Riyadh grows as regional center for international business firms
Wall Street investment firms, corporate law firms and business conglomerates are lining up for scarce premium office space in Riyadh.
Responding to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing campaign to attract international business, the government reported that 616 international companies established their regional headquarters in the capital city during the first quarter of 2025, an 8% jump from the previous quarter.
Saudi Minister of Media Salman Al-Dosari also said at a press conference that the kingdom’s efforts to promote startups are paying off, with commercial registrations up 13% to 1.7 million by mid-2025.
The Saudi government established a policy this year, requiring international firms to maintain a regional headquarters in the kingdom as a prerequisite for winning state contracts.
BlackRock joins Abu Dhabi’s IHC in $1 billion reinsurance venture
Wall Street titan BlackRock is teaming up with Abu Dhabi’s International Holding Co. to create a $1 billion reinsurance firm with its foundations in AI.
The venture announced Thursday is one of a cavalcade of deals that are being cooked up amid Trump’s tour of the Gulf next week, which will take him to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, followed by Qatar and the UAE.
BlackRock, the world’s largest alternative investment firm, and Abu Dhabi asset manager Lunate will join as minority partners, according to a statement issued by IHC.
The new company will be chaired by Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and Chairman of ADNOC. Mark Wilson, the former chief executive of Aviva and AIA Group, will serve as CEO.
Lunate, which was founded two years ago and manages $110 billion, will provide expertise in private and public markets to the reinsurance company, which will operate from the capital city’s free zone financial center, ADGM.
Also in the run-up to the Trump visit, the U.S. is developing a fast-track process for screening foreign investments, which could smooth the process for sovereign wealth funds such as the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the UAE’s Mubadala, and the Qatar Investment Authority to sign contracts next week, Bloomberg reports.
Goldman Sachs deepens ties with Saudi Arabia as PIF backs funds
As Goldman Sachs boosts its involvement with Saudi Arabia, the kingdom is offering more support for the Wall Street investment bank.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund is set to become an anchor investor in a series of new Goldman Sachs-managed funds that focus both on the kingdom and the other five Gulf states, Bloomberg reports.
The PIF and the U.S. firm signed a draft agreement relating to the new funds – subject to regulatory approval – which will be centered on private credit and public equity strategies in the GCC region, the news agency said.
Saudi Arabia has courted Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms as it seeks to invest its wealth and wean the economy off its dependence on oil.
Saudi FII conference winds down, spawning billions in deals
After three days of working the vast marble halls and plush meeting rooms of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, corporate chiefs are shaking hands on billions of dollars in deals arranged at Saudi Arabia’s annual Future Investment conference.
With FII’s outgoing CEO Richard Attias estimating that the conference would spawn some $28 billion in investments, executives from Wall Street, the Gulf, China and elsewhere vied for attention in announcing their latest deals.
Among the most watched tie-ups was the preliminary agreement announced by the Saudi Public Investment Fund to back Brookfield Asset Management’s new $2 billion Middle East fund, boosting the Canadian investment firm’s ability to finance deals in the Gulf.
New York-based Z Capital Group pledged as much as $2 billion for investments in Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg reports. It said the bank will launch a direct lending fund with approximately $1 billion early next year that offers senior secured and asset-backed loans to small and medium-sized businesses.
The National Bank of Kuwait signed $1.6 billion in deals at the FII conference, including a $690 million agreement with ACWA Power to support the Saudi energy and desalination company’s expansion plans in and outside the kingdom, KUNA reports.
UAE’s AI drive may lead to TSMC, Samsung building factories
The UAE’s determination to become a world center for AI development is attracting new interest from Asia’s big chipmakers.
Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics have discussed building large facilities to manufacture semiconductors in the UAE that could help propel the Gulf state to its goal of recognition as an artificial intelligence power, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Under initial terms being discussed, the projects would be funded by the UAE, with a central role for the Mubadala sovereign wealth fund and state-owned investment company MGX, which is focused on AI technology.
Amid the avalanche of interest in artificial intelligence, UAE-owned G42 has signed a variety of agreements with Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia over recent months.
Wall Street meets royal court at Saudi business summit
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – The captains of Wall Street met the princes of Saudi Arabia today at the kingdom’s annual gathering of the financial elite.
Speakers on stage at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center fielded questions on conflict in Europe and the Middle East, high interest rates, low growth and technological upheaval. Front and center was Saudi Arabia’s place in global markets.
