For Ahmad BinDawood, last year’s share offering in the eponymous Saudi grocery business was a chance to shape his legacy at the family firm he’s worked at since the age of eight, while cementing a $3.1 billion fortune built over the decades by his father and uncles.
As the October public offering of BinDawood Holding Co. got underway, details emerged of some $76 million in previously undisclosed loans made by the Saudi company to family members. In a departure from the traditional secrecy associated with the kingdom’s family firms, Jeddah-based BinDawood revealed everything, put the IPO on hold and gave buyers the chance to take their money back.
Beirut, Lebanon – Sabrina, a Bangladeshi domestic worker, is barely 127cm (4 feet 2 inches) tall and extremely thin. Her shoulder blades protruded from under her clothing as she scrubbed the floor in a house she is employed in. She looks ill and yet she works long hours for meagre pay to earn a living.
Sabrina arrived in Lebanon more than 10 years ago in search of work. Bangladesh, a developing country, had too many mouths to feed and too few job opportunities.
The move to Lebanon paid off. The Lebanese currency was pegged to the dollar at the rate of 1,500 pounds back in 1997 and used interchangeably on that basis. Sabrina would earn in dollars, save, and send her remittances back home where her family would convert the dollars into Bangladeshi takas and pay their expenses.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday warned corporations of “serious consequences” if they use their economic power in support of what he described as far-left causes, including opposition to a new voting law in Georgia.
“From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government,” McConnell said. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”
McConnell’s rebuke comes as a number of corporations, including Delta Air Lines Inc. and the Coca-Cola Co., have criticized Georgia’s new election law. Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta, a move endorsed by President Joe Biden.