Business

(Refiles to add dropped letter in CEO’s name)

By Chayut Setboonsarng

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Asian tourists are only expected to resume international travel at pre-pandemic levels gradually, by 2024, the new chief executive of online travel agency Agoda said late on Monday.

The Asia-focused company expects tourists from Asian countries, excluding China, will take about six months after respective COVID-19 restrictions are lifted to travel confidently, said Omri Morgenshtern, who took the helm at Agoda in July.

“Korea opened up two months ago … but numbers are 40% of what it was before, so it’s not jumping,” he said.

Across its Asian markets, Agoda’s booking volumes have returned to 2019 levels, but more so in domestic travel, Morgenshtern told Reuters in an interview, in contrast to the stronger and quicker tourism recovery in the United States and Europe.

“In the U.S. or Europe, it’s almost like everybody decided COVID was over,” said Morgenshtern, noting that travel resumed quickly there and many stopped wearing masks.

But in many Asian countries – like Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, and Indonesia – people generally have kept masks on even after mandates were dropped.

Agoda is rolling out more products to allow customers to plan their entire travel itinerary on the platform with the promise of more discounts, Morgenshtern added.

In 2020, the company, a unit of Booking Holdings Inc, slashed 1,500 jobs to cut spending amid the pandemic. Now, headcount has returned to pre-COVID levels, he said.

(Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor)

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HONG KONG (Reuters) – HSBC has appointed Goldman Sachs partner Christina Ma as its head of global banking for North Asia, according to a memo seen by Reuters.

Ma will join the bank after 21 years with Goldman Sachs, most recently as its head of Greater China equities.

She will replace Dai Kitamura, who was serving in the role on an interim basis before taking extended leave earlier this year. He will leave HSBC on Nov. 1 after 27 years with the bank.

The contents of the memo were confirmed by a HSBC spokesperson.

Ma will remain based in Hong Kong, and starts her new role in the first quarter of 2023, the memo said.

(Reporting by Scott Murdoch; Editing by Jan Harvey)

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Asian Development Bank said Tuesday it will devote at least $14 billion through 2025 to help ease a worsening food crisis in the Asia-Pacific.

The development lender said it plans a comprehensive program of support to help the 1.1 billion people in the region who lack healthy diets due to poverty and soaring food prices.

The Manila, Philippines-based ADB made the announcement during its annual meeting.

“This is a timely and urgently needed response to a crisis that is leaving too many poor families in Asia hungry and in deeper poverty,” ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa said.

The plan calls for improving long-term food security by strengthening farming and food supplies to cope with climate change and loss of biodiversity. The ADB said the funds will go to both existing and new projects spanning farming, food production and distribution, water resources management and social supports.

Asakawa said that in the short-term, support will be targeted at and designed to help the most vulnerable, particularly women.

In opening the ADB meeting, Asakawa noted that the economic outlook has worsened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, soaring prices for many commodities and a harsher economic environment thanks to rising interest rates and weakening currencies for many developing economies.

In a recent update, the bank downgraded its forecast for growth in the region to 4.3% from an earlier estimate of 5.2%. Next year’s outlook is for 4.9% annual growth.

Food insecurity threatens to undo decades of progress and has worsened with the strife in Ukraine, a key supplier of grain, oil and fertilizer to many countries in the region.

The situation will worsen as climate change amplifies extreme weather, hurting harvests and triggering migration, Asakawa noted.

The coronavirus pandemic had already pushed 100 million more people into hunger, the ADB estimates. A 10% increase in food price inflation could push another 64 million into poverty, it says.

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By Hilary Russ

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Starbucks plans to start negotiating its first labor contracts with employees at hundreds of unionized U.S. cafes in October, the coffee chain said on Monday.

When it does, those workers are likely to ask for a key job protection: to only be fired for just cause, according to barista and union spokesperson Casey Moore.

Baristas and shift supervisors in at least 240 company-owned U.S. Starbucks Corp locations have unionized in a little over a year. Workers at Chipotle Mexican Grill, Trader Joe’s grocers and other retailers have also since filed petitions with the national labor board seeking to join unions.

The Seattle-based company sent letters to union organizers at 234 stores on Friday, saying that it was available to begin bargaining in October, according to its post on a Starbucks company blog focused on the union’s activities.

