An investor looks up at screens displaying stock information at the Dubai Financial Market. Dubai’s index fell 1.7% yesterday as most stocks declined. Builder Arabtec dropped 3.3% after Egyptian newspaper Al Mal reported, citing an anonymous source that a planned deal between the firm and the Cairo government to build 1mn housing units in Egypt has fallen through.
Reuters/Dubai
Most Gulf stock markets slipped yesterday after oil prices fell, while Egyptian equities extended gains following the delay of an unpopular capital gains tax.
Brent oil fell $1.17, or 1.8%, to $65.37 a barrel on Friday, declining 2.1% on the week as a rallying dollar and profit-taking ahead of a long US holiday weekend cut short a two-day rally.
Petrochemicals giant Saudi Basic Industries, whose profits are sensitive to oil prices, dropped 2.5% and was the main drag on Saudi Arabia’s index which lost 0.4%.
Other blue chips were also mostly weak as investor sentiment appeared to suffer following an Islamic State suicide bomb attack. The blast killed 21 worshippers on Friday in a packed mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia in one of the deadliest assaults in recent years in the largest Gulf Arab country.
But Bahri, the exclusive oil-shipper for Saudi Aramco, rose 1.9% to a new all-time closing high of 54.50 riyals after saying yesterday it had signed a deal to buy five very large crude tankers from ship builders Hyundai Heavy Industries.
Hyundai will build the tankers and deliver them to Bahri in 2017. Bahri also has an option to buy five more. It did not say how much it would pay for the tankers, although each will have a capacity of 300,000 deadweight tonnage.
Dubai’s index fell 1.7% as most stocks declined. Builder Arabtec dropped 3.3% after Egyptian newspaper Al Mal reported, citing an anonymous source, that a planned deal between the firm and the Cairo government to build 1mn housing units in Egypt has fallen through.
Neither the Egyptian government nor Arabtec were available for immediate comment on the project whose value was estimated at 280bn Egyptian pounds ($36.70bn). Retail and entertainment startup Marka was one of just a handful of gainers, rising 1.6% after it said in a statement it expected the earnings of restaurant chain Reem Al Bawadi, which it bought this month, to grow at a rate of more than 25% annually in coming years. Marka also said it planned three more acquisitions in 2015.
Abu Dhabi’s bourse dropped 0.7% as large lenders National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank fell 0.9 and 1.0% respectively.
Egypt’s index rose 1.5% to a fresh seven-week closing high of 9,122 points, extending the broad rally which started last week when the Cairo government put on hold its plan to introduce a 10% capital gains tax.
For a second session in a row, the Cairo benchmark closed above technical resistance at 8,860 points, its early May peak, triggering a minor double bottom formed by the April and May lows and pointing up to around 9,400 points.
Elsewhere, the Kuwait index fell 0.3% to 6,311 points, the Oman index slipped 0.1% to 6,375 points and the Bahrain index fell 0.6% 1,372 points.
