Saudi Arabia Postpones ‘Davos in the Desert’ After Houthi Attacks

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

I'm Laura Thurow, Managing Director with Baird Private Wealth Management. For so many of us, life is busy. Between balancing family, career, and community, finding the time and focus to keep your financial plans on track can be a challenge. At Baird, we understand. Our financial advisors will partner with you to create a plan that's uniquely yours, one that gives you peace of mind and confidence so you can focus on what matters most.

Nicholas Miller (0:25)

Discover the Baird difference at rwbaird.com/wsj.

Alex Ossola (0:33)

After attacks on its airport at Capital City, Saudi Arabia is delaying its flagship investor conference until next year. Plus, why the luxury housing market is booming.

Nicholas Miller (0:43)

They have access to huge, huge amounts of home equity. So they get huge amounts of cash that they can put big down payments or even buy their next home in cash.

Alex Ossola (0:53)

And the Elizabeth Holmes documentary just blew past box office expectations for its opening weekend. What's got audiences and some podcast hosts so excited? It's Monday, October 19th. I'm Alex Ossola for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

Saudi Arabia has postponed its flagship investor conference that's known as Davos in the Desert. The Future Investment Initiative was originally scheduled for next week. Now, the conference will happen next year.

WSJ Foreign Correspondent Stephen Kalin says Saudi Arabia's escalating conflict with the Houthis drove the decision.

Stephen Kalin (1:35)

The airport in Riyadh was targeted multiple times this month, and there's just a sense that it's not safe enough for high-level executives to feel comfortable flying in. Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan and Citi's Jane Fraser were some of the top guests that were expected, and they had been deliberating whether to come or not.

Some other bankers from both of those banks had already begun canceling meetings. There was a lot of private backchanneling to the Saudis to explain that it was going to be really difficult for a lot of these senior people in finance and business from New York, London and elsewhere to make it to Saudi Arabia.

Alex Ossola (2:11)

Stephen says postponing the annual conference, which has been going on since 2017, is a big hit to the kingdom and its economy.

Stephen Kalin (2:19)

This conference is really huge for Saudi Arabia. It is put on by the Public Investment Fund, which is the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Saudi Arabia. It's chaired by Mohammed bin Salman. And the PIF is the vehicle through which he has been pushing his economic transformation plans. So this is sort of a hallmark annual event where they try to brag about what they're doing, what they're planning to do.

They try to attract investors. And it came to be a trademark for him. So the fact that it has to be canceled now is honestly a huge frustration for the kingdom. And it's really a symbol of how the geopolitical situation in the region, the war with Iran, now the war with the Houthis, is jeopardizing a lot of the economic and business plans that the kingdom has had.

Alex Ossola (3:09)

Separately, in a California courthouse, a new development in the case of the Saudi national who's been accused of bugging an OpenAI conference room. Federal prosecutors say that Abdulrahman Al-Fazan had been in touch with a member of the Saudi royal family about job opportunities in the kingdom before he was arrested. The prosecutors argue in a new filing today that Al-Fazan should be kept in custody because he's a flight risk. Al-Fazan's lawyer said he planned to address the new filing in court. Representatives from the Saudi embassy in Washington DC didn't immediately have a comment.

Elon Musk said that he would give every child in America one SpaceX share next year. He posted on X that this would be the quote, first of many. There are about 73 million kids in the US. So based on that and Friday's SpaceX share price, that could mean Musk is giving away roughly $10 billion in stock. The move follows similar pledges by anthropic and high-profile billionaires to give away some of the wealth they've accumulated during the artificial intelligence boom.

And like some other wealthy donors, Musk seems to be planning to use the government's new Trump accounts program for kids to donate the shares.

In other corporate news, the pharma industry is pouring billions of dollars into a new class of drugs. They're called protein degraders, and they're showing promise in going after a certain hard to target protein in disease cells. The US Food and Drug Administration has already approved a few protein degraders for certain kinds of cancer. But drug makers are testing others to treat conditions including autoimmune diseases like asthma and neurological conditions like Parkinson's. Lizzie Lawrence covers the pharmaceutical industry for the journal, and she says this new type of drug works differently from existing treatments.