THIS MORNING: PIF may have found its way out of LIV Golf’s bankruptcy

Good morning, wonderful people. This morning’s batch of earnings has a distinct ins. flavor to it, with the common denominator being growth on premiums while their investment portfolios lost money. The banks, meanwhile, are getting a version of the same message from their depositors.

Fitch says the era of cheap funding for Saudi banks is over. Lending has run ahead of deposits again, the pressure on margins lasts years rather than quarters, and it falls hardest on the lenders that grew fastest without a deep base of cheap deposits behind them.

AND- October’s contracting awards tripled from September, making it the third-biggest month of the year by value. Almost all of it landed in one sector, which is the catch. Red Sea International’s quarter, further down, shows the other side of the same market — what a slower pace of execution does to a contractor, with a rights issue now sitting with the CMA.

PSAs

Four more nationalities qualify for fast-track Saudi visas: Citizens of Mexico, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia no longer need a US, UK, or Schengen visa or a GCC residency to get a Saudi tourist visa online or on arrival, according to a Tourism Ministry statement. The multiple-entry visa is valid for a year and allows stays of up to 90 days for tourism, events, family visits, and Umrah outside of Hajj season.

This is the second visa expansion in a month, after Kosovo and Guyana were added in early October.

Buying bankruptcy

PIF may have found its way out of LIV Golf’s bankruptcy. BC Partners is preparing a preliminary bid for the USD 50 mn debtor-in-possession loan the fund holds — the financing that carries control of LIV’s Chapter 11 case — days after walking away from its LIV 2.0 project, the Financial Times reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The bid is early enough that it isn’t known whether PIF or LIV are receptive to it, or aware of the details.

A sale would serve what PIF has wanted since it stopped funding the league in September — a fast exit with no residual liabilities and no exposure to suits from golfers or vendors. The fund, which owned 98% of LIV, would put in further money to settle trade vendor claims that the Financial Times previously reported may run to USD 100 mn or more, against the USD 2 mn set aside for unsecured creditors. Selling the loan alongside that settlement would take PIF out of the case.

LIV’s lawyers told a federal bankruptcy court in New Jersey on Thursday that the group would wind down, with liquidation paperwork due by Monday, while leaving room to revisit if circumstances change.

For BC, the loan buys time for a 2027 relaunch, thinner than the 17-tournament, USD 300 mn version it had proposed. It would also preserve the USD 5 bn in net operating losses LIV has racked up in the US and UK since 2021, which it could use to shelter profits at companies it buys later.

LIV Golf was reportedly set for liquidation as its negotiations with BC broke down over unresolved terms. The original LIV 2.0 collapsed at the eleventh hour over player demands, with some of the 15-40 golfers who had shown interest demanding BC honor guarantees canceled during the Chapter 11 process while keeping the right to withdraw after signing. BC argues the opening is still there, citing PGA Tour schedule changes in 2028 and losses at Europe’s DP World Tour, though both tours have been cool on releasing players for future LIV events.

A footnote

Saudi Arabia’s 3Q deficit looks worse than it is. One of the causes of the USD 22.5 bn shortfall for the quarter came from a one-off collapse in Aramco’s income tax bill, a timing effect that should reverse, specialist publication Mees reports.

Aramco itself had a strong quarter, even as its payments to the state shrank. Net income rose 34.5% y-o-y to USD 36.3 bn in 3Q on a 20.3% jump in revenue to USD 123.8 bn, but the company’s income tax payment collapsed to just USD 758 mn, from USD 13.6 bn in 2Q. The cause is the price-equalization mechanism, which compensates Aramco for selling some fuels domestically at subsidized prices. A compensation lag from 2Q was largely cleared in 3Q, cutting its taxable income for the period. Mees calls it a timing effect that should unwind as payments normalize.

Royalties softened too, while dividends held. Royalty payments fell to USD 12.5 bn from USD 18 bn as realized crude averaged USD 95.2 a barrel, down from USD 108.1 in 2Q, though royalty income stayed above pre-conflict levels. Dividends remained the biggest single component of Aramco’s payments to the state, at USD 17.8 bn, so the quarter’s shortfall sat in the tax and royalty lines — both of which could rebound if, as Mees expects, 4Q oil prices average above USD 100 a barrel.