“I believe many of the challenges” in current world economic conditions such as high interest rates “actually play to our strengths,” Saudi Minister of Investment Khalid al Falih said in the Future Investment Initiative conference’s morning session.
The kingdom’s $760 billion sovereign wealth fund has launched 90 new companies since 2017, beginning its investment spree with a mandate from Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic transformation plan, which he introduced to the world investor class at the first FII conference seven years ago. Today, the Public Investment Fund is overseeing the development of the mega-project NEOM as well as major investments into alternative energy, aviation, telecoms. Forays into e-gaming and pro soccer and golf have grabbed headlines around the world.
Prince Mohammed, known internationally as MBS, sat beside South Korean President Yoon Suk Leol in ringside seats at the conference – which was arranged as a theater in the round – but he made no public comments.
In a panel discussion, Wall Street leaders were largely negative on the global economic outlook. Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, pushed for continued normalization among Arab countries and Israel as he called the economic transformation within the kingdom “so good”.
Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, the largest alternative investment firm in the world, said he’s seeing a dramatic increase in investing amid a slow-growth environment: “We have probably a quarter of the trillion we manage from retail, high net worth investors. I think that’s going to grow.”
The U.S. Federal Reserve is “having a pretty good impact of taking inflation out of the system,” he added, noting that of the 250 companies in its portfolio, cost of production was flat quarter-on-quarter.
Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, acknowledged the recent terrorist attacks in Israel, and was more pessimistic, predicting the Fed will have to continue to hike interest rates: “This reminds me of the Seventiess…. The Seventies was all about bad policy and today is all about bad policy again.”
Citi’s CEO Jane Fraser was also cautious. “We’re sitting here with a backdrop of the terrorist attack in Israel and the events that have unfolded since, and it’s desperately sad,” she said. “So it’s hard not to be a little pessimistic.
“There is a new S in ESG which is security, be it food security, energy security, it could be defense, or financial security,” she said, referring to recent emphasis on environmental, social and governance values in investing “That’s certainly a theme for all CEOs around the world – how to build more resilient companies and countries.”
Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank, summed up the general tenor when he said the world economy is at a “dangerous juncture.”
Freightos $80 million IPO funds shipping platform’s expansion
TEL AVIV – Freightos, an online platform for shipping goods around the world, will use some $80 million raised in a Wall Street public offering to upgrade its booking technology and expand operations globally, particularly in Asia, founder and CEO Zvi Schreiber told The Circuit.
The Jerusalem-based company sold shares for the first time on Thursday through a merger with Gesher, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, which enabled Freightos’ listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The new stock, bearing the ticker symbol CRGO, rose as high as $30 a share in early trading before closing at $10.49. It dropped 22% on Friday to $8.20.
“It’s all about expanding the product and expanding the customer footprint,” Schreiber, 53, said in an interview from New York, where he rang Nasdaq’s opening bell surrounded by cheering Freightos executives. “We’re already in a fast-growth trajectory, which is great, and we want to carry that on.”
Founded in 2012, Freightos disrupted the international shipping industry by allowing businesses to shop online for the best prices to move goods by sea and air – similar to comparing flight and hotel costs on sites like Expedia and Booking.com. Sales revenue boomed last year as Freightos benefited from high cargo prices amid world shipping delays. Prices have since declined.
“People were sort of lazy when supply chains were all running smoothly,” said London-born Schreiber who lives in Israel. “Now it’s clear that because of [factors such as] the pandemic, increasingly erratic weather, labor disputes, things are changing all the time. That just underlines the need to have a booking platform that is digital.”
Freightos also brought a wealth of data analytics to the freight industry, introducing real-time information on pricing, vessel location and available cargo space that were historically held tightly by shipping lines. “Now when a port goes down, you just go to a website and find the alternative,” Schreiber said. “ If the Suez Canal is blocked, you can go to the website and find the ship that would sail through the Pacific route.”
Of the $80 million raised in the IPO, $10 million came from Qatar Airways, the world’s largest air cargo carrier, and $60 million from M&G Investments and Prudential Assurance Co., both based in London, according to a Freightos statement. Shareholders include the Israeli venture capital firms Aleph, OurCrowd and Sadara; Singapore’s SGX Group; FedEx Logistics; and Bob Mylod, chairman of Booking Holdings, which owns Booking.com and Priceline.com.
While Freightos is registered in the Cayman Islands, Schreiber said its Israeli roots have not presented a barrier to its close connections with Qatar Airways, whose chief cargo officer, Guillaume Halleux, sits on the company’s board. Qatar has no official diplomatic relations with Israel and declined to join the 2020 Abraham Accords in which its Gulf neighbors, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, normalized ties with Israel.
