TheChek News Flow

Compétition

The Dead Don’t Die - Jim Jarmusch

Douleur et Gloire - Pedro Almodovar

Le Traître - Marco Bellocchio

The Wild Goose Lake - Diao Yinan

Parasite - Bong Joon Ho

Le jeune Ahmed - Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne

Roubaix, une lumière - Arnaud Desplechin

Atlantique - Mati Diop

Matthias et Maxime - Xavier Dolan

Little Joe - Jessica Hausner

Sorry we missed you - Ken Loach

Les Misérables - Ladj Ly

Une vie cachée - Terrence Malick

Bacurau - Kleber Mendonça Filho et Juliano Dornelles

La Gomera - Corneliu Porumboiu

Frankie - Ira Sachs

Portrait de la jeune fille en feu - Céline Sciamma

It must be heaven - Elia Suleiman

Sibyl - Justine Triet

Hors compétition

Les plus belles années d’une vie - Claude Lelouche

Rocketman - Dexter Fletcher

Too old to die young - Nicolas Winding Refn

Diego Maradona - Asif Kapadia

La belle époque - Nicolas Bedos

Séances de minuit

The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil -Lee Won-Tae

Séances spéciales

Share - Pippa Bianco

Pour Sama - Waad Al Kateab & Edward Watts

Family Romance, LLC. - Werner Herzog

Tommaso - Abel Ferrara

Étre vivant et le savoir - Alain Cavalier

LONDON — Six months after agents from Saudi Arabia murdered and dismembered the writer Jamal Khashoggi, companies are no longer shying away from the Arab kingdom.

The movie theater giant AMC says it is moving ahead with ambitious expansion plans for dozens of cinemas there. Hundreds of investors thronged last week to place $100 billion in orders for the first international bond sale tied to Saudi Arabia’s state-backed oil company. Google has a major data center in the works.

Many companies contend that they are, in part, helping to open up the deeply conservative society. A screening of Marvel’s “Black Panther” at a repurposed concert hall in early 2018 lifted a 35-year ban on movie theaters, with men and women attending the showing together.

But the math is simple: There is serious money to be made from working with the kingdom that lives off the world’s most profitable company, Aramco. A few weeks ago, Aramco disclosed that it generated $111.1 billion in net income last year. That was more than Apple, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil combined.

“It is nothing personal,” J. Robinson West, the managing director of the BCG Center for Energy Impact, a Washington-based consulting unit, said about why investors and banks flocked to the bond sale. “It’s just business.”

To corporations around the world, the October death of Mr. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who was strangled when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, was a controversy to avoid. Business leaders pulled out of a high-profile, government-sponsored conference in Riyadh, and have since largely kept quiet about their companies’ ties to the kingdom.

But global businesses and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, recognize a need for each other.

Saudi Arabia’s fortunes fall and rise with the price of oil. Increasingly, it wants fresh investment and businesses to support its fast-growing population — 33 million people, most of whom are younger than 30 — and to winnow a nearly 13 percent unemployment rate.

The crown prince rolled out a grand promotional campaign in 2016 to woo investors, but the results have been meager. Direct foreign investment fell to a decade low in 2017, just $1.4 billion, according to the Institute for International Finance, a research organization in Washington.

Investment fell, in part, because of concerns about how the kingdom — which increasingly means Prince Mohammed — confronts problems. In fall 2017, hundreds of Saudi businessmen and princes were detained, essentially under house arrest, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh and other locations amid corruption allegations.

About a dozen female activists were arrested in May for campaigning for broader rights, including driving. Some are still being held on “suspicion of harming Saudi interests,” and their court hearings have been delayed multiple times, including this week.

“Things certainly got worse after the fall of 2017 and have not significantly improved,” said Karen Young, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, referring to investment levels.

But the promise of Saudi Arabia, which saw oil prices rise by a third this year to about $71 a barrel for Brent crude, has been too rich for many big companies to pass up. Google, JPMorgan Chase and the Japanese technology giant SoftBank are among the businesses that have kept Saudi Arabia as a partner.

“We thought long and hard, and concluded that the best course of action was to go forward,” Adam Aron, the chief executive of AMC, said in an interview, describing his company’s decision to open at least 40 new theaters there over the next five years.

“It’s the right thing to do for the people of Saudi Arabia,” he said this month. “They have been deprived of going to the movies for decades.”

Google has been working on a Saudi data center, its first in the Middle East and an important hub for its cloud computing services, for more than a year. Revelations about Mr. Khashoggi’s killing had not derailed its plans. When asked about its business with the kingdom, Google said it had signed a memo of understanding with Saudi Aramco in early 2018 “to explore potential establishment of cloud services to serve our customers in the Middle East.”

“There are no further updates to share at this time,” the company added.

JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, canceled an appearance at the Riyadh conference in October, but showed up to pitch Saudi Aramco’s bond deal to investors in New York two weeks ago.

The investment firm Blackstone is still planning to spend money from a $40 billion infrastructure fund, of which $20 billion is meant to come from Saudi coffers, according to a person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly about the firm’s investment plans.

