MUST-READS

• IPOs in Saudi market poised for strong growth in 2025: EFG Hermes

  Karim Meleka, Co-Head of Investment Banking at EFG Hermes, said 2025 is set to witness strong activity in the Saudi and regional IPO markets, with the Kingdom maintaining dominance as it has for the past four to five years. Speaking to Argaam at the Capital Markets Forum (CMF), Meleka highlighted a wave of IPOs across multiple sectors. Healthcare, real estate, retail, and financial services are all seen to witness significant IPO activity. EFG Hermes has been actively involved in the healthcare sector. Last year, the firm took two sector companies public and is planning to list two more in 2025. The real estate sector is also heating up, particularly in facilities management, where EFG Hermes is working on two upcoming IPOs.

• Saudi Arabia has highest penetration rate of women professional gamers globally: Saudi prince: Video
  HRH Prince Faisal bin Bandar Al-Saud, chairman of the Saudi Esports Federation, said on Thursday at CONVERGE LIVE that the country has had the opportunity to show that professional gaming is a “real career path with no baggage for women”.

• Saudi Arabia targets $2.9bn Red Sea tourism spend and 28,000 jobs as it becomes yachting hub

  In collaboration with its partners, SRSA has accelerated infrastructure development along the Red Sea, issuing 29 tourism licences that have strengthened the economic landscape for yacht tourism. Among these, three licences were granted to yacht chartering companies, 10 to marina operators, and five to technical service providers in leisure and tourism, fostering a thriving marine tourism ecosystem. The Red Sea region, spanning 1,800km of coastline, is home to more than 1,000 islands, 150 pristine beaches, and 3,200 cultural and tourism assets, including heritage villages, markets, and active maritime ports.

• Saudi Arabia Chairs 69th Session of UN Commission on the Status of Women

  The 69th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) began yesterday, chaired by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, represented by its Permanent Representative to the United Nations Abdulaziz Alwasil. The session will continue through March 21, featuring a high-level delegation led by Family Affairs Council Secretary-General Maimoonah Al Khalil. As chair, the Kingdom emphasizes enhancing international cooperation to support women's empowerment and address their challenges. It will also share its experiences and initiatives that have strengthened Saudi women's role as a key driver of national development. Al Khalil emphasized that Saudi Arabia's selection to chair CSW69 demonstrates the significant strides made in empowering Saudi women. She attributed this success to the unwavering support of the Kingdom's leadership, which has facilitated women's continuous achievements across all fields.

• Egypt approves investment promotion agreement with Saudi Arabia

  The Egyptian parliament yesterday approved an agreement on the promotion and protection of mutual investments signed between Egypt and Saudi Arabia last October, Gulf Online reported. According to a statement published by the Federation of Saudi Chambers on its official account on X, the approval by the Egyptian parliament will help create optimal conditions for investment exchange between the two countries. The federation noted that the agreement “will lead to an increase in capital flows and investments between the two countries, provide more job opportunities, and strengthen economic relations.”

• How Mahmoud Khalil became the face of Trump’s crackdown on campus protests

  When protests over the Israel-Hamas war took root on Columbia University’s campus last spring, Mahmoud Khalil became a familiar, outspoken figure in a student movement that soon spread to other U.S. colleges. The international-affairs graduate student was a fixture in and around the protest encampment on Columbia’s Manhattan campus, serving as a spokesperson and negotiator for demonstrators who deplored Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and pressed the Ivy League school to cut financial ties with Israel and companies that supported the war. Now that visibility has helped make him the face of President Donald Trump’s drive to punish what he calls antisemitic and “anti-American” campus protests. In the first publicly known arrest of the crackdown, federal immigration agents took Khalil, a legal U.S. resident married to an American citizen, from his apartment Saturday and held him for potential deportation.

• Saudi Investment Fund pays $3.5bn to capture Pokémon Go

  Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) will pay $3.5bn (£2.7bn) to buy the gaming division of developer Niantic, whose titles include the hit mobile game Pokémon Go. The game involves players walking around in the real world to hunt the collectable creatures, which appear on their phone screens using augmented reality. Despite launching almost a decade ago, Pokémon Go is still amongst the highest-grossing mobile games in the world, with 30 million monthly players. The deal marks the latest step by Saudi Arabia to develop its gaming industry, which it has spent billions of pounds on in recent years. Niantic's other games, such as Monster Hunter Now and Pikmin Bloom, are also included in the acquisition, along with the people employed to make them. They will become part of Scopely Inc - which itself was bought by PIF subsidiary Savvy Games Group for $4.9bn in 2023. Scopely is one of the biggest names in mobile gaming, with its most successful title, Monopoly Go, being downloaded more than 50 million times and generating more than $3bn in revenue.

• G7 foreign ministers meet in Canada amid tensions with Trump
  Foreign ministers of leading Western democracies meet in Canada on Thursday after seven weeks of rising tensions between U.S. allies and President Donald Trump over his upending of foreign policy on Ukraine and imposing of tariffs. The Group of Seven ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, along with the EU, meet in the remote tourist town of La Malbaie, nestled in the Quebec hills for two days of meetings that in the past have broadly been consensual on the issues they face. Top of the agenda for Washington's partners will be getting a debriefing on U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's talks on Tuesday with Kyiv in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Ukraine said it was ready to support a 30-day ceasefire deal.

• Saudi Arabia’s Emergence as a Diplomatic Broker

  Although Riyadh’s audition for the global spotlight began years ago, it has kicked into overdrive this year, with the kingdom hosting multiple bilateral and multilateral meetings since January alone. These include the first high-level, direct meeting between Russia and the United States in years; an emergency Arab League summit to discuss postwar reconstruction plans for Gaza; an international meeting on securing assistance for post-Assad Syria; and the first foreign trips by interim Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa and newly minted Lebanese president Joseph Aoun. Most recently, Riyadh hosted President Volodymyr Zelensky this week amid high-level U.S. discussions on resolving the Ukraine war, and a follow-up summit between President Trump and Vladimir Putin may take place there as well.

• Siemens Energy awarded $1.6 billion Supply Contract for Rumah 2 and Nairyah 2 Power Plants

  Siemens Energy announces that it has been awarded a USD 1.6 billion project, with Harbin Electric International as the EPC contractor, to provide key technologies for the Rumah 2 and Nairyah 2 gas-fired power plants in Saudi Arabia. Located in the western and central regions, the plants will add 3.6 gigawatts of power to the national grid – enough to supply around 1.5 million homes. The project includes long-term maintenance agreements to support the plants’ operational reliability over the next 25 years. Core components for the power plants will be manufactured at the Siemens Energy Dammam Hub, which is currently expanding to increase local production capacity and support Saudi Arabia’s energy sector.

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