My 11-year-old daughter Amira has begun taking a big interest in the world of high finance and geopolitical strategy and has already developed some pretty strong views for one so young.

“Never say never” was the key phrase from Michael Ashley, owner of Newcastle United football club.

As a freeze-frame of the US presidential election, and the key role the energy industry will play when voters get to the polls on Nov. 3, President Donald Trump’s speech in Texas was a fascinating case study.

A shiver went through the UAE’s financial community last week when Emirates NDB, the champion of the Dubai banking business and one of the biggest banks in the region, declared figures for the first half of 2020.

World financial markets, with few exceptions, have defied gravity since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in earnest in March, but there is increasingly a feeling that “something has to give,” especially in equity markets.

Headlines are currently screaming at readers: “Oil markets starved of essential Russian and Saudi barrels.”

We could all do with a bit of good news amid the continuing carnage in the global economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The trend toward consolidation in Saudi Arabia’s banking system appears irresistible, whatever the post-pandemic future brings. That is a good thing.

The historic initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco at the end of last year was expected to kick off a wave of IPOs in the Kingdom, as investors got the flotation bug and markets became more liquid and more comfortable with the concept of public offerings.

Saudi Arabia is set to “come out on top” in the current oil market volatility, American investment bank JP Morgan said at the weekend.