THIS MORNING: Riyadh Air launches its first commercial flight

Good morning, all and welcome to a new week. A bittersweet headline leads today’s issue — the World Bank has trimmed our economic growth forecast for the year, but we’re still expected to outgrow other Gulf oil producers.

The 2026 World Cup kicked off last week and our national team will play its first match on Tuesday, facing Uruguay at 1am. The team will face Spain next week.

Paramount gets a green light

The PIF’s largest bet on Western media just cleared its biggest US hurdle. The US Justice Department closed on Friday an eight-month antitrust probe into Paramount Skydance’s roughly USD 110 bn takeover of Warner Bros Discovery, ruling the merger unlikely to harm competition or US consumers.

REMEMBER- The deal puts CBS-owner Paramount in control of the larger Warner family, home to HBO and CNN. The Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, and Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding are partially bankrolling the transaction with some USD 24 bn in equity.

The three Gulf funds would together own about 38.5% of the combined company, inside a foreign investor block of some 49.5% — one of the largest sovereign pushes into US media on record. The stakes were reportedly structured as non-voting to blunt foreign-influence concerns.

What’s next? Washington was the easy part, but Brussels is the real test. The European Commission has two parallel reviews running — a Phase 1 merger check due 7 July and a Foreign Subsidies probe targeting the Gulf money due 14 July — and can still escalate either into a full investigation.

Riyadh Air’s maiden flight

Riyadh Air’s first commercial flight to London Heathrow took off on Wednesday using a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the company said on X. Up to this point, the airline had been in an “operational readiness” phase, running invite-only flights to Heathrow on technical spare jets. Last week’s flight marks the real kickoff of its own fleet after taking delivery of its first two Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.

As for the elephant in the room (regional disruptions) CEO Tony Douglas downplayed the impact on operations. He told Reuters that disruptions elsewhere in the Gulf might actually push more traveler traffic toward Saudi Arabia. Given the complexities of launching an airline during a regional conflict, Douglas also admitted he was “glad” the carrier currently maintains a small fleet. And, thanks to uninterrupted airport operations in the capital, the startup has so far avoided direct disruptions, with Douglas saying that many travelers now view Riyadh as a “safe entry-exit point.”

But the skies are still turbulent: Riyadh Air is launching during an industry-wide crunch of high operating costs, flight reroutes, and surging fuel prices tied to the war. John Grant, partner at Midas Aviation, previously told us that the survivors of this environment will be the “well-resourced” and strategic fuel hedgers.

If you want a deeper dive into the ins and outs of Riyadh Air’s launch, we broke it down here.

China cuts Saudi oil imports

Crude exports to China are expected to remain near record lows in July, with purchases falling to less than a third of 2025’s average intake, as elevated prices following the US-Iran war weigh on demand from the world’s largest importer, Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources.

Where things stand: Aramco is set to ship around 12 mn bbl of crude to China for July loading, or about 387k bbl / d. Major refiners, including Sinopec, didn’t purchase any Saudi crude for a second consecutive month, while Rongsheng Petrochemical’s buying remains well below pre-war levels.

Behind the drop: Chinese refiners have cut run rates as weak fuel demand and higher crude costs led to refining losses, prompting a shift to cheaper alternatives such as Russian, West African, and Latin American crude, Kpler’s senior crude analyst Xu Muyu said. Saudi barrels, by comparison, remain relatively expensive. Aramco’s recent USD 6 per bbl price cut to Asia still puts it at a USD 9.50 per bbl premium over regional benchmarks.

China is still looking to deepen energy ties despite the disruption, as National Energy Administration deputy head Song Hongkun met Aramco Downstream President Mohammed Al Qahtani in Beijing on Thursday to discuss energy security and oil and gas cooperation. The talks focused on coordination and risk management amid ongoing disruptions to global energy flows following Middle East tensions and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Crown prince bows out of G7 summit

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will not attend this week’s G7 summit due to “prior commitments,” SPA reports. The 16 June gathering in France’s Evian was expected to bring together leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE to discuss the Middle East conflict, including the Strait of Hormuz situation and its impact on global fuel prices, as well as Iran-related negotiations.

A recurring absence: The Crown Prince has now declined invitations to four consecutive G7 summits, including last year’s gathering in Canada and 2024’s summit in Italy. He did not attend the 2023 Japan summit due to concerns over King Salman’s health at the time. Saudi Arabia is not a G7 member but is occasionally invited as a guest nation.

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You're at the stage where the questions have shifted: who gets what, whether your estate survives you intact or gets tied up in courts, whether you exit on your terms or let timing decide for you.

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In the final issue of EnterpriseAM Money Matters, we cover the decisions that define how you exit: estate planning under Egyptian law, what to actually ask your lawyer before you step back, how to read a severance package, when phased retirement makes financial sense — and when cashing out your options is the smartest move you'll make this decade.

Tap or click here to subscribe to the Egypt edition, delivered to your inbox on Wednesday, 17 June.

Data point

USD 64.5 bn — that’s how much Saudi investors traded in US equities through CMA-licensed institutions in 1Q 2026, up 47.2% y-o-y and marking a seventh consecutive quarter of annual growth, according to CMA data cited by Al Eqtisadiah. Trading volumes, however, fell 5% q-o-q amid US market volatility.

Overseas investing gathers pace: US stocks accounted for 28% of Saudis’ total trading activity, up from 18% a year earlier, while the Saudi market retained the largest share at 69%. Meanwhile, Saudi-held assets in foreign-listed securities reached SAR 36.5 bn, up 71% y-o-y, and trading in European markets jumped more than sixfold to SAR 11 bn — the highest level seen since the CMA started gathering data in 2015.

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The big story abroad

Next stop: Mars. SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO and CEO Elon Musk’s new status as the world’s first tn’aire dominated the front pages over the weekend and continue to do so this morning.

Here’s how day 1 of trading went: SpaceX made its debut on the Nasdaq on Friday after raising USD 75 bn in its IPO, overtaking Saudi Aramco for the title of the largest IPO in history. Shares ended the day up 19% at USD 160.95 apiece, pushing the company’s valuation to over USD 2 tn.

Meet the richest man alive: The company’s public debut pushed Musk’s net worth to USD 1.1 tn, making him over three times richer than second in line Google co-founder Larry Page. A USD 1.1 tn fortune once seemed unimaginable within our lifetime, with the first fortune exceeding USD 100 bn registered less than a decade ago.

Several outlets are out with interesting pieces worth reading on the matter, including the Financial Times’ AI is Revolutionising the Stock Market and Bloomberg’s Why Musk Raced to Take SpaceX Public in the World’s Biggest IPO, which puts the timing of the move into perspective — before the US midterm elections and dominating the scene before OpenAI and Anthropic move forward with their planned listings.

And speaking of Anthropic: The company behind Claude suspended all access to two of its AI models — Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — in response to a directive from the US government, which ordered the startup to block the models from any foreign nationals. The company said the government believes there is a “jailbreak” that can bypass Fable 5’s safeguards, potentially allowing the model to be used for identifying software vulnerabilities.

The latest war update: US President Donald Trump last night said that a US-Iran agreement to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz will “get signed tomorrow.” According to him, the waterway will be “open to all” immediately after the agreement is signed.