Legal battles weighing on Saad

The Saad Group’s Health Science Centre gleams, exuding the ambience of a grandiose five-star hotel rather than what it is: a hospital wing in eastern Saudi Arabia.

In the reception, a huge chandelier hangs from the ceiling, the centre of which is decorated with an ornate, stained-glass dome. The walls stretching up the building’s eight floors are clad in decorated marble.

The oncology centre is the latest addition to the more than 700-bed Saad Specialist Hospital, a SR2bn ($534m) complex that dominates the buildings around it in Al Khobar, an oil town in Saudi Arabia’s east. It employs some 4,000 people and is a showpiece asset of Maan al-Sanea, the Saudi billionaire who is battling to save his business empire in the face of financial difficulties, allegations of fraud and a number of lawsuits.

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