RIYADH: Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency Gov. Muhammad Al-Jasser will address the future of monetary policy in Saudi Arabia at the inaugural Economist Conferences’ Financial Leaders Forum at Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh on June 23. A cream of the financial services industry in the Kingdom and elsewhere in the Gulf will join him at this invitation-only event. Economist Intelligence Unit’s MENA Regional Director David Butter, who will chair the conference, said: “Saudi Arabia is attracting growing attention from international financial institutions. This event will provide an excellent opportunity to interact with some of the most influential executives and policymakers operating in the region.”
Amlak suffers $18.79m loss
DUBAI: Troubled Dubai Islamic mortgage lender Amlak said yesterday it posted a first-quarter net loss of 69 million dirhams ($18.79 million) due to provisioning and lack of real estate investments income. “This provisioning was made due to the current challenging market conditions prevailing in the real estate market,” Nasser Al-Shaikh, chairman, Amlak Finance, said in the statement on the Dubai Financial Market website.
Euro zone sheds 1.2 million jobs
BRUSSELS: A record 1.2 million people lost their jobs across the 16 euro countries in the first three months of the year as companies cut back severely to survive the recession, official EU data showed yesterday. The figure, up sharply from 526,000 in the last quarter of 2008, marked the biggest jump in lost jobs on records at the Eurostat data agency going back to 1995.