THE BASELINE.
THE NUMBER
trillion (SAR)
Total Saudi bank credit as of May, a record, up 16.2% in a year. Every giga-project render you've seen is, underneath, this number at work. The balance sheet is funding the build. (Arab News)
THREE SIGNALS
H1 bank profits: Al Rajhi SR13.76bn (+14.15%, highest of any lender), SNB SR13.02bn, Riyad SR5.26bn, Alinma SR3.27bn; total credit a record SR3.2tn, +16.2% YoY
The takeaway: Al Rajhi out-earned every bank and grew fastest; scale and speed together are rare, worth studying.
Abdullah Alkherb
A Snap–Kearney study found an 8-point gap between Saudi digital ad-spend growth and e-commerce growth; 30%+ of Saudi consumers find advertising culturally off-key.
The takeaway: A third of Saudi consumers feel that the ads don't represent them; the biggest growth driver isn't budget, but rather cultural fluency.
Mohammed Altuwaijri
The Cabinet approved unified GCC rules for jointly owned properties, standardizing common-area governance, owner rights, and asset management.
The takeaway: Disputes over shared ownership are the quiet friction in every tower, an unglamorous fix that unlocks investment.
Osamah Alfadda
THE MOVE
Jamjoom Pharma × Lifera
Jamjoom Pharma and PIF's Lifera signed a binding subscription for Biologics Co. — 51/49, Lifera majority — to build and run a Saudi vaccines and biosimilars plant. (Argaam)
look past pharma. The structure is the story: sovereign capital takes the majority, the operator brings the craft, the factory follows. Fintech ran this play. Defense ran it. Now medicine.
procurement. A PIF-majority producer of vaccines will not stay just another supplier for long, local content rules tend to follow local capacity.
FROM THE FIELD
Why do we always start with a baseline? Every engagement we run begins the same way: write down where the numbers stand today, before anyone touches anything. It feels slow. It isn't. A baseline is what makes "did it work?" answerable later, and it's astonishing how many transformations skip it, then argue about success afterward. Whatever you're starting this quarter: measure first. That's why this newsletter is called that.
