Latest news with #multinationalCorporations
Khaleej Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
Dubai office prices, rents jump by 24% in first 3 months of 2025
Dubai's office market will remain landlord-driven due to limited availability and sustained demand. According to analysts at Cavendish Maxwell, the shortage of Grade A office space is driving spillover demand, pushing prices higher in Grade B and C segments. 'Office sales prices rose 24.5 per cent year-on-year, while rental rates increased by 24 per cent, fuelled by limited availability and sustained demand, especially in Grade A accommodations. Additionally, ongoing shortages of Grade A space are driving spillover demand, pushing prices higher in the Grade B and C segments,' analysts said in the first quarter report. Dubai's office market maintained strong momentum in the first quarter of 2025 as the Dubai International Chamber reported a 39 per cent year-on-year increase in new foreign company registrations, including 11 multinational corporations and 42 SMEs. 'Dubai's office market entered 2025 with strong momentum, supported by steady economic growth, high levels of business formation, and resilient trade performance, all within a stable macroeconomic environment. This foundation is further strengthened by strategic infrastructure development, world-class connectivity, and a pro-business regulatory framework. Together, these factors have driven robust performance in the first quarter of 2025, reaffirming Dubai's status as a leading destination for regional and international capital despite ongoing geopolitical and economic uncertainties,' said analysts at Cavendish Maxwell. In the remainder of 2025, analysts see the office supply pipeline remains robust and may offer some relief to tenants. It is projected that approximately 215,000 sqm of new office space is expected to enter the market; however, actual completions are often lower than projected due to market factors, while pre-booking of units further reduces immediate availability. 'As a result, occupancy rates are expected to remain elevated throughout 2025, supported by strong and sustained demand that continues to outpace supply. Given this supply-demand dynamic, the market is expected to remain landlord-driven, with landlords maintaining significant leverage. Both sales and rental prices are projected to rise further throughout 2025, primarily due to ongoing supply constraints,' said analysts at the property consultant firm. It added that some tenants may downsize or relocate, while others might embrace flexible workspaces or pre-commit to pipeline projects. The office sales market reflected this positive sentiment, with approximately 900 transactions completed in Q1 2025, a 23.7 per cent year-on-year increase, driven by strong activity in both ready and off-plan segments. Notably, off-plan transactions surged, accounting for 18.9 per cent of all deals compared to just 8.1 per cent in Q1 2024, highlighting growing buyer confidence in future developments.
Forbes
7 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
How Should Businesses Be Approaching Sustainability Now?
There is a palpable air of uncertainty among many multinational corporate sustainability, ESG and risk management teams these days as everyone tries to anticipate the future of sustainability regulation. I've written quite a bit about the mixed messages companies are receiving from regulators in Europe as the EU Member States continue to debate the details of the Omnibus Simplification Package, and in the U.S., where it's still unclear exactly how this historic period of environmental deregulation will affect companies. The fact is that many businesses have invested significant time and resources into sustainability compliance and reporting initiatives while operating under the impression that major reforms like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) would be hitting their stride right now. Instead, they're living through a period of regulatory limbo in which it's not clear what exactly their future sustainability compliance obligations entail. So, what should they be doing in the meantime? The short answer is: now is the time to be reviewing the steps they have made so far, and the most obvious place to start is with is their materiality assessments. In the world of financial reporting, materiality is defined as information that can influence and ultimately inform the financial decision making of an entity. When applied to sustainability reporting, a materiality assessment is a company's foundational definition of the core sustainability issues that matter most to their businesses and their stakeholders. These guide the way they will report and integrate them into overall business strategy and investment. In short, these materiality assessments shine a light on the foundational truths that define a company's values and goals and determine whether or not they are aligned with their strategic objectives. The identification of these material matters is also the starting point to determine the information that should be disclosed in the sustainability statement, which identifies the impacts, risks and opportunities confronting a company and its upstream and downstream value chain. At a time when the rules of the game keep changing and where corporate positions on sustainability can easily become politicized, a well-thought-out and delivered materiality assessment is an important way for a company to assert the business case for its sustainability strategy. Importantly, it is a way for companies to take the emotion out of sustainability and instead focus on the facts and the financial rationale behind their actions, while ensuring their sustainability strategy is dynamic and meets the changing needs of their businesses. Even during this period of regulatory flux, the market drivers behind sustainability have not changed , and in some cases they have even increased in significance. Now is the time for businesses to really look at what other companies in their space are doing when it comes to sustainability