egypt.

At supermarkets across the country sugar has all but vanished, prompting media talk of a crisis and pushing the state to rapidly increase imports despite an acute dollar shortage and soaring global prices of the sweetener.

Egypt consumes around 3 million tonnes of sugar annually, while it produces just over 2 million tonnes, with the gap filled by imports, usually between July and October when local beet and sugar cane supplies have wound down.

But traders said high global sugar prices, which surged 50 per cent over the past year, combined with a rising black market rate for dollars has made it too expensive and risky for many importers to obtain sugar in recent months.

Importers have no choice but to turn to the black market to get dollars, as banks ration meagre supplies, paying 15 Egyptian pounds or more per dollar versus an official rate of 8.8. At such rates, more and more traders say they can no longer buy.

"No one is willing to source dollars for this. It is way too expensive," one sugar trader said.

In the absence of steady imports, sugar supplies have all but dried up, shop owners, commodity traders, and producers of sugary foodstuffs told Reuters.

"It's been four weeks since we've had sugar at any of the branches," said Aly Ibrahim Aly, a manager at Metro Market, one of Egypt's largest supermarket chains.

Other shops across Cairo told Reuters they were getting just a small fraction of their needs, with stocks sold out within the hour they arrive as customers fight over bags that have doubled in price in recent weeks.

"I just want to make a cup of tea and I can't," one shopkeeper said. He echoed growing complaints from the public about rising prices and shortages even as the country looks to implement further austerity measures ahead of a $12 billion IMF lending programme granted preliminary approval in August.

Blank cheque 

Traders describe the current sugar shortage as partly self-inflicted, the result of delayed government reaction to conflicting policy pronouncements.

The ministry of supply said in June that the country had sugar reserves to satisfy demand for a year. In August, it reneged, saying it needed 500,000 tonnes to make it until February, the start of the next harvest.

An arm of the supply ministry bought around 225,000 tonnes of sugar in August from state-owned factories, earmarking for government outlets stocks that normally supply the private sector, traders told Reuters. The private sector has struggled to procure adequate quantities since then.

"All the sugar is being dedicated to the government subsidy programme and nothing is going to the private sector," the sugar trader said, referring to government-run supermarkets that sell subsidised sugar.

"One company basically offered us a blank cheque and said do whatever it takes to get it," he added.

Ultimately they couldn't find any, he said.

Egypt's state grain buyer GASC has issued several sugar tenders over the past two months, buying about 250,000 tonnes so far.

GASC's recent tenders have called for white, as opposed to raw, sugar in order to bypass local refinement and head straight to supermarket shelves. That cuts time but adds an $80-$100 dollar per tonne premium, traders said.

Supply Minister Mohamed Ali El Sheikh said last week that Egypt had enough sugar stocks to cover demand for four months — but the manager of one government-run supermarket told Reuters on Tuesday that he had been out of stock for four days.

AMMAN — W Hotels is opening a 37-storey branch in Amman, featuring seven floors of serviced apartments and a helipad, Eagle Hills Jordan has announced.

Eagle Hills Jordan is developing the project, which includes the W Amman and the Skyline Residences serviced by the W Amman as well as office space and retail outlets, the company said in a statement. 

Skyline Residences will feature 41 apartments, between one and four bedrooms, on the top seven floors of the building, above the W Amman, in Abdali Boulevard. 

Construction of the project is complete, and only the finishes remain, according to Eagle Hills Jordan CEO Alaa Batayneh, who added that the $200 million project would be ready by mid-2017.

The hotel will be the only building in the area with a helipad, Batayneh told The Jordan Times. “It adds another dot for Jordan in the regional international market.” 

The W Amman is under the umbrella of Eagle Hills, an Abu Dhabi-based private real estate investment and development company and will be served and run by Marriot International Inc., which has more than 5,700 properties in over 110 countries.

In Jordan, Eagle Hills is involved in the development and management of four key projects, including The St Regis Amman and two mixed-use projects in Aqaba, Marsa Zayed and Saraya Aqaba.

The W Hotel, which by 2020 will have 75 hotels around the world, will offer 400 job opportunities in its branch in Amman, Batayneh said. 

