THIS MORNING: Flexible hours start rolling out for Riyadh gov’t workers

Good morning, all. We lead today’s issue with a deep dive into corporate Saudi Arabia — the hurdles firms are facing, how they secure their capital, and how they compare to their regional peers.

Plus: How did Saudi M&A activity hold up last quarter? Where did the Kingdom’s net foreign assets stand at the end of April? And what new regulatory reforms are on the table to expand the asset-backed debt market?

Flexible hours for Riyadh gov’t workers

Riyadh is rolling out flexible working hours in a push to ease the capital’s notorious morning congestion, the Royal Commission for Riyadh City said on LinkedIn. The initiative lets staff stagger their arrival times within a four-hour window, with civil service entities clocking in any time between 5:30-9:30am, while government bodies under the Labor Law get a window of 7-11am.

Where it applies: The initiative covers over 50 government bodies in six business districts, including King Abdullah Financial District, Digital City, Roshn Front, Laysen Valley, Granada Business, and the Diplomatic Quarter.

The goal is mainly to smooth traffic flows. Spreading peak arrivals across a wider window is meant to flatten the rush-hour crunch in some of Riyadh’s dense employment hubs.

What we’re watching: The rollout is concentrated in marquee districts such as KAFD for now. How the staggered-hours model plays out in these high-density zones could shape whether it’s extended citywide.

EU trade agreement up next?

A long-stalled trade agreement between the GCC and the EU could be settled at a leaders’ summit in Riyadh this October, unnamed European and Gulf sources told Aleqtisadiah. The shape of the agreement is shifting, with officials discussing a move away from a single, all-encompassing framework towards sector-specific agreements — think renewable energy, digital trade, and industrial supply chains, according to the sources.

Britain lit the fuse: Brussels’ renewed urgency follows the conclusion of a trade agreement with the UK last month to remove duties on roughly GBP 580 mn worth of UK exports to the GCC annually.

The gripe: The hold-up has been the EU’s insistence on bundling in non-trade matters, head of the Gulf negotiating team and adviser at the Economy and Planning Ministry Raja Al Marzouqi told the news outlet.

Ain’t waiting around: The bloc has already signed with South Korea and is eyeing agreements with China, Turkey, and Indonesia, a pipeline that could see Gulf states lean towards bilateral arrangements at the EU’s expense if Brussels keeps dragging its feet, Al Marzouqi warned. For GCC economies recalibrating away from oil, faster trade integration means importing the capital and technical goods those new sectors will need, he said.

DATA POINT- The EU remains the GCC’s second-largest trading partner, underpinned largely by fuel imports.

BlackRock's Jafurah vehicle taps debt markets

Green Palm Bidco opened books for a USD-denominated bond issuance yesterday, Global Capital reported. The company — which BlackRock-led investors set up to take a stake in Aramco’s Jafurah gas field — is selling two senior secured tranches, with initial price talks landing at 185 bps over US treasuries for the 15-year tranche and 180 bps for the 20-year tranche.

More to come: The transaction, expected to raise around USD 2 bn, is the first in a series of issuances designed to chip away at a USD 7.8 bn bridge loan the consortium secured last year to buy into the natural gas field.

ADVISORS- Citi, HSBC, and JP Morgan are coordinators. Active bookrunners are Bank of America, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Mizuho, MUFG, SMBC, and Standard Chartered. Passive bookrunners are ABC International, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and ICBC.

Earning well is not the same as investing well — and for most mid-level executives and entrepreneurs, the gap between the two is wider than they’d like to admit. The financial landscape has shifted. Regional markets are opening up, AI is rewriting how portfolios get managed, and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are entering the conversation.

And the questions that used to feel straightforward — buy or rent, fund the startup or play it safe, finance the car now or wait it out — are harder to answer than ever.

In Issue 2 of EnterpriseAM Money Matters, we get into the decisions that don’t have easy answers, because at this stage, playing it safe is the riskiest move you can make.

Tap or click here to subscribe to the Egypt edition, delivered to your inbox today, 11 AM Egypt & KSA.

Data point

10th place — that’s where Saudi Arabia ranked globally in the 2026 Kearney FDIConfidence Index, entering the world’s top 10 for the first time. The Kingdom also maintained its position as the third-ranked emerging market behind China and the UAE.

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The big story abroad

No single story is dominating the global front pages this morning — but among the stories making headlines:

#1- SpaceX will reportedly raise USD 75 bn in its highly anticipated IPO, selling 555.6 mn shares at USD 135 a pop, unnamed sources told Reuters. These figures put the firm’s valuation at USD 1.75 tn.

#2- Microsoft launched its own AI offerings at its Build conference to compete with proprietary models, including coding assistants and reasoning models, which would lower costs and reliance on OpenAI products. The tech giant also unveiled Project Solara, a family of prototype devices designed to host AI agents that carry out complex tasks autonomously.

#3- Investors seem bullish and unafraid: Concerns over inflation and elevated asset prices are trumped by optimistic sentiments, as financial markets currently exhibit “more greed than there is fear,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said. He added that so long as investors remain bullish, there is ample liquidity to absorb massive upcoming IPOs from companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

#4- The UN General Assembly has elected its next head. Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman narrowly defeated Cyprus’ Andreas Kakouris to secure the presidency of the UN General Assembly.

AND- The latest war updates: Iran launched fresh attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain last night — some failed en route and others were intercepted. In response, US forces launched “self-defense” strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island.