-Makkah Halal Forum 2026 marked a pivotal milestone in the development of Saudi Arabia’s halal industry, ushering in a new phase of structured institutional action.
This shift moves the sector beyond theoretical discourse toward a fully integrated implementation framework. It cements the Kingdom’s global leadership in halal and enhances the credibility of Saudi products in international markets.
The forum witnessed the launch of a package of strategic enablers reflecting the maturity of the Saudi experience in the sector. Chief among them was the introduction of the Halal Academy as a specialized knowledge and training arm dedicated to building professional expertise and raising standards across the entire value chain.
The event also saw the unveiling of the Golden Halal logo, a high-level accreditation mark designed to provide global markets with a unified benchmark of trust, underscoring the Kingdom’s commitment to the highest standards of quality and compliance.
These initiatives signal a strategic shift that goes beyond the traditional concept of religious oversight. Instead, they frame halal as a comprehensive industrial and economic system that integrates Sharia compliance with high quality standards, advanced governance, and digital traceability. The approach is expected to enhance the competitiveness of Saudi exports and facilitate their entry into global markets.
National success stories highlight the tangible impact of this transformation. Chief executive officer and founder of Roya Factory for Food Products Rasha Al Sanea noted that Saudi accreditation has evolved into a comprehensive quality certification that provides companies with a clear competitive edge abroad.
She noted that obtaining certification involves a rigorous process, including assessments of facility safety, manufacturing quality, and compliance with global standards ahead of final audits. These measures strengthen product reliability and boost readiness for international expansion.
Al Sanea added that the presence of international delegations and trade missions in Makkah on the sidelines of the forum helped accelerate expansion opportunities and open direct export channels to several markets.
She emphasized that pairing the Saudi Made logo with accredited halal marks, foremost among them the Golden Halal logo, enhances global consumer confidence and gives Saudi products a strong presence across diverse cultures and markets.
— SPA

The stock market has been quick to punish software firms and other perceived losers from the artificial intelligence boom in recent weeks, but credit markets are likely to be the next place where AI disruption risk shows up, according to UBS analyst Matthew Mish.

Tens of billions of dollars in corporate loans are likely to default over the next year as companies, especially software and data services firms owned by private equity, get squeezed by the AI threat, Mish said in a Wednesday research note.

“We’re pricing in part of what we call a rapid, aggressive disruption scenario,” Mish, UBS head of credit strategy, told CNBC in an interview.

The UBS analyst said he and his colleagues have rushed to update their forecasts for this year and beyond because the latest models from Anthropic and OpenAI have sped up expectations of the arrival of AI disruption.

“The market has been slow to react because they didn’t really think it was going to happen this fast,” Mish said. “People are having to recalibrate the whole way that they look at evaluating credit for this disruption risk, because it’s not a ’27 or ’28 issue.”

Investor concerns around AI boiled over this month as the market shifted from viewing the technology as a rising tide story for technology companies to more of a winner-take-all dynamic where Anthropic, OpenAI and others threaten incumbents. Software firms were hit first and hardest, but a rolling series of sell-offs hit sectors as disparate as finance, real estate and trucking.

In his note, Mish and other UBS analysts lay out a baseline scenario in which borrowers of leveraged loans and private credit see a combined $75 billion to $120 billion in fresh defaults by the end of this year.

CNBC calculated those figures by using Mish’s estimates for increases of up to 2.5% and up to 4% in defaults for leveraged loans and private credit, respectively, by late 2026. Those are markets which he estimates to be $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in size.

‘Credit crunch’?

But Mish also highlighted the possibility of a more sudden, painful AI transition in which defaults jump by twice the estimates for his base assumption, cutting off funding for many companies, he said. The scenario is what’s known in Wall Street jargon as a “tail risk.”

“The knock-on effect will be that you will have a credit crunch in loan markets,” he said. “You will have a broad repricing of leveraged credit, and you will have a shock to the system coming from credit.”

While the risks are rising, they will be governed by the timing of AI adoption by large corporations, the pace of AI model improvements and other uncertain factors, according to the UBS analyst.

“We’re not yet calling for that tail-risk scenario, but we are moving in that direction,” he said.

Leveraged loans and private credit are generally considered among the riskier corners of corporate credit, since they often finance below-investment-grade companies, many of them backed by private equity and carrying higher levels of debt.

When it comes to the AI trade, companies can be placed into three broad categories, according to Mish: The first are creators of the foundational large language models such as Anthropic and OpenAI, which are startups but could soon be large, publicly traded companies.

The second are investment-grade software firms like Salesforce and Adobe that have robust balance sheets and can implement AI to fend off challengers.

The last category is the cohort of private equity-owned software and data services companies with relatively high levels of debt.