And SoftBank, whose nearly $100 billion Vision Fund for technology investments counts the Saudi government as its biggest backer, has had little difficulty crafting deals using Saudi cash. It has participated in 20 investments since the Khashoggi news emerged, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Some analysts said that floating Aramco’s bonds was a shrewd move by the crown prince.

Aramco raised $12 billion from its first-ever bond offering on the international market. Investors placed tens of billions of dollars in orders on the same day that the State Department barred 16 Saudis from the United States, for their suspected role in killing Mr. Khashoggi.

“Everyone in Saudi will be celebrating that they have actually pulled this through and made it a success story,” Ayham Kamel, head of Middle East at Eurasia Group, a political risk firm, said of the bond deal.

Many Western companies were tight lipped about their continued investment in Saudi Arabia for weeks after Mr. Khashoggi disappeared.

But in November, SoftBank’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, publicly articulated what many corporate titans have quietly used as their justification for working with the kingdom. “As horrible as this event was, we cannot turn our backs on the Saudi people as we work to help them in their continued efforts to reform and modernize their society,” Mr. Son told analysts and investors at an earnings presentation in Tokyo

Companies have also taken cues from the Trump administration, which has repeatedly stressed that it considers the crown prince a crucial ally in a long-awaited Middle East peace proposal and other issues.

Saudi Arabia is likely to be active, not only as a place to invest but as a borrower and an investor. The country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, has assembled a nearly $300 billion portfolio of assets that includes stakes in technology companies like Uber and the electric carmaker Lucid.

Its chief, Yasir al-Rumayyan, said in February that the fund planned to open investment offices in New York and San Francisco as it stepped up investments.

Still, some companies have decided to back away.

Endeavor, the Hollywood talent agency, returned a $400 million investment from the Saudis this year and severed its relationship with the kingdom’s leaders. The British entrepreneur Richard Branson, who returned from a 2017 visit to the kingdom wowed by Prince Mohammed’s vision, recoiled after Mr. Khashoggi’s murder. Mr. Branson suspended his directorships in Saudi tourism ventures and cut off conversations with the Public Investment Fund.

In the unlikely event that more Western companies follow suit, the kingdom has a contingency plan: working increasingly with allies in Asia.

Countries including China, South Korea and Thailand have become key customers for the Saudis as the United States reduces its dependence on imported oil because of domestic shale production.

In turn, the Chinese oil giant Sinopec has become a high-profile investor in the kingdom, with a refining joint venture with Aramco and a research and development facility at a science park called Dhahran Techno Valley, in eastern Saudi Arabia. The science park represents an effort by the Saudis to create a technology hub around Aramco and the nearby King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.

Other companies listed as tenants on the park’s website include Halliburton, Honeywell, Schlumberger, Emerson Electric, General Electric and Baker Hughes, a G.E. company.

On Monday, Aramco said it was spending $1.25 billion for a stake in Hyundai Oil Bank, a South Korean refiner, creating what it called a “dedicated outlet” for Saudi crude.

The question now is whether and how Saudi Arabia can use the momentum from the Aramco bond sale. “For people to invest in Saudi Arabia, they need a belief that this country is moving in the right direction,” said Roger Diwan, a vice president at IHS Markit, a research firm. “The last 12 months have not been stellar.”

Chip maker’s lead in nascent technology offered a defense against Broadcom’s bid and spurred Apple settlement

Through more than two years of takeover threats and legal strife, Qualcomm Inc. QCOM 12.25% trained its focus on the future promises of 5G. That fixation is paying off so far.

The chip maker’s lead in fifth-generation wireless technology persuaded the Trump administration last year to block a hostile bid by Broadcom Inc. AVGO 0.64% out of national-security concerns. It helped muscle Apple Inc. to the table to settle a patent-royalty dispute on Tuesday and it contributed to Intel Corp.’s INTC 3.26% decision to discontinue developing rival 5G modem chips for smartphones.

The success of Qualcomm’s strategy—accelerate spending on 5G while staring down existential threats—has pushed up the company’s stock 38% since Monday’s close to $79.08, hitting highs not seen since 2014.

“They positioned their company to execute on this specific opportunity,” said Charles Lemonides, portfolio manager of ValueWorks LLC, which has roughly 5% of its holdings in Qualcomm. “It’s not like they hedged their bets,” he added. “They were all about this technology roadmap.”

While the Apple deal removes a significant overhang, it doesn’t clear away all of Qualcomm’s challenges.

Qualcomm moves from fending for its life to needing to fulfill sizable new chip supply for a demanding tech giant. The 5G chip Qualcomm released in 2019 was designed to work alongside its own processor with 4G LTE functionality. For Apple, it will need to deliver a stand-alone modem chip with 5G capabilities that can work with the iPhone’s custom processors.

And Qualcomm isn’t out of the legal woods yet, either. It still faces an antitrust challenge from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that could upend its patent-royalty business, which had accounted for half of its profit before its legal tussle with Apple erupted. A federal judge's ruling in that case, which wrapped up in late January, could come any minute.