REMEMBER- The government posted a SAR 244.3 bn deficit in the first nine months against an original full-year budget forecast of SAR 165.4 bn. Revenues rose 3% y-o-y to SAR 858.9 bn — oil down just 1% to SAR 446.3 bn, non-oil up 8% to SAR 412.5 bn — while the gap was driven by spending: grants jumped 197%, subsidies rose 49%, and financing expenses climbed 38%.

War Watch

Saudi air defenses intercepted a barrage of Houthi missiles and drones yesterday, with falling shrapnel causing minor damage to an Aramco administrative building in Riyadh. The coalition said it destroyed two ballistic missiles launched toward Riyadh, one aimed at the eastern region, two cruise missiles over Riyadh, and a drone launched toward the southern region.

The Saudi-led coalition destroyed a ballistic missile launch platform in Sanaa that the Houthi militia had used in an attempted attack on Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, SPA reported yesterday, citing coalition spokesperson Turki Al Maliki. Saudi forces carried out 91 airstrikes and missile attacks across Al Jawf, Taiz, Hajjah, Saada, Hodeidah, and Lahj, Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree said on X. These strikes brought the total number of air and missile strikes since the escalation began to nearly 4.5k, according to Saree.

Yemeni forces are pressing from the other end: The Yemeni army said it carried out 875 strikes on Saturday and killed or neutralized 130 Houthis. Spokesman Majed Al Nazili said forces also destroyed or disabled 50 vehicles, military equipment, and missile launch platforms. Fighting continued in Taiz, while emergency units and Nation’s Shield forces struck Houthi concentrations and reinforcements in Marib and Al Jawf.

Diplomacy continues in parallel: Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan spoke on Saturday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty about regional and international developments and efforts to support security and stability. He also spoke with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani about efforts to de-escalate regional tensions.

REMEMBER- The Houthis reportedly demanded around USD 51 bn plus formal recognition of the group as Yemen’s rulers in exchange for ending the war.

Put on ice

Two logistics forums set to take place in Riyadh have been pushed back by nearly a year. The Global Logistics Forum (GLF), originally scheduled for 29 November to 1 December, will now run on 16-18 November 2027, according to the Saudi Ports Authority (Mawani). The Global Supply Chain Forum, which Mawani and UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) co-organized to run alongside the GLF, is also moving to 2027, UNCTAD said, without specifying new dates. The GLF said the extra time will allow more preparation and coordination with international partners.

What about the participants? Organizers confirmed existing GLF registrations and partnerships will remain valid. The forum, organized by the Transport and Logistics Services Ministry, debuted in Riyadh in 2024, when it generated a string of agreements covering cargo operations, warehousing, and logistics zones.

Know your obligations

Businesses can now check which zakat, tax, and customs obligations apply to their activities through Business Consult, a new online service from Zatca, the authority said. Users enter information about their business activities, and the system analyzes the data to display the applicable regulatory obligations instantly, alongside relevant guidance.

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The big story abroad

Nvidia is investigating its own boss. The company said in a brief statement yesterday that it will look into whether CEO Jensen Huang “has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.” Huang was reportedly in a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed and an alleged Chinese spy. Megaspeed is a Singapore-based Nvidia customer that has come under US scrutiny over alleged smuggling of Nvidia chips into China. Nvidia is caught between Washington and Beijing — the Trump administration has licensed it to sell a limited range of chips to China, but Beijing has blocked their import.

Singapore has overtaken Ireland as Apple’s largest tax shelter, the Financial Times reports. The tech giant used Singapore’s tax incentive regime to cut USD 2.7 bn from its tax bill this year after attributing up to USD 50 bn in earnings to its Asian hub, according to disclosures filed with its annual report under new US reporting rules. That beats the USD 2.6 bn reduction it secured through Ireland, home to its European headquarters.

Anthropic is pushing further into the energy sector. The AI lab secured commitments for 1.7 GW of heavy-duty gas-fired generators for data centers in September, paying USD 3.4 bn to Texas-based equipment supplier OnePWR Solutions, the Financial Times reports. The order includes the engineering and construction expertise needed to get the generators up and running. It marks the biggest known one-off acquisition of power-generation equipment by an AI lab, as developers increasingly go straight to suppliers to secure hard-to-find power gear.