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That FTSE Stamp MENA
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Well, the bells have rung from London all the way to the UAE! Abu Dhabi has announced its bourse partnership with the FTSE Russell to develop co-branded indices. ADX hopes that the tie-up can help it to create new indices that help realize its vision to offer further tradeable index products on its market.
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Being the first in the region to have a benchmark index administrator like FTSE Russell is major. It highlights the ambition of ADX — it may be local but it's going global. It signals its chops to the global investor, allowing ADX to court and (hopefully!) top the AED 15.2b it got in 2021.
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Why it matters
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GCC bourses are getting competitive — this move (that is seen as the first in the GCC) makes it clear that ADX is looking for a promotion from its current position as the second-biggest regional exchange. All in all, great for the region's public markets!
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What’s wrong, Paytm? INTL
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Paytm, the Indian mobile payments platform, has seen its stocks drop to a 52-week low. After a disappointing IPO in November (despite it being India's largest public offering to date), Paytm and its parent company One97 have some work to do to claw back its reputation. This comes after it reported a growth in its business — what gives?!
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Does misery love company? With beauty retailer, Nykaa, launching its own IPO to much fanfare but then dropping 18% in the following two weeks, it's a sobering time for the Indian stock market (which was hoping to take on the US and China).
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Why it matters
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It seems that continued selling pressure and the rocky performance of the rupee against the dollar may require investors to exercise some pay-tience.
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$1.3b spent on drugs — but for good to tackle rare genetic diseases INTL
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Covid-19 vaccine makers Pfizer (PFE) has partnered with gene editing biotech firm Beam Therapeutics (BEAM) to develop technology for manipulating DNA. The two firms hope that the tie-up can see them develop drugs for rare genetic diseases by following the approach of base editing. Pfizer's stock price was given a booster shot in the arm with its shares rising 0.9% up to $56.24 once the news broke out.
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The move comes as the pharma giant continues to do further work with mRNA vaccines. Beam’s strength lies within its based editing tech that is designed to cut just a single strand of DNA rather than two, which is achieved with the more ‘traditional’ CRISPR- gene editing.
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Why it matters
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Covid-19 came out of nowhere and pulled a TKO on the world — and now, the world needs to tool up. Basically, scientists are claiming that endemic and pandemic-style diseases may become more common; and so, the super-smart people at Pfizer and Beam are hoping that single shot cures for genetic diseases and others become a bit more commonplace.
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Bye, bye, LuoBuLeSi INTL
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The Roblox (RBLX) revolution will not be televised. Well, at least not in China. Five months after launching under the guide of LuoBuLesi and a tie-up with Tencent, the immersive 3D world has been shut down in the land of the Great Wall. There's clearly been a data mishap somewhere with Roblox announcing that it was making the “necessary investments'' to the way its data is processed.
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The good news is that they plan to relaunch a new version, the bad news is they’re not sure when that's going to happen. Its brief time in the Chinese market was not without its challenges, it faced competition from Bytedance owned Reworld, as well as falling foul of China's notorious tech regulations.
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On the topic of video games in China, this shutdown comes hot on the heels of Epic Games bowing out with Fortnite, despite making countless modifications to comply with local laws.
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Why it matters
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The shutdown of Roblox highlights how difficult it is for non-Chinese brands to build and sell digital products in the country. With Chinese regulators dubbing video games as ‘spiritual opium’ it's hard to see how developers can hit that next level in this particular market.
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Spectacles for all INTL
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Oh, Snap! The camera company Snap Inc (Snap) is suing the US patent office for rejecting its proposed trademark of the term “spectacles”. Snap was told that the term is still a generic term for smart glasses and that its version “has not acquired distinctiveness.” Hoorah for posh Brits and anyone else who still uses the 18th-century term for corrective eyewear.
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Snap's camera-equipped ‘Spectacles’ were first launched in 2016 and initially faced huge losses. Recent times have seen CEO Evan Spiegel reinvent the eyewear into an augmented reality iteration, which is available to a select few. Moving away from simply snapping your dinner, Spiegals's desire to integrate AR shows his long-term vision for the product.
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Why it matters
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Snap’s willingness to fight this trademark war shows its faith in the product. Despite suffering from early heavy losses, the recent emergence of the metaverse has got companies that make products in the digital world (and all it entails) to throw up endless possibilities.
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