reporting. This peer comparison will soon become a key benchmark against which other companies will measure themselves and will also be measured. While sustainability disclosure reporting regulators have been debating the best path forward, many leading companies have already started reporting in compliance with the CSRD. In fact, some 500 companies have already published sustainability reports under the CSRD. The full library of reports can be found here, courtesy of ESG data management software company KEY ESG, which has been cataloging them all. One of the first things that stands out when reviewing these reports is that many of them come from companies in jurisdictions where the CSRD has yet to be fully implemented. In fact, according to a detailed PwC analysis of 100 CSRD reports, about 90% of them came from five European countries, three of which (Germany, Spain and the Netherlands) have not yet transposed the CSRD into national law. Another key finding of the analysis was that these reports are not very standardized. Some are 30 pages; others are 300 and they each focus on different aspects of sustainability-related risks. However, the important takeaway for business leaders who are still refining their approaches to sustainability reporting is that hundreds of manufacturers, technology companies, financial services firms, retailers, utilities and others are already out there walking the walk on sustainability reporting. These early standard bearers will not only have a jump on the intricacies of the reporting process once the mandate is finalized; they will also help establish industry best practices and position themselves as leaders to investors, customers and other stakeholders who increasingly want to know about business risks linked to sustainability. It's easy for business leaders to become distracted in a news cycle like the one we find ourselves in today that seems to be consumed with the idea of delayed implementation and political infighting. The big picture is that, delayed or not, sustainability reporting mandates of some type are coming, whether directly from regulators, or as is currently the case, from other stakeholders such as investors and customers. The sooner companies get themselves aligned with those standards, the better off they will be when the time comes to comply with the law. Moreover, with so many companies already reporting in line with the CSRD, and the informed view is that more and more will do so voluntarily, the prevailing market forces are creating some pressure on businesses that have not yet shared their sustainability reports. Now is not the time to delay. It is the time to refine and hone sustainability practices to focus on what matters most to the business and its stakeholders.
Entrepreneur
21-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
More Mid-Sized GCCs Will Enter India in the Post Trump Era
The number of GCCs in India could swell up to 3,500 by 2030 and the size of the market will grow from USD 60 billion to beyond USD 110 billion in the next 5 years. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. More number of mid-sized GCCs are expected to enter India in the post Donald Trump era due to factors like price rise and talent shortage that are plaguing the US economy. "When GCC came to India in early 90s, they came in quest for backend operations but soon they realised that India also has the talent to support their innovation-led R&D endeavours. So, over a period of time, they emerged and evolved as R&D units…In phase 2, they started focussing on India markets and most of them were set up keeping in mind India's talent pool and economics of operations," said Alouk Kumar, CEO, Inductus GCC, a consulting firm. "GCC 3.0 is about the post Trump era and more mid-sized GCCs will be entering India, the number swelling up to 3,500 by 2030. The size of the market will grow from USD 60 billion to beyond USD 110 billion in the next 5 years. Last year, on an average, one GCC was set up in India every week. This year, this is expected to increase to two GCCs a week which is a 100 per cent growth," Kumar told Entrepreneur India. (Alouk Kumar, CEO, Inductus GCC) Many IT service companies in India are actively establishing their own GCC units to compete on the growing trend of multinational corporations setting up their own in-house technology centers in India. For example, Infosys is said to be actively pursuing GCC-related initiatives under its Project Altius, including BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) models and scaling support services. Similarly, Cognizant has appointed a global head of GCC services and reportedly has 10 active GCC projects. Wipro too is reportedly building a dedicated GCC service line. This is also an indication of the pressure felt by the traditional IT services companies from the GCC sector. Kumar said that a major chunk of the GCC talent comes from the IT services industry which is already a mature sector in the country. "There has been a de-growth of IT services industry. The loss of IT services industry has been a gain for GCCs," he said. Currently, GCCs contribute 1.5–2 per cent to India's GDP and it is likely to touch 3.5 per cent in 2024 according to the Economic Survey. However, Inductus believes this could touch 5 per cent after taking into account the Trump's era. Apart from the US, other major economies like Germany and Japan are also eying India to set up R&D centers. "Slow economic growth, an ageing population, and high wage structures are putting tremendous pressure on their economies and that is in turn driving the India advantage. Sector wise, IT, BFSI, healthcare, aviation, and automobile are leading the setting up of the GCCs," Kumar said. India is renowned for its deep expertise in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and cloud computing. With a score of 2.8, India leads the world in AI skill penetration, ahead of the US (2.2) and Germany (1.9), according to the Stanford AI Index 2024. Since 2016, India's concentration of AI talent has increased 263 per cent, making it a significant hub for AI.