“We look forward to these negotiations and hopefully setting dates and securing locations for contract bargaining,” the post said.

Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, said employees at some stores have waited more than five months to start discussions on issues, including worker safety, discrimination, and respect in the workplace.

The union’s national bargaining committee has made one priority “just cause,” Moore said, a core form of employment security requiring a company to discipline workers for some reason that is fair – as opposed to an frivolous cause such as personal dislike – and often allows the union to settle cases in arbitration.

More than 110 Starbucks employees have been terminated for minor issues as retaliation for their union organizing, Moore said.

After a federal appeals court ruling, Starbucks said earlier this month that it would rehire seven employees in Memphis who the union said were fired in retaliation for organizing.

No Starbucks employees have or will be disciplined for supporting unions, the company said earlier this month. Claims of retaliatory firings are false and Starbucks is disputing them in legal proceedings, it said.

(Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Some investors are growing concerned the dollar’s meteoric rise is setting the stage for a rapid reversal, which would bruise those who have sought refuge in the U.S. currency in recent months.

Soaring U.S. interest rates, a comparatively strong American economy and demand for a haven from wild gyrations in asset prices have lured investors to the dollar, driving it up about 22% against a basket of currencies in the past year.

Some investors worry the dollar trade has become excessively crowded, raising the risk of a sharp unwind if the case for owning the currency changes and investors try to exit their positions all at once.

“Positioning is crowded,” said Calvin Tse, head of global macro strategy, Americas, at BNP Paribas. “If we get a catalyst, the dollar can turn, and turn very aggressively,” he said.

International Monetary Market speculators held a net long U.S. dollar position of $10.23 billion for the week ended Sept. 20. That is lower than a recent high of nearly $20 billion in July but marks the third-longest streak since 1999 in traders holding bullish positions on the greenback, with 62 straight weeks of long positioning.

Barring a brief period of peak pandemic-related uncertainty, broad net options positioning data going back to 2014 shows U.S. dollar long positions are the most stretched ever, according to Morgan Stanley.

Some 56% of participants in BofA’s global fund manager survey in September named being long the dollar as the most “crowded trade,” the third straight month the greenback has held that position in the survey.

Investors may have already had a taste of what a reversal could look like when the dollar index retreated nearly 3% over the course of two weeks, starting in mid-July, as some investors bet U.S. inflation might be set to moderate enough to allow the Fed room to pivot away from its path of aggressive interest rate hikes.

While a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation report in August dashed those hopes and sent the dollar higher, the dangers stemming from the crowded dollar trade have only grown, investors said.

“Undoubtedly, when you have a crowded trade, where you have investors all seeking the same thing, when perceptions do change, the reaction is a violent one,” said Eric Leve, chief investment officer at wealth and investment management firm Bailard.

“We could easily see a 10%-15% move the other way in the dollar vs euro or yen,” he said.

In 2015 and 2009, the last two instances when the dollar index rose more than 20% during a one-year period, the index subsequently logged a two-month drop of 6.7% and 7.7%, respectively, once the greenback peaked.

REVERSAL CATALYST

While crowded positioning can aggravate any potential reversal for the dollar, it would take a big fundamental change to cause that reversal, investors said.

Falling U.S. interest rate volatility, normalizing European energy prices and China abandoning its zero-COVID policy are three prerequisites for the dollar to enter into a structural bear market, BNP’s Tse said.

“When those three are all checked off, it provides us more of a runway to see the dollar enter a bear market, but I don’t see these happening any time soon,” he said.

While U.S. interest rates are above those in many other economies, almost every major central bank, including the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, has hiked rates as they step up their fight against high inflation, helping boost the allure of their battered currencies.

Any signs that U.S. inflation could be easing might help revive expectations for a dovish pivot by the Fed, robbing the greenback of a crucial driving force.

A serious blow to the U.S. economic outlook could also hurt the dollar, said Jack McIntyre, a portfolio manager at Brandywine Global.

The Fed’s aggressive policy tightening has boosted worries that the U.S. economy could be headed for a recession next year.

