|By Arabian Post Staff| The three-month Saudi Interbank Offered Rate, or Saibor, used as a benchmark to price loans, has climbed 15 successive months to the highest in seven years, Bloomberg reported. It gained 84 basis points this year to 2.385 percent on Sunday, compared with a 27 basis-point advance in the London Interbank Offered Rate for dollars. Meanwhile, the loans-to-deposit ratio among Saudi banks, a key measure of […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia said it was holding investor meetings in London, Los Angeles, Boston and New York from Wednesday to sell benchmark bonds maturing in five, 10 and 30 years. The issue is expected to be at least $10 billion. “It’s very good timing,” Bloomberg quoted Angelo Rossetto, a trader at GMSA Investments Ltd. in London, as saying. “I wouldn’t say now or never as […]
Standard Chartered Bank (China) (SCB China) has launched a direct trading business for RMB/AED and RMB/SR and the bank becomes the first batch of direct trading market-makers for RMB against AED and SR in China’s inter-bank FX market. Sami Mahfouz, head of Financial Markets UAE, said: “Standard Chartered has a broad network and historical presence in the Middle East and we offer one-stop products and solutions covering […]
|Arabian Post Research|The Middle East geopolitics is set to enter a new flashpoint over the US legislation that will ultimately allow families of the victims of 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabian for responsibility for the terrorist attack. Both the US House of Representatives and Senate have passed a bill to this effect unopposed, but President Barack Obama is expected to veto the legislation, although Congress could override […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Saudi Arabia’s non-oil private sector continued on its upward trajectory in August, with business conditions improving to the greatest extent in a year. Output and new business remained the key growth drivers – both rose sharply and more quickly than in July. Employment and input stocks also increased, with a number of companies looking to expand capacity in line with rising workloads. Meanwhile, price pressures […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — As Muslims from around the world head toward Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia and Iran have escalated their sectarian rivalry over which country represents the true Islam. Iran unleashed the first barb Monday, when the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Saudi Arabia of deliberately killing pilgrims during last year’s hajj. He called for the world’s Muslims to reconsider Saudi […]
CAIRO — Seven people were killed in Saudi Arabia when a missile fired from Yemen struck a commercial district in the city of Najran, the kingdom’s official news media confirmed on Wednesday. The attack, on Tuesday evening, appeared to have been carried out by Houthi militias in northern Yemen in retaliation for a series of deadly airstrikes by the Saudi-led military coalition on Monday and Tuesday. Those […]
By SHUAIB ALMOSAWA and ROD NORDLAND August 13, 2016 SANA, Yemen — Airstrikes carried out by warplanes from a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia killed at least 19 people, mostly children, on Saturday in a residential area and a school in northern Yemen, witnesses and hospital officials said. One bombardment in the village of Birken in the Razih District, near Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia, struck the home of […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Saudi Arabia’s banks are seen more likely now than ever before to tap the international bond markets. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Saudi banks have less foreign currency debt outstanding compared to any other GCC country. Of the 57 securities outstanding from issuers in the kingdom, only one is a dollar bond from a bank, compared with more than 400 foreign-currency notes from […]
SAUDI ARABIA. — In line with its steadfast commitment to supporting the realization of the Saudi Vision 2030 – and its related strategic goals – The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has inaugurated a year-long Business Analyst Program in the Kingdom. The initiative is especially designed to help nurture young Saudi talents and equip the nation’s youth with the tools, knowledge, and leadership skills needed to excel in the […]
SAUDI ARABIA. JLL, the world’s leading real estate investment and advisory firm, today has released its Q2 2016 Riyadh and Jeddah Real Estate Overview reports assessing the latest trends in the office, residential, retail and hotel sectors. With Saudi Vision 2030 pivotal to the diversification and restructuring of the economy in lieu of decreasing oil prices, this report highlights that both Riyadh and Jeddah continue to maintain […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Saudi Arabia will build a maritime complex on its east coast, with shipbuilding capability, to provide sufficient capacity for exporting oil, Bloomberg reported quoting Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih. The country, the world’s largest oil-producing nation, eventually will have a shipping fleet that will match its oil capabilities, Al-Falih said in Riyadh. Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, will need more tankers to meet global […]
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — For most of his adult life, Ahmed Qassim al-Ghamdi worked among the bearded enforcers of Saudi Arabia. He was a dedicated employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — known abroad as the religious police — serving with the front-line troops protecting the Islamic kingdom from Westernization, secularism and anything but the most conservative Islamic practices. […]
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — For most of his adult life, Ahmed Qassim al-Ghamdi worked among the bearded enforcers of Saudi Arabia. He was a dedicated employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — known abroad as the religious police — serving with the front-line troops protecting the Islamic kingdom from Westernization, secularism and anything but the most conservative Islamic practices. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The coordinated militant attack on the eve of Eid is the biggest challenge yet to Saudi Arabia’s internal security since it crushed an al-Qaeda insurgency a decade ago, according to Bloomberg. With no claims of responsibility, suspicion has fallen on Islamic State, which has vowed to overthrow Gulf rulers they see as betraying Islam. One of the bombings on Monday, near the Prophet’s Mosque […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Saudi Arabia approved the National Transformation Plan (NTP) on Tuesday June 7, 2016, as part of Saudi Vision 2030 and goal to reduce reliance on oil. The NTP aims to boost non-oil revenue to 530 billion riyals (US$141 billion) by 2020 through more than 500 initiatives including the implementation of new taxes and increasing government fees and taxes on “harmful products”. Minister of State Mr. […]