Reuters
13-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
US tariff pause on Beijing puts pressure on 'China-plus-one' countries
BEIJING/MEXICO CITY/HANOI, May 13 (Reuters) - A new U.S.-China agreement to pause sky-high tariffs on each other is pressuring manufacturing hubs such as Vietnam and Mexico to make their own, better deals with the U.S. to continue benefiting from a "China-plus-one" strategy by global producers. In the new world order dictated by President Donald Trump's shifting announcements of tariffs, countries measure their success not by the terms of their trade deals with the U.S. but by how they compare to other countries. For the last five weeks, many nations facing significant duties under Trump's now-paused "reciprocal" global tariff regime announced on April 2 took solace from having better rates than China, which saw U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports ratchet up from 20% to an embargo-like 145% from March to May. Vietnam, for example, was better off than China with a 46% rate, while Thailand was at 36% and Malaysia at 24%. Given their comparative advantage, manufacturing hubs anticipated further moves by multinational corporations to set up shop in their countries and decrease their dependency on China, potentially adding to a years-long trend known as "China-plus-one". Now, everything is up in the air again following a breakthrough in U.S.-China trade talks that resulted in a 90-day reprieve from the astoundingly high tariffs on China, leaving a base 30% import tax rate for made-in-China products. Tariffs on China still remain higher than competing industrial hubs paying 10% under Trump's 90-day pause on the reciprocal duties, but some experts said the deal could halt some of the momentum pushing multinationals to further shift supply chains outside of China. "The rules of the game are still uncertain," said Diego Marroquin Bitar, an expert on North American trade who also works as a consultant. "I think companies are just going to delay their investments as much as they can." Starting in his first term, Trump sought to leverage tariffs on China to force companies to relocate manufacturing to the U.S. The "reshoring" to the U.S. largely did not materialise, but over the past decade companies such as Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab did start looking for alternatives to China, with a focus on countries that offered relatively low labour costs and smaller tariffs. Southeast Asian nations were among the biggest beneficiaries, along with Mexico, but if the U.S.-China tariff pause is extended, those countries could see their comparative advantage dissipate. Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia are currently negotiating their own tariff deals with the United States. Mexico, which avoided reciprocal tariffs, is also seeking to reduce separate import duties on specific products such as automobiles. The U.S.-China trade thaw means companies that had considered speeding up efforts to offshore production from China may now tap the brakes, said Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University. "They will maintain their current situation, keep China as their main operations hub and make appropriate partial arrangements in neighbouring countries, but the bulk of their business will remain in China," he said. Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University's Center for International Security and Strategy, said the uncertainty of Trump's policymaking was "very painful for companies" trying to decide whether or how much to decouple from China. "The current cooldown in tensions does not mean that U.S. firms dare to boldly engage in business activities in China," he said. "Everyone is still waiting for the possibility that tariffs might be imposed again." For countries like Vietnam, which had also attracted Chinese manufacturers since Trump imposed tariffs in his first administration, the unexpected U.S. rapprochement with Beijing ratchets up pressure to reach their own sweeter deals. "If Vietnam manages to strike a better deal than China - which is more than likely after today - it will present itself as an attractive alternative to China in regional investment strategies," said Leif Schneider, head of international law firm Luther in Vietnam. "This was already the outcome of the 'First Trade War' introduced by the first Trump administration," he added. Trade tensions and uncertainty have already reduced pledges for new foreign investments in Vietnam, which in April fell to $2.84 billion, a 30% drop from March and a decline of about 8% year-on-year. In Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly emphasised Mexico's comparative advantage on U.S. tariffs. Most exports to the U.S. under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal are tariff free, although Trump has imposed sizeable levies on steel, aluminium, vehicles and auto parts. Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China and a consultant on international trade, said even if Monday's trade deal with China sticks, multinational companies will still be wary of depending solely on Chinese manufacturing - and Mexico stands to benefit. "If you are Walmart, Target, Home Depot or any other important importer who just went through five weeks of hell, you appreciate the reprieve but you are looking for a different supply source," he said.
