Word: saudi
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...pressure that forced Syria to pull out its forces. Last week, the Hariri family formally announced that Saad, 35, one of Hariri's four sons from two marriages, would take up his late father's political role. Saad, who until now has run his father's business empire in Saudi Arabia, seems a virtual shoo-in for Prime Minister if he chooses to run. Many hope that Saad can finish the job of rebuilding and reuniting Lebanon his father began. "He is very capable and very serious," says Marwan Hamade, a leading opposition MP. "He has the knowledge...
...Arafat P.L.O. hierarchy was more worried about the understandings reached in Saudi Arabia between Jordan and Syria. The main concern: that the two countries might agree on a format for dealing with the Israelis without P.L.O. participation. To try to ensure against that eventuality, Arafat's Tunis-based branch of the P.L.O. was assiduously cultivating two Syria-based P.L.O. factions, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian Communist Party. Said a P.L.O. source in Tunis: "We don't want our cause to be hijacked by any Arab country or countries...
...bank loans in flush times have turned out to be bad credit risks whose problems have been compounded by plunging property and stock values. In Kuwait an estimated one-third of some bank portfolios are made up of loans on which borrowers are no longer making interest payments. In Saudi Arabia, only two of ten banks last year reported an increase in earnings...
Even Bahrain, once the shining jewel of gulf finance, has been having troubles. The island country off the coast of Saudi Arabia emerged in the 1970s as a haven for Westerners and a banking center for the entire region. At one time local officials dreamed that it would become a world financial capital in a class with Singapore. No one talks that way today. The decline in construction financing and restrictions by Saudi Arabia on dealings in the riyal, the Saudi currency, have hurt business. Many banks, including Citibank and Chase Manhattan, have slashed staffs and slimmed operations...
...Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi conduct all litigation, including financial cases, through Islamic courts. That presents banks with a particular problem because Muslim law forbids riba, the earning or payment of interest, on the ground that it is usury. For years the Muslim world quietly allowed the ban on riba to be circumvented by letting the banks call interest payments service charges or commissions. But these days, when Saudi borrowers are handed a bill for interest charges or commissions, they may take refuge in Islamic law and refuse to pay. Banks are left with little means of getting their money...