It also needs to finish development of its first processor with built-in 5G capabilities, a product it demonstrated at Mobile World Congress that will be crucial to helping the company maintain its leading position as a provider of smartphone chips world-wide.

“5G is in its infancy,” said Patrick Moorhead, president of the technology firm Moor Insights & Strategy. “To make it go mainstream, Qualcomm has to deliver these chips on time and at quality.” A Qualcomm spokesman declined to comment on those challenges.

5G promises to supercharge smartphones and unlock the power of connected devices, homes and cars by transferring data at faster speeds. Qualcomm envisions a future where everything will be connected—manufacturers can put chips in every part of their machines, farmers can put internet-connected sensors on livestock—and all powered by the company’s chips.

Qualcomm’s emphasis on 5G had its share of doubters. Some analysts said Apple didn’t need Qualcomm’s chips. Other analysts said that it would be years before 5G would be widespread enough to save Qualcomm from the threats it faced.

Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf ignored critics and added more than $500 million in spending on 5G, racing to keep pace with an industry pushing to bring the wireless technology to market in 2019, a year faster than expected. He faced withering criticism. In its takeover pitch, Broadcom said Qualcomm failed to earn money on 4G. “Why will 5G be any different?” it asked.

Qualcomm used 5G to lobby the Trump administration to reject Broadcom’s more than $100 billion offer for its business a year ago. In December, it demonstrated the speed and potential of its first 5G modem chips inside Samsung Electronics Co. smartphones at a Qualcomm event in Hawaii.

The exhibitions made clear that Qualcomm was leading the pack in 5G, and ultimately might have prompted Intel to exit the business, said Srini Pajjuri, an analyst at Macquarie Group. “Qualcomm had a better technology and a better modem, and their roadmap is much better for 5G,” Mr. Pajjuri said.

An Intel spokesman declined to comment.

Without Qualcomm, Apple might have struggled to get 5G chips into the iPhones it expects to launch late next year, analysts say. With the legal settlement behind the companies, however, Apple’s path to 5G becomes clearer.

Jeff Helfrich, a portfolio manager at Dallas-based Penn Davis McFarland Inc., said the Apple deal returned Qualcomm to a status quo of dominance in the mobile-chip industry, but it didn’t solve the problem of a cooling global smartphone market or erase the challenge of diversifying into new business areas.

“The wireless market has been their go-to market for years,” he said. “They tried to branch out into displays and other markets, and none of it really stuck. They have a great business and great franchise, but the question is, ‘What’s next?’ ”

Navab Capital Partners’ projected buying power would set it apart from most new entrants

Alexander Navab, a former senior executive at private-equity firm KKR & Co., is launching a buyout firm that will focus on midsize-to-large transactions, seeking to take advantage of an area of the market where he sees less competition.

Mr. Navab, who served until 2017 as the head of KKR’s private-equity business in the Americas, has assembled a group of veteran investors from firms such as Baupost Group LLC, Carlyle Group LP and Warburg Pincus LLC.

Navab Capital Partners, as the new firm will be known, could begin raising its first fund with a $3 billion target in the coming months, according to people familiar with the matter.

The fund will be the latest in a steady stream of new vehicles being launched by individuals spinning out of established firms. There were 374 first-time funds closed in 2018, which raised $41.6 billion in aggregate, according to data provider Preqin. That is down from a 2016 peak of 531 funds raising $81.5 billion.

Providing it is able to meet its target, Navab Capital’s buying power will set it apart from most of those players: The average first-time fund was $161 million in 2018, Preqin data show.

“There is now a larger bifurcation between the megafirms and the smaller, midcap firms,” Mr. Navab said in an interview. “If you can create a scaled, upper-middle-market firm with appropriate experience on your team, there are significant investment opportunities you can pursue.”

Among the deal makers Mr. Navab has hired to join him as partners are Bob Berlin, a managing director at Baupost, who has invested across various sectors during his decadelong career there; Ram Jagannath, an 11-year Carlyle veteran who has focused on the health-care sector; and Annette Rodriguez, a longtime investor at Warburg, who most recently led deals in the consumer sector.

The Petershill unit of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s asset management division is providing seed capital to the firm.

Born in Isfahan, Iran, Mr. Navab, 53 years old, left the country with his family during the 1979 revolution at the age of 14, taking refuge in Greece. The family later immigrated to the U.S.

Once thought to be a possible successor to co-Chief Executives Henry Kravis and George Roberts, Mr. Navab left the buyout firm in 2017 after Joe Bae and Scott Nuttall were promoted to the roles of co-president and co-chief operating officer.

Mr. Navab, who joined KKR in 1993, became co-head of the Americas private-equity business in 2008, later becoming its sole leader. The business had over $36 billion in assets under management at the time of his departure.

Before KKR, Mr. Navab worked on mergers at investment firm James D. Wolfensohn Inc., which was later bought by Bankers Trust New York Corp. He was an investment banker at Goldman before that.

La banque publique d'investissement veut pouvoir réagir en cas de potentielles prises de contrôle des entreprises françaises par des fonds étrangers.