The world’s three largest economies – the United States, China, and the euro zone – have been slowing sharply, and even a “moderate hit to the global economy over the next year could tip it into recession,” the World Bank said in a recent study.

“I think what weakens the dollar is increasing likelihood that the U.S. goes into a recession, and that is not discounted in the dollar,” McIntyre said.

But with the dollar scaling new multi-decade highs, positioning for a pullback can be painful. “We have been fighting it a little bit, but it’s tough,” McIntyre said.

(Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; editing by Ira Iosebashvili, Megan Davies and Paul Simao)

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By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three men, including a father-and-son duo, were criminally charged on Monday with orchestrating a market manipulation scheme that briefly caused the owner of a tiny New Jersey deli to have a more than $100 million market valuation.

Peter Coker Sr, 80, Peter Coker Jr, 53, and James Patten, 63, were charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in a 12-count indictment with securities fraud and conspiracy, while Patten was also charged with wire fraud, money laundering and securities manipulation.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed related civil charges.

Prosecutors in New Jersey said the defendants conspired since 2014 to inflate the prices of two publicly-traded companies, Hometown International and E-Waste Corp, through manipulative trading, and use them to generate illegal profits by acquiring private companies in so-called reverse mergers.

The alleged manipulation caused the stock prices of Hometown to rise 939% and E-Waste to rise 19,900%, prosecutors said.

Hometown’s market value swelled as high as $123 million in April 2021 even though its sole asset, a Paulsboro, New Jersey-based business called Your Hometown Deli, generated just $13,976 of sales in 2020 and $25,004 in 2021.

The company merged this year into Makamer Holdings Inc, a Los Angeles bioplastics startup.

It closed the deli, which was located in a Philadelphia suburb, in June, and later sold the business for $15,000 and its inventory for $700, according to a regulatory filing.

Lawyers for the defendants could not immediately be identified. Peter Coker Sr, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Patten, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, were arrested on Monday. Peter Coker Jr, of Hong Kong, is at large.

Your Hometown Deli became a surprise subject of attention in April 2021 after hedge fund manager David Einhorn mentioned it in a letter to shareholders, where he warned of the dangers of risky stocks and need for more regulatory oversight.

“The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn wrote.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Doina Chiacu and Tyler Clifford in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Rosalba O’Brien)

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MILAN (AP) — Kim Kardashian took Milan by storm on Saturday, curating a new collection for Dolce&Gabbana that took inspiration from 20 years of archival looks.

It was a day of debuts in Milan, including Maximilian Davis, a 27-yeaer-old British designer with Afro-Caribbean roots, at the creative helm of Salvatore Ferragamo and Filipino American designer Rhuigi Villasenor at Bally, as the brand returns to the runway for the first time in 20 years.

Some highlights from the fourth day of Milan Fashion Week previews of mostly womenswear for next spring and summer:

KIM KARDASHIAN AND DOLCE & GABBANA: THE BACKSTORY

Kim Kardashian’s love of Dolce & Gabbana goes way back, and the affection showed in her curation of their latest collection, drawing on archival looks from 1987-2007.

She remembers growing up watching her mother dress in Dolce & Gabbana for date nights with her stepfather, recalling “she always looked so smart and so strong.” One year, Kardashian’s borrowed one of her mom’s black Dolce & Gabbana dresses with a built-in bra and choker to wear for a family Christmas card, a look, she said, “I will never forget.”

When Kardashian and her sisters owned a store, she borrowed her father’s credit card to buy a bunch of D&G dresses, jeans and belts before her paycheck came in.

Even the family dogs were named Dolce and Gabbana. Gabbana was a black labrador, Dolce a tiny chihuahua.

“It is very close to reality,’’ Stefano Gabbana quipped in a presentation for the new collection.

But no matter how hard she tried, even deploying her mother, Kris Jenner, to help make her case, the designers refused to open their archives. “The past is the past,’’ Domenico Dolce explained. “We try to go ahead with the new generation.”

That is, until Kardashian proved she had the right stuff.

When Kourtney Kardashian married Travis Barker in Italy, social media swarmed with the vintage Dolce & Gabbana dresses she and her sisters wore. They were all from Kim Kardashian’s private collection, which she accrued with the help of a book of more than 100 desired Dolce & Gabbana looks she and her stylist compiled years before.