“We’re pragmatic and they’re pragmatic,” Schreiber said of the Qatari airline. “It’s just doing what makes sense from a business perspective.”
Freightos also does significant business with the Dubai-based carrier, Emirates.
The new funds will help Freightos grow and extend the company’s influence in a variety of ways, said Michael Eisenberg, co-founder of Aleph, which co-led the first investment round in Freightos a decade ago.
“The infusion of capital allows Freightos to lean in when so many other companies are leaning back,” Eisenberg told The Circuit. “Going public also brings brand recognition and credibility, which opens doors with enterprises, shippers and airlines and ocean carriers.”
Schreiber said the money will allow Freightos to pursue an “aggressive expansion plan” around the world while paying special attention to Asia, noting the company’s latest partnership agreement with China Southern, the country’s largest airline.
“It’s not a secret that we’ve been stronger in Europe and in the U.S.,” Schreiber said. “We’ve still got a limited footprint in Asia, but Asia, of course, is a huge part of the world economy and particularly important when it comes to freight.”
Mobileye files for IPO amid barren Wall Street landscape
While stocks drop ever lower and corporate funding sources remain dry, investors saw some light last week when Mobileye, the Jerusalem-based chipmaker for self-driving vehicles that is owned by Intel Corp., filed for its long-anticipated initial public offering.
When the IPO will take place and how much Mobileye will seek to raise on the Nasdaq remains unanswered. But the company’s filing of its S-1 preliminary prospectus with the SEC late Friday generated rare optimism during a tough year.
“I am thrilled,” Michael Granoff, founder and managing partner of Maniv Mobility, told The Circuit. “Mobileye is the most impactful company that has ever been created in Israel, and its impact may grow manyfold in the years to come,” said Granoff, a veteran automotive technology investor who doesn’t hold an interest in the company.
If Mobileye starts selling shares before the end of 2022 as executives have indicated, it will be one of the biggest IPOs of the year. The IPO market has shrunk amid a 33% slide in the Nasdaq Composite Index since the end of 2021, a steady rise in interest rates and global tensions from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
According to the filing, the IPO is being led by investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Among the 24 financial advisors listed are Citigroup, Barclays, Evercore ISI and RBC Capital Markets.
The document leaves the size and timing of the IPO blank. Intel, which bought Mobileye for about $15.3 billion in 2017, had hoped to raise $50 billion with the IPO and has since trimmed the target to $30 billion, according to Bloomberg. Neither company has confirmed the report. Only two IPOs have raised $1 billion or more on New York exchanges since Jan. 1, compared with 45 in 2021.
Mobileye is one of the leaders in creating software, semiconductor chips, cameras and sensory arrays to enable the development of self-driving vehicles. Chief executives from the world’s largest car companies have made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to see the company and meet with CEO Amnon Shashua.
In Friday’s filing, Mobileye said it plans to use proceeds from the IPO to pay back debt to Intel, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes. Other details gleaned from the prospectus are that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger will serve as chairman of Mobileye and that the board will include Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah. Huntsman, who previously served as U.S. ambassador in both Russia and China and was a Republican candidate for president in 2012, serves on the board of Ford Motor Co. The document notes that Mobileye acquired Moovit, a popular app and transportation business, from Intel this year. Intel bought the Israeli company for $900 million in 2020.
Shashua said in a July letter to employees that the IPO was being postponed until markets stabilize. “We still hope that the offering will take place in 2022 and meanwhile the company is prospering on all fronts and the future seems more promising than ever,” he wrote. In last week’s prospectus, the company reported a 21% increase in revenue for the first half of 2022 compared to the same period last year.
Gelsinger said in an interview with Calcalist while visiting Israel in March that Intel was closely following market conditions to determine the timing for the IPO. “The electric car market is heating up and I want Mobileye to be a prominent player there,” Gelsinger told the financial news site. “We are fully invested in Mobileye’s success but I think it will be a greater success after the IPO.”
New registrations for electric vehicles in the U.S. have increased by more than 250% over the past five years. Sales of electric cars in China nearly tripled to 3.3 million last year, about half the global total.
Granoff, whose fund is an investor in Israel’s Otonomo Technologies, which collects data from network-connected vehicles, said the Mobileye IPO will be good for the emerging industry of autonomous vehicles.
“They pioneered concepts that have made vehicles safer and have set the stage for cars that are increasingly automated,” he said.
