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BEIJING – China’s wholesale and retail sectors posted solid growth in the first nine months of 2025, providing sound support for expanding domestic demand in the country, the Commerce Ministry said on Monday.

From January to September, the added value of China’s wholesale and retail trade grew by 5.6 percent from a year earlier to reach 10.5 trillion yuan (about $1.48 trillion), which accounted for 10.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, said an official with the ministry, quoting data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

During this period, profits of key commodity markets in the wholesale industry expanded by 8.2 percent year-on-year, while profits of industrial consumer goods markets increased by 17.9 percent year-on-year, the ministry said.

Looking at the retail industry, retail sales of goods reached 32.5 trillion yuan in the first three quarters of 2025, an increase of 4.6 percent year-on-year.

Online retail sales in China’s rural areas registered a 7.7 percent year-on-year increase in the January-September period, while sales of agricultural products via e-commerce platforms grew by 9.6 percent.

China has seen about 126 million new home appliances sold under its consumer goods trade-in program this year, the ministry noted.

The bank, which exited Saudi Arabia in 2014, is now securing a new investment banking license and plans to open offices in Riyadh by early 2026, CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan said in an interview with Bloomberg TV, where he was attending the Fortune Global Forum and the kingdom’s flagship annual Future Investment Initiative summit. ​Confirming the bank’s re-entry into Saudi Arabia and that the kingdom “will be recognizing” the new regional headquarters in just a couple of days, the kingdom’s Investment Minister Khalid Al-Falih said, “People have seen that the kingdom is a long-term partner. We’re not transactional.”

Venkatakrishnan told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell that working with trusted partners is important “because you’re making fairly large commitments financially and otherwise, and you need to work with partners whom you can trust and who are there for the long term and who will help you through the teething troubles.”

Barclays joins a growing list of financial giants like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and HSBC setting up deeper roots in the Gulf’s largest economy; by contrast JP Morgan is celebrating 90 years of doing business in the region. The move underscores Saudi Arabia’s ambition to transform itself from being a petroleum superpower into a diversified global business and financial hub, and increasingly a strategic nexus from which major businesses can access three different continents with ease.

The wider RHQ program

Saudi Arabia’s nine-year-old economic transformation plan, known as Vision 2030, is 85% complete, Minister Al-Falih said in opening remarks at the Fortune Global Forum. The strategy has already attracted over 675 regional headquarters—well past its original target of 500 by 2030—through generous incentives such as 30-year tax exemptions, tax relief, and streamlined regulatory frameworks.​

The government’s Regional Headquarters Program, launched in 2021 by the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, aims to make the capital the de facto economic center of the Middle East. Multinational players such as PwC, Deloitte, Lenovo, and Siemens Energy have already relocated leadership operations from Dubai and other hubs to Riyadh. Unlike special economic zone offices elsewhere, RHQs in Riyadh are designed to serve as genuine operational bases—not symbolic branches—managing corporate strategy and human capital across the entire Middle East and Africa. Also, Riyadh’s trillion-dollar transformation—anchored by NEOM, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), and megaprojects across tourism, AI, and green energy—represents a lucrative opportunity for capital providers.​​

At a breakout session at the Fortune Global Forum, executives hailed the program as transformative for localization, manufacturing, and innovation. Executives at Lenovo, for example, detailed construction of the region’s largest ICT manufacturing plant in the Saudi desert, while leaders at Siemens Energy spoke of expanding exports across the Middle East through its Riyadh-based regional center.​

In conversation with Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media, executives from Massimo, Siemens, and Lucid Motors highlighted that their RHQs have allowed them to do things like scale production, export vehicles to Europe, and build AI-driven health and transport systems from within the kingdom.​

Air Liquide announces today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire NovaAir, a leading industrial gas producer and supplier in India, from PAG, an Asia-focused private equity firm. This acquisition represents another investment for the Group in the country and a strategic milestone in its Indian growth story.

Founded in 2019, NovaAir is a full-service industrial gases platform supplying bulk industrial gases, critical specialty gases, and providing onsite services and EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) support to its clients in the key industrial regions of East and South India. The company serves customers in the steel, automotive, fabrication, electronics, photovoltaic and healthcare industries, among others. 

The acquisition of NovaAir which is present in the East and South of India complements Air Liquide’s existing operations in the North and West of the country, bringing a large project portfolio managed by an experienced team. Through this operation, the expanded geographical reach will substantially strengthen Air Liquide’s footprint in the industrial merchant market, allowing it to better serve customers in the growing automotive, metals, electronics and healthcare sectors.

This acquisition follows a series of recent investments in India by Air Liquide, underscoring the Group’s commitment to investing in the long-term growth opportunities of the Indian market. Air Liquide has been present in India since 1992 and has solid ambitions in this country. The Group’s operations in India encompass the supply of industrial and medical gases, engineering and construction services, cryogenic equipment manufacturing, medical systems for healthcare and the development of speciality chemical ingredients.

Emilie Mouren-Renouard, member of Air Liquide’s Executive Committee, notably in charge of supervising activities in India, stated: 

“This acquisition represents a new step in our development in India. It demonstrates our long-term commitment to supporting the country’s industrial and healthcare development. This acquisition will significantly enhance our capacity to serve customers from small and medium enterprises to large industrial players, across a wider geographic footprint. It is another illustration of the growth potential of the Group.”