“Everything looked insane. It was so fun,’’ Kardashian said of the wedding looks. “I think (the designers) were surprised I came with all my own stuff and I had been collecting it for years.”

Dolce said the wedding photos persuaded them to dig into the archives, and he approached Kardashian about the project.

“We were afraid that the vintages dresses would look old. Instead, they were still contemporary,’’ Dolce said.

And so the new Spring-Summer 2023 collection was born, with the designers selecting looks from the past that they loved, many with memories attached working with models like Linda Evangelista and Monica Bellucci. Kardashian curated from there.

“After all these years, this is all of the stuff we would wear today,’’ Kardashian said. “As a designer, I would just think that is so cool, to see everyone trying to emulate the looks. And why not do a full collection, obviously with some new pieces in there, but just reimagined in a way that we would wear it today, which is so similar to how it was shot and worn back then.”

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HASHTAG CIAO,KIM AT DOLCE & GABBANA

Designers Dolce and Gabbana presented their Spring-Summer 2023 collection curated by Kim Kardashian against the backdrop of a film showing Kardashian, styled as a starlet, sensually eating a plate of pasta.

And indeed, Kardashian’s curation showed her full embrace of Dolce & Gabbana’s Italian roots.

“You just don’t take shit from anyone when you are here and wearing Dolce & Gabbana,’’ Kardashian told reporters. “You feel powerful, and strong and sexy at the same time.”

Lingerie strongly inspired the collection. There were corsets, incorporated bras and bodysuits, employing all of the designer’s best tricks, from rigid bones for structural elements, to pretty lace and eye-catching crystals. They were worn with gartered stockings and long gloves, or under beautiful wraps.

Kardashian adhered to a mostly neutral palette: black, gray and beige, with some burgundy. And she the drew the line at prints, completely rejecting the brand’s fruits and florals, causing Gabbana to lament: “She killed me. I said ‘Noooo!’”

But she went all in on the leopard.

“I would say the boys brought out the leopard in me,’’ Kardashian said. “I think you will see that for me, color is the crystals.’’

The collection was designed with women of all ages and shapes in mind, Kardashian said, with the goal of simplifying designs to help some of the more ornate pieces feel less intimidating.

“If you simplify it, more people can feel confident wearing it. And I think we really achieved that in the show,” she said.

Kardashian’s mom, three of her children and sister Khloe sat in the front row. Proud mamma Kris Jenner filming the entire show on her phone.

JIL SANDER’S TRANQUILITY

Jil Sander created a tranquil island in Milan’s chaotic fashion week, filling a temporary show space in a distant field with a thicket of wildflowers and grasses, along with soothing pastels and forgiving silhouettes.

The collection lends itself to easy layering and defies all gender stereotypes. Creative directors Lucie and Luke Maier continued to dabble in embellishments, adding sequins, feathers and metallic accents to the brand’s minimalist silhouette.

Sleeveless suiting worked across genders, and men wore long pastel kilts with button-down shirts. Knitwear was distressed, with rough edges and slits, in both tops and dresses. The designers chose a single print, featuring blurry points of light.

Models carried umbrellas to protect the looks from the seasonal rainfall — inconvenient for an outdoor show but welcome in Italy after months of drought.

FERRAGAMO’S NEW DAWN

Maximilian Davis created a vermillion red background for his Salvatore Ferragamo debut in the courtyard of a 17th century baroque and neoclassical palace — all the better to highlight the fashion house’s new direction.

The 27-year-old British designer worked strong silhouettes and simple elements, like tank tops and leggings, or full-on bodysuits, all the better to highlight the bag of the season, oversized cutout bags in highly polished leather with a canvas interior. Dresses were slinky in solid colors or flowing chiffon in degradé prints; a red trouser and skin-tight top combo popped with crystals. Strappy sandals featured a distinctive circular heel.

The male silhouette was challenged with an off-shoulder, sheer ombre dyed top, the colors an homage to the California sunset. Davis tapped Ferragamo’s leather heritage with boyishly short leather shorts paired with a leather blazer. Any male divo can make a red-carpet entrance with a silver sheer off-shoulder top that flows dramatically into a trailing scarf.