Deal Professor By STEVEN DAVIDOFF SOLOMON It’s hard to get one’s head around it: An initial public offering that would value a company in the trillions of dollars. That’s trillions, with a T. Saudi Arabia is considering selling shares in its state oil company. With 261 billion barrels of oil in reserves and a yearly output of over three billion barrels of oil, the company, Saudi Aramco, […]
Los Angeles: A California man was found guilty on Thursday of murdering a Saudi engineering student after responding to the victim’s ad to sell his car. A jury in San Fernando deliberated just 15 minutes before convicting Agustin Rosendo Fernandez, 29, of first-degree murder in the 2014 stabbing death of Abdullah Abdul Latif Al Kadi, a third-year electrical engineering student at […]
SAUDI ARABIA. According to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the digital age has ushered in a number of trends that have transformed the media consumption habits of each Saudi generation profoundly – and vastly differently. In parallel, with information and connectivity available at everyone’s fingertips – anywhere, anytime – the Kingdom’s traditional media landscape has, in recent years, been disrupted. The findings presented […]
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund made its highest-profile deal, investing $3.5 billion in U.S. ride-share company Uber Technologies Inc. as the country seeks to diversify its assets with more overseas acquisitions. Yasir Alrumayyan, managing director of the Public Investment Fund, will take a board seat at the San Francisco-based company after the deal, which values Uber at $62.5 billion, the company said in a statement. It’s the biggest […]
New fatwa matches a view expressed in April by Dubai’s Islamic Affairs & Charitable Activities Department Manama: A Saudi scholar has banned the use of other people’s Wi-Fi without their knowledge, saying that Islam could not tolerate theft. “Taking advantage of the Wi-Fi service illegally or without the knowledge of other beneficiaries or providers is not allowed,” Ali Al Hakami, a […]
|Arabian Post Staff| Banks in Saudi Arabia are coming under fresh pressure over products that allow speculators to bet against the kingdom’s currency peg, Bloomberg reports quoting people with knowledge of the matter. Bloomberg said the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency has asked lenders to explain why they are offering dollar-riyal forward structured products to customers less than four months after the regulator banned options contracts that let […]
SAUDI ARABIA. The recent Ministerial Resolution on the Saudisation of the sale and repair of mobile phones, together with the earlier resolutions on the retail of female clothing, indicate a growing approach by the Ministry of Labour to require the complete Saudisation of certain activities within the retail sector. In this article we examine the existing requirements and also the proposal for a weighted Nitiqat. Sale and […]
Dubai: The cost of insuring exposure to Saudi Arabia risk for a five-year period widened by 8 basis points ahead of its bond issue as investors increased hedging bets. The five-year Saudi Credit-Default (CDS) Swaps jumped to 160 basis points on Tuesday compared to 152 basis points last Monday, data showed. “This accounted for their large […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia ranks among the top dozen foreign holders of U.S. debt, the Treasury Department disclosed, breaking its silence on the issue for the past four decades. “The stockpile of the world’s biggest oil exporter stood at $116.8 billion as of March, down almost 6 percent from a record in January, according to data the Treasury disclosed Monday in response to a Freedom-of-Information […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|In further signs of consolidation by pro-reform Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman ordered the replacement of his central bank chief and Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi, the most influential personality of the oil industry yet. The moves are understood to be influenced by the sweeping economic changes spearheaded by the Deputy Crown Prince as part of his visionary plan […]
Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled his “Saudi Vision 2030” to reduce the kingdom’s reliance on oil. The blueprint, approved by King Salman, includes plans to sell less than 5 percent of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, the creation of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and raising non-oil revenue. Here’s a guide to the main elements of the plan, announced on Monday […]
Saudi Arabia’s plan for the post-hydrocarbon era will have to overcome habits developed over decades of relying on crude sales to fuel economic growth, create job and build infrastructure. Almost eight decades after oil was first found in the country, officials are set to unveil Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “Vision for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” on Monday, a blueprint seeking to reduce the reliance […]
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is seeking to recruit senior bankers to help the kingdom run what may become the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The fund, which holds about $100 billion worth of stakes in local companies, is working with U.S.-based executive search firm Korn Ferry International to hire for positions including the head of private equity, head […]
Saudi Arabia won’t restrain its oil production unless other producers, including Iran, agree to freeze output at a meeting this weekend in Doha, the kingdom’s deputy crown prince said. The world’s biggest crude exporter would cap its market share at about 10.3 million to 10.4 million barrels a day, if producers agree to the freeze, Prince Mohammed bin Salman said during an interview on Thursday at King […]
