$1bn
Qatar, the small Gulf nation which its neighbours accuse of punching above its weight, is having to pay a hefty price for paying $1bn to release members of its royal family who were kidnapped in Iraq while on a hunting trip.
Doha apparently spent the money in a transaction in April that secured the release of 26 members of a Qatari falconry party in southern Iraq and about 50 militants captured by jihadis in Syria. Both are the most frequently blacklisted forces of the Middle East: an al-Qaeda affiliate fighting in Syria and Iranian security officials.
$27bn
Across the world, major cities are experiencing a real estate glut – from Lagos to New York and London to Melbourne.
It is last a century ago, when Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese purchasers spent $27bn on US homes in the year to March 2016.
As outbound capital faces tougher scrutiny in Beijing and the rest of the world cope with falling low oil price, luxury property developers and their banks are facing a hard time. In London, luxury developers are offering lavish inducements to would-be buyers, from price discounts and tax incentives to gift cards, sports tickets and furniture packs. One development in north London boasts a free car for every purchaser
36 cents
Professional investors might normally be expected to head for the hills at the first hint of a security that is likely to default. Emerging market bond fund managers, however, are queueing up to buy long-dated Venezuelan sovereign bonds in the full expectation that Caracas will renege on payment.
Investors have so far made a mint on shorter dated Venezuelan debt. A bond issued by PDVSA, the state oil company, for instance, traded as low as 36 cents on the dollar in February 2016 before being repaid in full in April this year, more than doubling the money of those who bought at the nadir.
$2.2bn
Ghana’s cocoa regulator said it is 10 billion cedis ($2.2 billion) in debt after the nation missed its production target in the previous season and as a slump in prices is weighing on revenues from the current crop. Ghana Cocoa Board didn’t meet revenue targets for the 2015-16 season as the total output of 778,000 metric tons of beans fell short of an earmarked 850,000 tons, Noah Amenyah, a spokesman for the regulator in the world’s second-biggest grower, said by phone on Thursday. The board so far suffered $1 billion in revenue losses in the current season that started in October as future contract prices fell by more than a third since the middle of last year, Amenyah said.
20%
As Nigeria takes tentative steps toward freeing its currency amid a market meltdown caused by lower oil prices and a shortage of dollars, the emergence of a separate NDF market underlines investors’ growing confidence in the so-called Nafex window. Traders expect the forwards to give them greater control in predicting future exchange rates and raise the appeal of carry trades in naira assets. “It’s created a situation in which you have two NDF markets,” Samir Gadio, head of Africa strategy at Standard Chartered Plc. Cape Town-based Allan Gray Ltd. is among those that have increased their holdings, tempted by cheap stocks and bond yields of about 20 percent.
