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  • US Lifts Ban on Offensive Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia

    Since the truce, “there has not been a single Saudi airstrike into Yemen and cross-border fire from Yemen into Saudi Arabia has largely stopped,” Patel said. “The Saudis since that time have met their end of the deal, and we are prepared to meet ours,” Patel said.

  • Biden Lifts Ban on Offensive Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia

    Biden had ordered the pause on the sale of precision-guided munitions and other weapons to pressure Riyadh to wind down its war against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Saudis met their end of the bargain, according to a senior US official who asked not to be identified discussing a decision that hasn’t been publicly announced.

  • US to lift ban on offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia

    The Biden administration has decided to lift a ban on U.S. sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, the State Department said on Friday, reversing a three-year-old policy to pressure the kingdom to wind down the Yemen war. The State Department was lifting its suspension on certain transfers of air-to-ground munitions to Saudi Arabia, a senior department official confirmed. "We will consider new transfers on a typical case-by-case basis consistent with the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy," the official said.

  • The road ahead for banks in the GCC region: 7 priorities

    The financial sector in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has managed to outperform the global average on several financial metrics, according to the McKinsey & Company study, including on return on equity (by three or four percentage points), margins, and cost-to-asset ratios.

  • Lebanon housing costs surge amid property crunch as conflict fears spark exodus, echoing 2006 war

    Panic set in among many residents following a recent strike near Beirut and the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander, reigniting fears of a wider conflict and prompting many to seek temporary accommodations in northern Lebanon and mountainous regions.

  • Saudi Arabia urges citizens to leave Lebanon immediately

    Saudi foreign ministry urged its citizens on Sunday to leave Lebanon ‘immediately’ as regional tensions recently surged. In a statement, the ministry has reiterated its call for all Saudi nationals to avoid traveling to Lebanon. It said the Kingdom's embassy in Lebanon was closely monitoring the developments in the southern region of the country.

  • Calls for foreigners to leave Lebanon as war fears grow

    Several countries have urged their nationals to leave Lebanon, as fears grow of a wider conflict in the Middle East. Iran has vowed “severe” retaliation against Israel, which it blames for the death of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday. Israel has not commented. His assassination came hours after Israel killed Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Western officials fear that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia and political movement based in Lebanon, could play a key role in any such retaliation, which in turn could spark a serious Israeli response.

  • Saudi Bank Performance and Growth Prospects Underpinned by Favourable Operating Environment

    The operating environment for Saudi banks remains favourable, and our operating environment score of 'bbb+' is the highest across the GCC’s banking sectors (one notch above the bbb of its closest peers - the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait), being the highest score for EM banking sectors scored by Fitch globally. The operating environment for banks in the kingdom is underpinned by high oil prices and by government spending, supporting the country's giga projects and the Visions 2030 strategy, and resulting in solid non-oil GDP growth. Fitch Ratings forecasts real non-oil GDP growth to average 4.5% over 2024–2025 (2022–2023: 5%).

  • Saudi Fund’s Multibillion-Dollar Bank Deals Deepen China Pivot

    Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund signed preliminary agreements worth as much as $50 billion with six Chinese financial institutions, in the latest example of the kingdom’s deepening ties with Beijing. The deals were done to boost two-way capital flows through both debt and equity, according to a statement from the $925 billion Public Investment Fund. The memoranda of understanding were signed with the Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, China Export & Credit Insurance Corp., Export-Import Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

  • Israel-Lebanon facing highest risk since October 2023

    Lebanon and Israel are bracing for the highest risk of full-scale war since October 2023. This latest escalation was triggered by a rocket attack on the Arab Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, July 27 that killed 12 young people. Israel launched a number of airstrikes on Hezbollah targets on Saturday night, but the Israeli security cabinet met Sunday afternoon, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return from the US, to decide on further targets to be hit in Lebanon.