Good morning, wonderful people, and thank you for your patience this week while we took a few days off to tool-up for 2026.

We take a limited number of publication holidays every year. It’s a chance to work ahead, think big thoughts, and get organized — particularly when we’re planning something new. Breaks like these don’t just allow us to keep our journalism sharp by engaging in a bit of Maoist self-criticism, but to cook up new things.

Uh, Enterprise? Beyond self-flagellation, what do you guys do on these breaks? Past publication breaks are where we built the things that became:

• Our annual events series, including our flagship EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum
• Our audio products, including Morning Drive and Making It
• Our launches in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the MENA-India corridor
• The relaunch of EnterpriseAM Weekend in Egypt
• …and plenty more

We’ll have lots more for you in the months to come — stay tuned. 🙂

We lead this afternoon with news about India and Oman’s Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, to be signed tomorrow. The agreement is likely to open a new dimension in the economic ties as the two countries move beyond single commodity trade focusing on unleashing a new wave of two-way investments in logistics, pharmaceuticals, green energy and defence sectors.

Exclusive- JBM Electric Vehicles Chairman Nishant Arya spoke to us in an interview talking about the company's operations in the UAE as it seeks to expand its electric bus offering across the Gulf region.

Talking of investments, Adia has snapped an additional stake in ICICI Prudential’s IPO while Masdar has walked out of the consortium seeking to take ReNew private.

WATCH THIS SPACE-

Semiconductors: Apple is in advanced talks with India’s Murugappa Group to assemble and package chips for iPhones, marking the first time the tech giant has considered moving this critical “mid-stream” process to India, Economic Times reports. The potential agreement involves Murugappa subsidiary CG Semi, which is currently building a USD 250 mn semiconductor facility in Gujarat that is expected to go live in 2026.

CG Semi is not going it alone. The facility is a joint venture with Japan’s Renesas Electronics and Thailand’s Stars Microelectronics, providing the technical IP that India’s domestic conglomerates currently lack.

Why It matters: This is the second major signal in the last two weeks — following Intel’s pact with Tata Electronics — that the “China+1” strategy is moving rapidly up the value chain.

The corridor dynamic: India is using massive subsidies from the central government to lock in the Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test layer first. While the UAE and Saudi Arabia focus on high-end computing and AI infrastructure, India is positioning itself as the region’s factory floor for testing and packaging — a lower-margin but high-volume play that anchors the supply chain.

M&A: Japanese banking giant Mizuho Financial Group has agreed to acquire a controlling stake (up to 78%) in Avendus Capital — India’s premier investment bank — from KKR for USD 523 mn, Reuters reports.

The trend: This is the third big move by a Japanese major in recent months. MUFG is nearing a deal to acquire a 20% stake in Shriram Finance for USD 20 bn, according to Reuters. Sumitomo Mitsui recently bought a stake in Yes Bank and is expanding capital allocation in the renewables sector.

Corridor angle: Avendus Capital is active in connecting Indian startups and corporations with large Gulf investors, having advised on several high-profile agreements where Gulf SWFs were the lead or significant investors. Avendus advised Lenskart on a USD 500 mn investment and Bengaluru-based DealShare to raise USD 45 mn from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

AI: Abu-Dhabi AI firm G42 is seeking to expand its “Sovereign AI” playbook with the launch of Nanda 87B, an open-source Hindi-English LLM model designed to capture 600 mn+ Hindi speakers across the globe.

The Nanda 87B was trained on a curated dataset of 65 bn Hindi language tokens featuring 87 bn parameters, according to a press release. The model is trained for real work use with fluency in formal and spoken Hindi as well as Hinglish (a blend of Hindi dialects with English), delivering “strong performance” in translation, summarization, and transliteration commands, the statement says.

Our take: G42 joins global AI giants ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, who are aggressively competing for India’s 1 bn internet users. Nanda 87B could offer Indian startups a cheaper foundation model to build upon, lowering the barrier to entry for local AI innovation.

Monetary Policy: Policy rates are likely to remain low for a prolonged period, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra said, citing the central bank’s projections, in an interview with Financial Times. The comments follow the RBI’s decision earlier this month to cut the repo rate by 25 basis points and inject liquidity of up to USD 16 bn (INR 1.4 tn) to support what it has described as a “goldilocks” growth-inflation mix.

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Data point: Exports

A 5.4% y-o-y increase in India’s total exports was recorded in 1H 2025 (April to November) to USD 562.1 bn, according to data released by the Commerce and Industry Ministry. The trade deficit in November fell to a five-month low, with total exports rising 15% y-o-y with a marginal decline in imports.

KEY HEADLINE- Exports to the US rose 11.38% in 1H and 10% m-o-m in November to USD 6.2 bn despite the 50% tariffs imposed by Washington on India. Exports to the UAE — India’s largest Gulf trading partner — rose 6.7% y-o-y in 1H.

HAPPENING TODAY-

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Muscat this evening for a two day-visit, at the invitation of Sultan Haitham bin Tarik. It is the final leg of his three-nation tour, following visits to Jordan and Ethiopia.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD-

Will Gulf sovereigns continue backing Paramount Skydance’s hostile bid for Warner Bros Discovery? The question hangs in the air this morning amid widespread reports that WBD plans to reject Paramount’s bid in favor of Netflix. The news sent Affinity partners, the key conduit for GCC backing of Paramount’s hostile bid, running to the exit.

Affinity, the private equity outfit led by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, said overnight it would “no longer pursue the opportunity.” Kushner helped Paramount line up some USD 24 bn in funding for the bid from Saudi’s PIF, the Qatar Investment Authority, and Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding.

PLUS- It’s a rough morning for the auto industry: Volkswagen is shutting a plant in Germany, its home market, for the first time in its 88-year history. That’s bad news for any country (including Egypt) hoping that VW would choose it as the site for a new assembly plant — German unions would go bonkers if it invested significant sums abroad after shutting a plant at home. Ford, meanwhile, is taking a USD 19 bn writedown as it walks-back plans to go all-in on EVs.

Keep an eye on oil this morning: Crude futures dipped overnight after the Trump administration said it would impose a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” going into and and out of Venezuela.

AND- The Trump administration is in damage-control mode after the White House chief of staff gave a stunningly candid interview to Vanity Fair in which she said she was “aghast” at the destruction of USAID, called Elon an “odd duck” and ketamine user, and talked smack about JD Vance’s love of conspiracy theories. Read: Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term (Part 1 of 2)