Oil price rise fails to lift shares

Indexes for the main exchanges in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Qatar and Saudi Arabia finished half a per cent lower in trading on Wednesday, even as oil prices started to creep up towards the end of the day’s trading on expectations of a nine-month extension to Opec’s capacity cuts.

The Bahrain All Share Index finishing about one-third of a per cent higher at 1,314.02.

In Dubai, shares in DXB Entertainments, the owner of Dubai Parks and Resorts, fell 3 per cent to 78 fils as the company said it would offer deeply discounted entry tickets for four-hour evening periods under a Ramadan Nights promotion. The company, whose shares have dropped by about 40 per cent this year, will offer the tickets from Dh95 per visitor. Typical one-day ticket prices start from Dh240 for a Bollywood Parks or Legoland Water Park pass.

Shares in Emaar Malls dropped by 1.9 per cent to Dh2.58 per share following its announcement that it is to take a 51 per cent stake in the online fashion retailer Namshi, for which it is paying US$151 million.

Earlier in the day, Moody’s downgraded China’s credit rating on concerns about the country’s debt. However, it left the ratings of the country’s biggest banks untouched, meaning that an issue of three new bonds on Nasdaq Dubai by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) worth more than $1.26 billion was unaffected.

ICBC listed two new dollar-denominated bonds of $400m and $300m, respectively, and a €500m (Dh2.05bn) euro-denominated bond. The bank now has five bonds listed on Nasdaq Dubai, following the issue of a $400m bond in June last year, and a $500m bond in May 2015.

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