Good morning, friends. We hope the long National Day weekend treated you well. There’s plenty waiting for you after the break.

The regulators set the tone this morning. The CMA is pitching a rewrite of the IPO rulebook to narrow the gap between the demand a company advertises at listing and how its stock trades once it’s out. It comes as Saudi IPOs are having their weakest run in years, and it goes at the mechanics: the underwriting bank becomes a genuine backstop, big investors have to show the money behind their bids, and issuers put a year of forecasts on the record.

Aramco, for its part, is quietly rearranging its own furniture. The state giant is reorganizing to create a standalone gas division — the kind of structure that tends to precede a minority listing, if Aramco ever decides it wants fresh capital that way.

And the Kingdom is picking up some outside help on the war, with France and the UK each lending a measured, defensive hand while the East-West pipeline moves crude again as repairs run their course. More on all of it below.

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Careful company

The war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis is starting to carefully draw foreign militaries. France and the UK have each offered limited, defensive support to the Kingdom as missile and drone exchanges intensify.

France is committing forces to protect Yanbu. It will send troops, radar systems, and defense equipment, President Emmanuel Macron said. Paris’ goal is “not to get us involved in any conflicts, but to protect this site,” he said.

The UK is offering narrower support. A single Royal Air Force Voyager will provide “defensive air-to-air refuelling” for a limited period expected to last several weeks, the Financial Times reports, quoting Prime Minister Andy Burnham. “We want to see an end to the conflict as quickly as possible and we stand ready to play our part,” he said, tying the limited role to protecting oil flows and keeping a lid on the UK’s cost of living.

The Makkah pact’s members are talking, but no action yet. Defense chiefs from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey met in Riyadh on Friday, though the session produced no new commitments beyond the pact’s existing terms. Turkish parliament speaker Numan Kurtulmus said it could eventually grow into a broader bloc “for the Muslim world” — one that might even include Iran, according to Reuters.

Throughout this, exchanges haven’t slowed down. Since Thursday, Saudi air defenses intercepted and destroyed six missiles fired toward Taif and Yanbu, two drones aimed at Riyadh, and a missile at Khamis Mushait, Coalition spokesman Turki Al-Maliki said on X. The Houthis said they hit a “sensitive site” in Riyadh and Aramco facilities in Yanbu in response to the Kingdom’s “aggressive aerial raids,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Thursday. Saudi Arabia struck back the next day with 14 airstrikes and missile attacks on Taiz, Amran, Marib, and Saada in Yemen, Saree said in a separate statement. The number of Saudi strikes has exceeded 1k since the escalation began.

MEANWHILE- US-Iran diplomacy is moving backwards. US President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s proposed seven-day ceasefire and told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, the Wall Street Journal reports US officials as saying. Under the proposal, Iran would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and restarted nuclear talks in exchange for a lifting of the blockade on its ports, the unfreezing of some assets, and eased sanctions on its oil exports. Washington, however, sees less urgency as tanker traffic through Hormuz rises, while Tehran wants terms close to June’s agreement.

Returning to flow

Is the East-West Pipeline moving oil again? Three sources told Reuters that the pipeline restarted operations on Tuesday, over a week after a drone strike forced it offline. The line is running at a reduced rate for now — three of its 11 pumping stations were damaged in the attack. Aramco is targeting nearly 4 mn bbl / d and 40% of capacity expected within days, though a full restart will take six to eight weeks.

Aramco was already lining up buyers ahead of the restart: The company had informally told Asian refiners they’d soon be able to collect crude again from Yanbu, Bloomberg reported before the restart was confirmed. Aramco kept ramping up loadings from Ras Tanura in the Gulf throughout the outage, according to shipping data reported by Reuters.

Not every buyer got the workaround in time: Several Asian refiners contacted by Aramco missed scheduled loading dates after the pipeline shut down and had tankers either idling near the Red Sea port or sailing toward it.