Models trod across red sand that covered the entire courtyard, a reference to Ferragamo’s Hollywood origins near the California beaches, and Davis’ own Caribbean heritage.

The sea and the sand mean for him “a place where you can go to reflect, and feel at one,’’ he said. “I wanted to show that perspective, but now through the Ferragamo lens.”

Super model Naomi Campbell turned out for the debut.

BALLY REBOOTED

Filippino American designer Rhuigi Villasenor, best known for his U.S. streetwear brand, is seeking to drive a transition at the storied Swiss brand Bally, founded in 1851.

His debut collection paid tribute to the brand’s heritage of quiet elegance, while introducing an edge. A plunging V-neck swimsuit was worn with snakeskin boots, while a long beaded skirt featured a waist-high slit and was paired casually with a denim top. For him, a flashy reptile leather jacket was worn with a mesh top and jeans, but there was also a dark blue double-breasted suit for more formal business occasions.

Villasenor said he was inspired by “the brand’s codes around art, graphic design, architecture and nature.”

BOTTEGA VENETA’S TROMP L’OEUIEL

To the uninitiated, Kate Moss looked downright dressed down on the Bottega Veneta runway, in a pair of loose jeans and a plaid shirt. But that is the genius of designer Matthieu Blazy, who replayed a trick from his first season, showing leather pants that replicate the look of jeans.

Every piece in Blazy’s sophomore collection was strong: from the intarsia knitwear that have ice blue and red vying for the starring role, to the leather shift dresses and jackets with unexpected folds, to the shredded leather skirts and dresses, and sheer dresses embellished with velvety floral appliques.

At Bottega Veneta, leather is king. Bags include beautifully crafted fishing bags that fit neatly on the body, either in flat leather or a basket weave, to bucket-bags worn flung over the shoulder.

Blazy collaborated with Italian architect and designer Gaetano Pesce on the sculptural resin runway and 400 unique chairs, some with hand drawings, used for guests at the show and destined for Design Miami.

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(Reuters) – Pfizer Inc Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said on Saturday he had tested positive for COVID-19.

The chief executive said in a statement that he was feeling well and is symptom free.

(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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(Reuters) – British drugmaker GSK plc, has poached Burberry Group’s finance chief to create a rare all-female executive leadership team, Sky News reported on Saturday.

GSK could announce as soon as Monday morning that it has recruited Julie Brown to replace Iain Mackay, who has served as its chief financial officer since 2019, the report added.

(Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Graff)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Saudi Arabia appears to be leaving behind the stream of negative coverage that the killing of Jamal Khashoggi elicited since 2018. The kingdom is once again being enthusiastically welcomed back into polite and powerful society, and it is no longer as frowned upon to seek Saudi investments or accept their favor.

Saudi Arabia’s busy week of triumphs included brokering a prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia, holding a highbrow summit on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, marking the country’s national day with pomp and pageantry, hosting the German chancellor and discussing energy supply with top White House officials.

The kingdom is able to draw focus back to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious rebranding of Saudi Arabia and his goals to build both the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and pull the kingdom up from the G-20 to the more exclusive G-7 nations representing the biggest economies.

It’s a mission that’s often characterized as waking up a sleeping giant. Except it’s happening even as human rights reforms remain off the agenda.

As the crown prince embarks on sensitive social and economic reforms, he’s simultaneously overseen a far-reaching crackdown on dissent that his supporters say is necessary to ensure stability during this period. Among those detained or banned from leaving the country are women’s rights activists, moderate preachers, conservative clerics, economists and progressive writers. Even top princes and Saudi billionaires have not been spared. Many were rounded up and held in the capital’s Ritz-Carlton in a purported anti-corruption sweep that netted over a $100 billion in assets.

The clampdown, however, drew its strongest international rebuke following the killing of Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul four years ago.

And just last month, staggeringly long prison terms were handed down against two women for their Twitter and social media activity. A Saudi court sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison in August for allegedly damaging the country through her social media activity. It came on the heels of a 34-year-long prison sentence for another Saudi woman convicted of spreading “rumors” and retweeting dissidents. Both women were handed down the unusually long sentences on appeal.

