American banks are heading towards recording a sharp rise in “bad debts”, which constitutes a “time bomb” or a major threat at best to their profits during the coming period, and perhaps during the past few period as well. “Bad debts” are loans whose owners default for long periods, or whose owners ask the court for protection from creditors, or declare bankruptcy, which means that they are amounts owed to the bank from debtors who become impossible to repay, so the bank is forced to consider them as “bad debts.” Then he writes them off and transfers them to his list of losses. A report published by the American network “CNBC”, and viewed by “Al Arabiya.net”, said that the accumulation of “bad debts” threatens to weaken investors’ growing optimism regarding the prospects of the largest American banks. According to the report, non-performing loans (debts associated with borrowers who have not made any payment in at least the past 90 days) are expected to rise to a combined $24.4 billion in the last three months of 2023 at the four largest lenders in the United States. The four largest lenders in the United States are: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup, according to a consensus of Bloomberg analysts.

The Egyptian-Saudi committee concerned with following up the electrical interconnection project between the two countries will discuss the date of installing the submarine cable at its scheduled meeting next week. Sources told Al Arabiya Business that the Italian company “Brisman” is close to completing the submarine cable. In preparation for its shipment and installation between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the matter is being discussed between the two sides and the project consultant. The sources explained that the length of the submarine cable exceeds 19 kilometres, and the cable will be placed on a ship equipped for its installation immediately after the completion of its manufacture in the Italian company. The contractual value agreed upon with the Italian company includes shipping, installation and insurance of cables with a value exceeding 220 million euros. According to the agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the trial operation of the electrical interconnection project between the two countries is scheduled to begin at the end of May 2025, with the official operation of the project, which costs $1.8 billion, to begin in two phases, the first in June 2025 with a capacity of 1,500 megawatts, and the second in November of the same year. With a capacity of 1500 megawatts.

A Reuters analysis of ship tracking data showed that the movement of oil and fuel tankers in the Red Sea was stable in December, although many container ships changed their routes due to attacks by the Houthi movement in Yemen. The attacks led to a sharp rise in shipping costs and insurance premiums, but their impact on oil flows was less than feared as shipping companies continued to use the main east-west corridor. The Houthis, who said they were targeting ships heading to Israel, attacked shipments of largely non-oil goods. The additional costs have not made much difference to most shipping companies so far, because the cost of using the Red Sea is still more affordable than sending goods around Africa. But the situation is worth monitoring as some oil companies such as BP and Equinor shift shipments to the longer route. Experts said that increased shipping costs would likely increase US crude exports to some European buyers. “We haven’t really seen the disruption to tanker traffic that everyone was anticipating,” said Michelle Wiese-Bockman, a shipping analyst at Lloyd’s List. The competing ship-tracking service Kepler monitored an average of 236 ships crossing the entire Red Sea and Gulf of Aden region daily in December, which is slightly more than the daily average of 230 ships in November. West-to-east diversions affected some European fuel oil and gasoline shipments to the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and East Africa.

MBC Group shares jumped by a maximum of 30% in their first trading session on the main Saudi stock market, Tadawul, today, as is often the case with new, newly listed stocks. The company was listed within the media and entertainment sector in the market, which includes three other companies: “Saudi Research and Media Group,” “Tihama Advertising and Public Relations,” and “Arabia for Technical Contracting.” It is considered the first privately owned Arab group to launch satellite channels, before the Saudi government owned 60% of them. The group’s founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Walid bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, owns the remaining stake. The share price in the first hour of today’s trading session reached 32.5 riyals, compared to 25 riyals the listing price. The daily price fluctuation limits for newly listed stocks on the main financial market are 30% (up or down) during the first three sessions of listing, and then fixed limits for the daily price fluctuation of 10% are applied to them later. The group had offered 33.25 million new shares, representing 10% of its capital after issuing the offering shares and increasing the capital. Individual subscribers were allocated only 10% of the offering shares.