Into the dip

PIF is considering wading into Gulf bonds, and is turning to a known name to do it. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is weighing an initial USD 500 mn mandate for Pacific Investment Management Co. (Pimco) to buy mainly Gulf government debt, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

It would be PIF’s first time handing money to Pimco, though the firm is well established in the neighborhood. It already runs money for Sama, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and the Kuwaiti and Qatari wealth funds, and has lent bns to state-backed borrowers across the region through private placements since the Iran war began.

PIF would be buying into a market that has cheapened sharply. Gulf sovereign bonds have sold off since the war started, as strikes on energy infrastructure and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz weighed on sentiment toward the region. Investors now demand 121 bps more in yield to hold Gulf government debt than before, with Qatar and the UAE the hardest hit, down 5.7% and 4.3% respectively, and Saudi down 3.5%.

The move also fills a gap in PIF’s book. The fund’s portfolio leans on equities, private investments, and Saudi development assets, and carries less fixed income than peers like the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. A bond allocation would move it toward that balance. The plan is still in early stages, with no decision made.

Adia answers a Kaust liquidity call

Adia buys into Kaust’s USD 1 bn secondaries sale: The endowment behind Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) is offloading a private markets portfolio worth at least USD 1 bn into the secondaries market and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia) is the buyer, PEI Secondaries Investor reports, citing three sources it says are familiar with the matter. The portfolio carries Asia-Pacific and China private markets exposure, and Jefferies is understood to be advising.

Why it matters: The transaction is one of the more direct capital links yet between a Saudi institutional balance sheet and an Emirati sovereign fund, landing as both governments race to build out their own private-capital ecosystems.

BACKGROUND- Kaust joins a growing line of university endowments testing the secondaries market for liquidity, alongside the University of California, Yale, and Harvard. Little is publicly disclosed about the Kaust endowment, which is run out of Washington, DC by the Kaust Investment Management Company.

What we don’t know yet — exact pricing, the full manager list, or whether this is a one-off rebalancing or the start of a broader Kaust sell-down. Adia and Jefferies declined to comment, and Kaust didn’t respond to PEI Secondaries Investor’s questions.

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The Egyptian government locked in enough LNG and crude to carry the country through peak demand this summer, and the real question now is who pays for it and for the rebuild ahead.

PowerTrip, our new four-part signature series, follows the money behind an energy sector that went from exporting gas to importing it in just five years.

Over the four issues this autumn, we'll look at how the lights stayed on and what that cost, who will own the next generation of power, how fast renewables can really scale, and whether Egypt's claim to be the region's energy hub still holds.

Issue I lands Wednesday, 30 September, and looks at how Egypt avoided rationing this summer, what the gas shortfall means for the economy, and where oil is headed over the next 18 months.

Tap here to subscribe to the Egypt edition and get PowerTrip delivered straight to your inbox.

The big story abroad

Prospects for a lasting resolution to the regional war dimmed over the weekend. US President Trump rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire that would have seen Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart nuclear talks in exchange for Washington lifting its port blockade. Trump expects the bombardment of Iran to continue after the US midterm elections in November, officials said.

Tehran’s response? Tehran has signalled that meeting its conditions and continuing negotiations is the only path to reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Mediators in the US-Iran talks have not officially passed along a US rejection of the plan, despite Trump’s public comments, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said.

In other geopolitical news: Washington and Beijing have agreed to cut over USD 30 bn worth of tariffs on non-sensitive goods in both directions. This applies to US exports including farm goods, wood, and cosmetics, and imports including small appliances, toys, and decorations. The two sides agreed to establish an investment board to discuss opportunities and challenges and to schedule a November dialogue on AI risks and benefits.

Apple liable for haptic patent infringement: A federal jury in San Diego ordered Apple to pay upwards of USD 5.7 bn in damages to Taction Technology after finding the tech giant infringed two haptics patents. The suit alleged that Apple used patented tech to power the haptic feedback in iPhones and Apple Watches. Apple intends to appeal the verdict, describing it as “entirely unsupported by facts.”