The Associated Press asked Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Farhan bin Faisal about these sentences. “Those cases are still in process. They are not yet at the final appeal,” he said, adding that the cases lie with the judiciary, which he said operates independently. He spoke at the exclusive Yale Club during an event in New York this week. He would not discuss the cases further.

Saudi Arabia’s strength lies not only in its top position as the world’s biggest oil exporter, but also as the home of Islam’s holiest site and its birthplace.

The prince’s efforts to shed the yoke of decades of ultraconservative Wahhabi control over every aspect of life are popular among young Saudis. From movie theaters and concerts, to women driving and curtailing the morality’s police’s authority, the face of Saudi Arabia is changing. The latter stands in stark contrast to the protests in rival Iran’s cities this week over the death of a woman in the custody of that country’s morality police.

At the other end of these changes is a reorienting of Saudi Arabia’s identity from a chiefly religious focus to one of cultural and national pride.

At a swanky daylong forum this week at one of New York’s premier Upper East Side addresses, the kingdom’s $620 billion wealth fund drew some of the city’s Who’s Who to mingle and network on the sidelines of the United Nations’ annual gathering of world leaders. While the kingdom never stopped drawing investors or forging partnerships in the years since Khashoggi’s death, or amid its ongoing war in Yemen, those ties were less forward-facing among U.S. elites.

The Public Investment Fund has significant stakes in Uber, Lucid Motors, the cruise operator Carnival, Live Nation, Nintendo, Microsoft and a range of other companies. The aim of these investments is to grow Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth and use it to establish world-class tourism, entertainment and luxury industries in the country. In doing so, the kingdom is creating a resilient economy as the world looks to a future powered by green energy rather than fossil fuels.

The PIF’s biggest undertaking is Neom, a futuristic megaproject along the kingdom’s northwestern Red Sea coast that envisions flying cars and a 105 mile-long (170 kilometer) zero carbon emissions city that’s entirely enclosed and powered by Artificial Intelligence.

The crown prince oversees the PIF, but the man who runs its day-to-day investments is Yasir al-Rumayyan. He spoke at the so-called “Priority Summit” to a monied elite that included Jared Kushner, a former White House advisor and Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner recently secured a $2 billion investment from the PIF to jump start his new private equity firm.

The fund is key to the 37-year-old prince’s race against time to create at least 1.8 million jobs for young Saudis coming of age and entering the workforce.

“It’s not only the figures that we are looking at, but the quality of these jobs, the quality of our offering to our society — and at the same time, making money while we’re doing it,” al-Rumayyan said.

The PIF’s wealth is fueled by the kingdom’s oil earnings. Al-Rumayyan is also chairman of Saudi Aramco. The state-owned oil and gas company had a record second-quarter this year with profits that topped $48 billion — a figure more than Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon’s same-quarter earnings combined.

The summit, organized by the PIF’s Foreign Investment Initiative Institute that puts on the annual “Davos in the Desert” in Riyadh, drew more than just people seeking opportunities and a morsel of Saudi Arabia’s offerings. It also attracted intellectuals and artists — the kind of soft power that money can’t always buy.

Despite a shift in tone in the West, the shadow of Khashoggi’s killing still looms.

The crown prince was notably absent from Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, which drew royals from around the globe to London this month. Sources close to Prince Mohammed said he would not attend the funeral, the optics of which would have been a distraction. But they did say he would fly to London to offer condolences to the new King Charles III. That never transpired.

And after the crown prince helped negotiate the prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine, a move that drew international praise, the headline of the New York Post read: “White House thanks killer crown prince.”

Fernando Javier Sulichin, an Argentine film producer who’s collaborated on projects with Oliver Stone, said he was drawn to the PIF’s event because he wanted to hear new ideas and brainstorm.

“Instead of being cynical and just reading the newspapers, it’s like, what’s going on in the world?,” he said, adding that none of the sessions and discussions “are edited by any editorial board.” He likened it to sourcing water from the river rather than the tap.

No longer pulled by the tide, the kingdom is riding its own wave.

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Aya Batrawy, an AP journalist based in Dubai, is on assignment covering the U.N. General Assembly. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ayaelb and for more AP coverage of the U.N. General Assembly, visit https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations-general-assembly

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