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  • Saudi Arabia’s Neo Space Group Appoints Martijn Blanken as New CEO

    NSG is a wholly owned company of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the nation’s sovereign wealth fund. NSG will focus on pursuing strategic and commercially feasible space sector opportunities. It will also invest in the most promising new space technology startups and entrepreneurs both in Saudi Arabia and globally. NSG is fully aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and plans to create a global commercial space communications leader.

  • SAMA Regulations Enhancing Saudi Islamic Banks’ Transparency, Sharia Governance

    Islamic finance-specific rules issued by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) over 2020–1H24 are enhancing Islamic banking regulations to some extent, says Fitch Ratings, through better transparency and reporting requirements, standardisation and sharia governance, and increased consumer confidence in the products’ sharia-compliance. While the Saudi Islamic banking market is the largest globally, and we expect the operating environment to be favourable over 2H24–2025, persisting issues include low standardisation, still-developing Islamic-finance regulations, and fragmented disclosures.

  • Hevolution announces $400 million surge in healthspan funding

    Hevolution Foundation, a global nonprofit organization that provides grants and early-stage investments to incentivize research and entrepreneurship in healthspan science, has announced it has committed $400 million to healthspan sciences over the last 21 months, a move that positions the Foundation as the world’s largest philanthropic funder of geroscience.

  • Saudi startups take lead in MENA funding space

    Saudi Arabia’s startup ecosystem has affirmed its leading position in the funding space, capturing over 53 percent of the region’s venture debt financing in 2023, according to MAGNiTT’s latest report. The venture data platform revealed that Saudi startups raised a total of $400 million in venture debt last year, a 602 percent growth compared to $57 million in 2022.

  • Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund launches new group to boost space industry

    The Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, on Monday launched the Neo Space Group to work on the Kingdom’s satellite and space industry, its first investment in the sector.

    The Neo Space Group or NSG is the “PIF’s first investment focused on the space industry,” the sovereign wealth fund said in a statement.

  • Ireland, Spain, Norway announce recognition of Palestinian state

    Ireland, Spain and Norway announced on Wednesday that they would recognise a Palestinian state on May 28, saying they hoped other Western countries would follow suit, prompting Israel to recall its ambassadors.
    Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the move was aimed at accelerating efforts to secure a ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza.

  • Multilingual Saudi women welcoming Hajj pilgrims at Medina airport sparks social media buzz

    Saudi Arabia is set to welcome Hajj pilgrims with a multilingual team of women at Prince Mohammed bin Abdul Aziz International Airport in Medina.
    A video clip showing young Saudi women practising welcome phrases in various languages, including English, French, Turkish, and Indonesian, among others, has gone viral

  • Consulting firms’ grip on Saudi economy sparks local misgivings

    But some officials fear Saudi ministries have become over-reliant on western consultancies, from the Big Four of Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC to more specialist strategy consulting firms, as disgruntlement grows about the outsiders’ ever-growing role in running the country. “I’ll be in a lot of meetings where Minister X or Deputy Minister X is presenting a strategy,” said one Saudi professional who has worked both in the government and at a top consulting firm. “And the first thing that they’ll say is: ‘Ahlan wa sahlan, welcome, and I would like to let you know that consulting firm Y prepared this presentation’ . . . They don’t even take ownership of it.”

  • Who’s Who: Abdullah Al-Ajmi, space business development director for Lockheed Martin in Saudi Arabia

    Abdullah Al-Ajmi is the space business development director for Lockheed Martin in Saudi Arabia. He is responsible for coordinating and bolstering the Kingdom’s space efforts. In addition to fostering strategic cooperation between government and commercial enterprises, Al-Ajmi oversees the facilitation of scientific experiments and international research collaborations, as well as the administration of future space-related missions. A retired brigadier general of the Royal Saudi Air Force and Ministry of Defense, he has a wealth of expertise and experience in remote sensing and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and space systems.

  • Saudi Arabia to Launch a Centre for Space Futures in the Forum’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Network

    The World Economic Forum has signed an agreement with the Saudi Space Agency to establish a Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) focused on space.
    The Centre for Space Futures, set to open in autumn 2024, will be hosted by the Saudi Space Agency. It aims to facilitate public-private discussions on space collaboration, incorporating best practices from the Forum and its communities into the global space sector and generating contributions to accelerate space technologies.