“The W is an international brand, so we are very excited to have it here in Jordan under the Skyline Residences,” he said.  

ROME — Climate change could sink up to 122 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030, mostly in South Asia and Africa, where small farmers would see their output plummet, the UN warned on Monday.

In an annual report, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) warned that a worst-case scenario involving high-impact climate change would pound the communities that rely on agriculture for their livelihood.

It called for a "broad-based transformation of food and agricultural systems" to adapt to a warmer world, and doubling down on support for the world's 475 million smallholder farm families.

"There is no doubt climate change affects food security," FAO chief Jose Graziano da Silva said.

"What climate change does is to bring back uncertainties from the time we were all hunter gatherers. We cannot assure any more that we will have the harvest we have planted."

Farming is both a driver of climate change, responsible for some 21 per cent of global greenhouse gas production, and a victim, with crops adversely affected by drought and floods.

Adopting "climate-smart" practices, like planting nitrogen-efficient and heat-tolerant crops, or finding better ways to conserve water, would reduce undernourishment for many millions, the FAO said.

To weigh the effect of climate change, the FAO created predictive models based on either a low- or high-impact scenario, and compared them to a third in which climate change did not exist.

Without global warming, it said, general economic growth would work to reduce the numbers of those at risk of hunger in most regions.

But taking a "business as usual" approach in a world with climate change would see the numbers of the world's poor jump by between 35 and 122 million by 2030.

In the worst-case scenario, 62 million of the newly poor are in South Asia, and 43 million in Africa. 

'Increasingly severe' impact 

Over the next few decades, the UN agency said some regions, especially cold ones, would actually see some gains in fishing, farming and forestry output. 

But that positive impact would disappear by 2030, replaced by an "increasingly severe" negative impact on yields all across the globe.

The FAO urged signatories to the 2015 Paris climate deal to "put commitments into action", underscoring the need to help developing countries with climate change mitigation.

These should include support for innovation, climate finance to fund developing countries' involvement and using international public finance to trigger greater public and private investment.

The FAO estimated the cost of funding smallholder farmers in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia at roughly $210 billion (190 billion euros) per year.

"The benefits of adaptation outweigh the costs of inaction by very wide margins," Graziano da Silva said.

In comparison, developed countries and the biggest developing countries spent more than $560 billion in 2015 supporting the farming industry, the FAO said in its report.

The UN agency also highlighted agricultural innovations that could help the industry reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of flooding rice paddies, for example, Asian farmers could use water-conserving alternatives, with a 45-per cent drop in methane emissions.

AMMAN — Minister of Industry, Trade and Supply Yarub Qudah on Monday called for strengthening the economic ties between Jordan and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Speaking at the Jordanian-Bosnian Business Forum held in Amman, the minister urged Bosnian businessmen to invest in Jordan and to benefit from the opportunities available in the Kingdom.

Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of Bosnia and Herzegovina Mirko Sarovic called on the two sides to sign bilateral agreements to enhance economic relations and commercial exchange as he urged businessmen from his country to explore potential investment opportunities in Jordan, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Also on Monday, Agriculture Minister Khaled Hneifat met with Sarovic, according to Petra. The two ministers stressed the importance of increasing cooperation in the agricultural sector and opening the Bosnian market to Jordanian agricultural products. Hneifat and Sarovic agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding to boost cooperation.

BENAULIM, India — The leaders of five of the world's rising powers ended a two-day summit on Sunday with a pledge to speed global economic recovery as well as to fight terrorism.

Meeting in the beach resort state of Goa in southwestern India, the five countries known collectively as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — adopted a final declaration endorsing their commitment to act against the financing of terror groups and their supplies of weapons and other equipment.

Presidents Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Michel Temer of Brazil and Jacob Zuma of South Africa, and their host, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also vowed in the declaration to tackle the global economic slowdown and reform the world's financial architecture.

The group, which represents nearly half of the world's population and a quarter of its economy, with a combined annual GDP of $16.6 trillion, renewed its commitment to speed global recovery by investing in infrastructure projects and the manufacturing sector.

The BRICS leaders adopted three agreements, including two to set up separate research networks for developing agriculture and railways. They agreed to crack down on economic crime by fighting tax evasion, money laundering and corruption.

