Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Co., the Saudi family holding company whose Bahraini bank has defaulted, owes 34.6 billion Saudi riyals ($9.2 billion) to more than 100 banks, two people familiar with the situation said.
The Algosaibi group held a meeting with creditors in Bahrain June 24 to ask for a grace period of 90 days to investigate the debt, said one person involved in the talks, who declined to be identified because the information is confidential. A spokesman for the company, which bottles Pepsi Cola in Saudi Arabia and holds stakes in lenders including Saudi British Bank, had no immediate comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.
The size of Algosaibi’s liabilities “strikes the markets as a surprise,” said Luis Costa, an emerging-markets debt strategist at Commerzbank AG in London. “This is a problem when it comes to buying anything originated from the Middle East, how to properly measure the leverage of players there.”
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