Washington, Rabi’II 21, 1438, Jan 19, 2017, SPA– U.S. builders increased home construction in December, led by a jump in apartment building, while single-family houses lagged, the government said Thursday.
The Commerce Department reported that housing starts surged 11.3 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2 million.
The figures are volatile month to month as starts plummeted in November after a big gain in October.
Apartment construction soared 53.9 percent last month, while single-family housing starts dropped 4 percent.
The figures finish a solid 2016 for home construction. Developers began work on the most new houses and apartments since 2007, the year the Great Recession started. Single-family home building rose 3.9 percent and apartment building was 10.3 percent higher.
–SPA
18:24 LOCAL TIME 15:24 GMT

Washington, Rabi’II 21, 1438, Jan 19, 2017, SPA– The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week fell to the lowest level in more than 43 years, the government said Thursday, offering another sign that more workers enjoy job security.
The Labor Department reported that 234,000 Americans sought jobless aid, a drop of 15,000 from the previous week and lowest since November 1973.
The four-week average, a less volatile reading, dropped by 10,250 to 246,750, also the lowest since November 1973.
The total number of people receiving unemployment benefits was 2.05 million, down 7.7 percent from a year earlier.
Unemployment claims are a proxy for layoffs. They now have come in below 300,000 for 98 straight weeks. The low totals suggest that businesses are confident about their prospects that they were holding onto staff.
–SPA
18:10 LOCAL TIME 15:10 GMT

Represents Safanad’s second data center investment

NEW YORK, Jan. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Safanad Limited (“Safanad”), a global principal investment firm, is pleased to announce it has acquired its second data center operation in partnership with Industry Capital.

Responding to increasing demand for critical data center capacity in key geographic locations, CentralColo Holdings (“CentralColo”) announced that it has acquired through an affiliated venture the 280,000-square foot Tysons Technology Center in Vienna, Virginia and CentralColo will be the operator. The project is strategically located just off the Washington DC beltway, equidistant from downtown Washington DC and Ashburn Virginia, within the Tysons Corner market, which constitutes the largest office submarket in the greater Washington DC metro area and is the twelfth largest employment center in the country. The property consists of a 200,000-square foot Tier 3 data center and an 80,000-square foot office building and campus on 14.5 acres.

Today, the connectivity-rich data center features 9 megawatts of capacity for anchor enterprise customers that include some of the world’s largest hyper scale cloud and network providers, as well as government organizations. Total occupancy of the project exceeds 75% and CentralColo plans to add an additional 4 megawatts over the next twelve to eighteen months. CentralColo has already introduced the first new customer to the data center, Atlantic Metro/InfoRelay, a leading cloud, network, managed services, and managed hosting provider.

In addition to the proximity of the project to Ashburn which affords the occupants tremendously low latency and multiple connectivity options, the site has the added advantage of having a multitude of backbone network connections which are diverse to the Ashburn network. The data center is currently connected with 14 premiere telecommunication and fiber carriers with others expressing interest in establishing a presence in the facility based on CentralColo’s plans for additional enterprise, government and service provider customers coming online.

CentralColo is an operator of data centers offering both hybrid IT and colocation services to a global client base. In August 2016, Safanad and San Francisco based investment firm, Industry Capital, announced a partnership to invest in CentralColo. CentralColo’s first facility is in the heart of Silicon Valley, providing hosting and connectivity services to a broad array of customers. CentralColo is positioned to address the needs of both mission critical IT loads, cloud services/solutions and high density compute requirements such as data analytics, research and development, testing, warehousing, and staging platforms.

“The Tysons Technology Campus with its highly desirable location within the Northern Virginia market now gives us the perfect East Coast asset to complement our first project in the Silicon Valley,” said Ken Parent, Chief Executive Officer of CentralColo. “These two assets provide the company with a strong platform for growth as we look to continue to expand in additional markets and support our customers with a variety of connectivity and hosting services supporting hybrid IT solutions.”

Craig Kahler, Director of Private Equity at Safanad, added, “We are thrilled with this strategic acquisition as it positions CentralColo as a premier data center operator and further strengthens our partnership with Ken and the CentralColo team.”

For Safanad Media Enquiries: info@safanad.com / +971 4 312 9700

About Safanad

Safanad is a global principal investment firm that invests in real estate, private equity and public markets. As principal investors, Safanad preserves and grows wealth through a disciplined industry focused investment approach that builds relationships with exceptional management partners and top industry leaders. With offices in New York, Dubai and London, the firm seeks to identify global investment opportunities poised to deliver consistently attractive returns, where the firm’s capital and investment expertise support value creation. For more information, visit www.safanad.com

About Industry Capital

Industry Capital is a private equity firm investing in real assets globally. Industry Capital and its affiliated entities maintain top-tier track records across investment platforms. In addition to its real asset platforms, Industry Capital owns an interest in wealth management firm, Osborne Partners Capital Management, that manages portfolios on behalf of high-net-worth individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.industrycapital.com

About CentralColo
CentralColo owns and operates regulated data centers and provides IT services for hybrid IT solutions. This includes fiber connectivity, high power and efficient cooling, colocation services, and metered power down to a single circuit. CentralColo’s first facility is a large carrier neutral, network dense and cross connect friendly Tier III data and compute center with over 8 MW of IT load in the heart of Silicon Valley. The Company is expanding nationally and recently announced the acquisition of a 200,000 square foot data center in Northern Virginia.  For more information, visit www.centralcolo.com.

Logo – http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/393371/Safanad_Logo.jpg

DAVOS, Switzerland, Rabi’II 21, 1438, January 19, 2017, SPA — Multinational businesses must avoid short-term thinking and show leadership to help restore faith in globalisation among citizens who feel left behind by the pace of economic change, British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday, according to Reuters.
May said businesses must put aside short-term considerations and invest in people and communities for the long term. “We must heed the underlying feeling that there are some companies, particularly those with a global reach who are playing by a different set of rules to ordinary working people,” she told business leaders at the World Economic Forum, a gathering of business and political elites in the Swiss Alps.
“So it is essential for business to demonstrate leadership, to show that in this globalised world everyone is playing by the same rules.”
–SPA
13:27 LOCAL TIME 10:27 GMT

NEW YORK, 21 Rabi’II, 1438,January 19, 2017, SPA — U.S. stocks closed mixed Wednesday.
The dollar gained ground against a basket of currencies. Light sweet crude oil for February delivery lost $1.18 to $51.30 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while gold futures dropped $9.40 to $1,203.50 per ounce.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 22.38, or 0.11 percent, to 19,804.39. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index added 4.01, or 0.17 percent, to 2,271.85. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index gained 16.93, or 0.31 percent, to 5,555.65.
–SPA
10:24 LOCAL TIME 07:24 GMT