"We have agreed to make the BRICS a strong voice on emerging regional and global issues," Modi told reporters.

The BRICS leaders stressed the need to strike a balance between economic development and environmental protection, and hailed the early entry into force of the Paris climate agreement.

The BRICS nations agreed that the New Development Bank, which the group set up in 2014, should continue to focus on infrastructure, technology and renewable energy sectors, adding that "in order to further bridge the gap in the global financial architecture, we agreed to fast track the setting up of a BRICS credit rating agency".

"In a world of new security challenges and continuing economic uncertainties, BRICS stands as a beacon of peace, potential and promise," Modi said.

The thrust of the declaration reflected the flagging economic fortunes of the BRICS countries in recent years due to the global slowdown.

In Russia, the decline in global oil and commodity prices coupled with biting Western sanctions have dealt a blow to the economy. The Chinese economy has slowed to its slowest pace in 25 years, although its 7 per cent growth rate still places it among the fastest-growing global economies.

South Africa remains caught in severe economic turmoil, with the country's credit rating at risk of being downgraded to junk by the end of the year.

Brazil is only just emerging from months of the worst economic recession it has seen since the 1930s, a situation that was further worsened by recent political turmoil.

India, although the fastest-growing country in the world at 7.5 per cent annually, is grappling with widespread poverty and the challenge of strikes against militants in Kashmir.

BENAULIM, India — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed multibillion-dollar energy and defence pacts on Saturday following talks aimed at reinvigorating ties between the traditional allies.

Modi hailed Putin as an "old friend" after their meeting in the Indian state of Goa, where leaders of the other BRICS emerging nations were also gathering for a summit.

"Your leadership has provided stability and substance to our strategic partnership," Modi said alongside Putin at a beachside resort, after officials signed up to 20 agreements between the two nations.

Modi said the pacts on jointly producing light military helicopters, building frigates and other areas of cooperation "lay the foundations for deeper defence and economic ties for years ahead".

They also signed an initial agreement on India's purchase of Russia's state-of-the-art defence system, capable of shooting down multiple incoming missiles, although there were no details on a time frame for delivery.

Putin has been seeking to seal deals with India to help revive Russia's recession-hit economy, following sliding oil prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. 

"I would like to stress that we intend to expand our bilateral cooperation not only in energy but also across a wide range of areas," Putin said.

The announced energy deals include Russian oil giant Rosneft's decision to buy almost the entire stake in India's Essar Oil for almost $13 billion.

Essar said the deal involving a group led by Rosneft was the largest single foreign direct investment in India. 

The leaders also signed an agreement to supply more units to a nuclear plant in Kudankulam in southern India to meet the fast-growing economy's thirst for electricity and to reduce its reliance on dirty coal.

Modi also held talks with China's President Xi Jinping late Saturday, in the hope of boosting investment and trade. Relations, however, have been frustrated by Beijing's decision so far to block New Delhi's entry to a nuclear trade group, among other issues.

China and India, the world's two most populous nations, are jockeying for regional influence in Asia. 

Modi will host a dinner for the leaders of the BRICS club — which also includes South Africa and Brazil — ahead of talks on Sunday.

BRICS was formed in 2011 with the aim of using its growing economic and political influence to challenge Western hegemony.

AMMAN — Jordan has been elected to chair the joint meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), which will be held in Washington in the fall of 2017. This election, for the first time, took place on the sidelines of the IMF and the WB meetings that convened in Washington this month, during which Finance Minister Omar Malhas met with US officials and discussed the country’s efforts as part of its economic and financial reform.

Discussions also covered the outcome of the London conference and the developments of the Extended Fund Facility the Kingdom signed with the IMF. Later this month, an IMF mission is scheduled to visit Jordan to conduct the first review of the programme signed with the Kingdom, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

AMMAN — Amman Chamber of Commerce President Issa Murad on Saturday commended the Cabinet's decision to extend the duration allowed for storing vehicles at public and private warehouses to three years instead of two, describing that as a “positive step".

Murad, who is also a senator, said the step will boost the sector, especially as demand on buying vehicles, has not been that strong lately, both at internal and external markets, according to a statement released by the chamber. Murad said the decision provides traders and importers ample time to sell cars.