“The winners of this entire transformation — if it really becomes, as we’re increasingly believing, a rapid and very disruptive or severe [change] — the winners are least likely to come from that third bucket,” Mish said.

CNBC

Luxury brands from Harry Winston to Loewe are going all in on Lunar New Year collections in a bid to attract Chinese customers.

Ahead of the Year of the Horse, which starts on Tuesday, Harry Winston unveiled a limited-edition, $81,500 rose gold watch with diamond bezels and a red lacquer horse. High-end fashion brand Chloé released a capsule collection, ranging from $250 silk scarves to a $5,300 snakeskin and leather shoulder bag with a horse head and tail linked by a horsebit chain. A slew of other brands, including Loewe, Gucci and Loro Piana, have introduced new bag charms with horse motifs.

The Year of the Horse arrives at a time of cautious optimism for designer brands and could mark the start of a China’s luxury market comeback.

Chinese consumers were once the primary driver for the global luxury sector but have cut back sharply in recent years, weighed down by the country’s slowing economy and depressed housing values.

The Chinese luxury market stood at about 350 billion RMB in 2024, or about $50 billion, according to estimates from Bain. While the consultancy estimates that market contracted by 3% to 5% in 2025, Bain analysts noted that the sector started showing signs of recovery in the second half of 2025 on the back of stronger stock market performance and consumer confidence.

Bernstein senior analyst Luca Solca said he predicts Chinese luxury spending will stabilize, forecasting mid-single-digit percentage growth in 2026. However, the market is still far more competitive than at its peak, he said.

Before the Covid pandemic, Chinese consumers accounted for about one-third of the global luxury goods market, according to Solca. That percentage has since dipped to about 23%, he said.

The luxury market’s fortunes do not solely rest on Lunar New Year, but it is an opportunity for Western brands to show respect for Chinese culture, he said.

The annual holiday is associated with the colors red and gold, which symbolize good luck and fortune in Chinese culture. Each Lunar New Year is represented by one of 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Last year’s animal was the snake.

But Solca said in order to best capture the Chinese luxury consumer, brands need to go beyond the expected motifs.

“The Chinese are no longer in awe of anything that comes from the West,” Solca said. “A perfunctory interpretation of CNY is not going to go far.”

Veronique Yang, who leads BCG’s consumer practice in Greater China, said literal interpretations can come across as lazy or even disrespectful to Chinese consumers. Younger shoppers are also looking for fresher takes, she said.

“Chinese young people, they respect the old Chinese culture, but to be honest, a lot of parts of it they don’t understand, or they want it to be reinterpreted in a modern way,” she said. “It’s important to weave a narrative that connects the heritage with a contemporary vision.”

Lunar New Year collections date back to the early 2010s, as Western brands were eager to tap into the rapidly growing Chinese luxury consumer market, according to Daniel Langer, professor of luxury strategy at Pepperdine University. At the time, newly wealthy Chinese consumers were eager to spend on designer goods, especially when they traveled abroad, he said, as there were few luxury boutiques in China outside major cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

Now, with broader access and more choice, brands have to work harder to bring in new clients.

And in the 12 years since the last Year of the Horse, Chinese high-income consumers have become more discerning, Langer said.

“They’ve been to the best places in the world. They’ve dined in the best restaurants in the world. They’ve shopped in the best shops in the world. Their expectations towards brands are significantly higher,” he said. “China has completely changed from a country where there was pent up demand for luxury goods to a country of the highest sophistication.”

They also have grown accustomed to spending less on Western brands between pandemic travel restrictions and the rise of domestic high-end labels, according to Langer.

Before the pandemic, Chinese consumers did most of their luxury shopping abroad. Pandemic travel restrictions permanently changed that dynamic. According to Bain, two-thirds of Chinese luxury goods spending was done abroad in 2019. Last year, overseas spending made up only a third.

The Year of the Horse provides a natural opportunity for a sizable number of Western brands to connect to the holiday. Langer said he preferred brands who take a less literal approach, such as Loewe, which adorned its signature Puzzle bags with fringes and tassels for a cowboy aesthetic.

Yang noted, however, that the year’s zodiac animal is a good luck symbol only for people who were born in that year, which makes playing too much into horse imagery a risk.

Instead, she said, brands can use immersive experiences to connect to Chinese customers, especially younger ones, in a more authentic way.

Valentino, for instance, held a three-day lantern festival in January at Tianhou Palace, a historic temple along the Suzhou Creek in Shanghai. Burberry launched an extensive Lunar New Year campaign in mid-December, with Chinese brand ambassadors and a pop-up boutique and ice rink in Beijing.

“There’s a lot of different cultural elements that you can integrate and build a narrative around,” Yang said. “It’s not only about animals.”

CNBC