Uber’s pursuit of Careem and Alabbar’s pursuit of IFFCO are making headlines, but our fellow finance nerds will want to check out Saudi’s new securitization rules

A couple of juicy M&A stories and boring (for normals) but important (for us finance nerds) regulatory changes in Saudi lead the column this morning on what’s shaping up to be a very busy week for Markets + Deals news. Look for the pace to continue this month, war or not, as bankers and lawyers push to close transactions before the summer slowdown begins once school is out.

UP FIRST- Could Uber end up owning all of Careem again? Telco-turned-tech-investor e& is selling a 12.5% stake in Careem’s super-app unit, Careem Technologies, to Uber for USD 100 mn — cutting its holding to 37.53% from 50.03% and attaching matched put-and-call options exercisable between December 2031 and January 2032 that open a path for Uber to take the whole thing, per a press release (pdf).

The history: Uber had owned Careem’s ride-hailing business outright since its USD 3.1 bn 2019 buy, and in 2023 sold e& a 50.03% stake in the spun-out super app for USD 400 mn. The news comes as Uber chases another rival — Germany’s Delivery Hero — after tabling a USD 38.29-a-share proposal and building a 37% position ahead of a possible takeover.

AND- International Holding Company and Mohamed Alabbar are both circling troubled food producer IFFCO, which is buckling under roughly USD 2 bn in debt and creditor insolvency filings, Bloomberg reports. Nobody has yet made a formal bid, but Alabbar has written to the board and creditor banks signaling interest in the whole business, which includes assets potentially worth several bn USD spanning food, packaging, chemicals, and logistics across 50 countries.

It’s a food security play: IFFCO’s UAE plants are among the more important nodes in the Emirates’ supply chain.

Speaking of food security: AD Ports is buying Brazilian agri-bulk terminal operator Corredor Logística e Infraestrutura (CLI) for USD 835 mn (c. AED 3.1 bn) — its first owned port infrastructure in Brazil, according to a disclosure (pdf). The transaction gives AD Ports exposure to the supply side of the world’s biggest sugar, soybean, and corn exporter. Rival DP World has been building out Santos on the same thesis. The AD Ports transaction should close in the second half of this year.

M&A IN CONTEXT- Saudi M&A defied the regional slump in 1Q, logging 24 deals worth USD 689 mn, a 4% y-o-y increase in volume even as MENA-wide value slid to USD 23.3 bn from USD 31.3 bn, per Ansarada (pdf). The Public Investment Fund was the big driver. “The conflict may be reshaping timelines, but it’s not reshaping the region’s thirst for M&A,” Ansarada’s Justin Smith told Arab News. One caveat worth flagging: Data providers disagree on the depth of the slowdown, with LSEG putting MENA M&A far lower at USD 18.8 bn, with inbound down 90% to a 10-year low.

Tadawul is drafting a dedicated framework for securitization and asset-backed issuances, splitting debt-listing rules from equities and adding disclosure tailored to structured deals, according to proposed amendments (pdf) open for consultation until 14 June. The point, Fitch’s Bashar Al Natoor says, is to let investors take risk on a defined asset pool rather than the issuer — the precondition for a genuine asset-backed sukuk market, building on last year’s SPE reforms.

This sounds boring to non-finance nerds, but it could be really big: Securitization is the lifeblood of consumer finance and the wider non-banking financial sector — in Egypt, it’s what funds the NBFI industry, with the banks as the primary buyers of the paper. A deeper, better-regulated Gulf template than what’s in place today is one other Gulf regulators will be watching.

SOUND SMART- Securitization is the art of turning lots of small, illiquid loans into one tradable security. A lender — say a consumer-finance or leasing firm — bundles thousands of car loans, installment plans, or lease receivables into a single pool, then sells bonds or sukuk backed by the monthly payments that pool throws off. The lender gets a lump of cash today instead of waiting years to collect it and recycles that straight into new lending.

Two big real estate moves to keep an eye on: In Saudi, the Royal Commission for Makkah City awarded SAR 13.3 bn (USD 3.5 bn) of redevelopment work across six districts spanning 2.7 mn sqm. Interestingly each scheme runs through a closed-ended real estate fund rather than a straight contract. We’re taking this as officials trying to bring in institutional capital rather than further stressing the state budget or further crowding the private-sector out of the banking system.

MEANWHILE- Egyptian real estate giant TMG is pushing into Iraq, with a unit there securing land and a license for a USD 10 bn, 12.8 mn sqm megaproject in Baghdad Financial and Economic City, targeting USD 18.8 bn in sales and USD 108 mn in recurring annual revenue. It follows real estate developer Ora and snackfoods giant Edita into Iraq and joins TMG’s USD 10.7 bn Banan City in Riyadh and USD 4.7 bn foray into Oman.

From the Dept. of Dumb Moves: S&P Dow Jones Indices has opened a consultation (pdf) on demoting Egyptian equities to frontier status, citing market-access and capital-mobility concerns. Consultations are open until 17 July, with any change effective at the September 2027 reconstitution. The mechanical hit is small (Egypt is just 0.12% of the S&P EM BMI), but the signal is not: it comes while the EGX is deepening with a derivatives market, short-selling, and a state IPO pipeline that includes Misr Life and Banque du Caire.

Our take: The case is … non-existent? Nobody else we know of is flagging access or capital-mobility problems right now: the carry trade clears every day and FTSE reaffirmed Egypt’s emerging-market status only three months ago. This reads more like a box-ticking review than a real warning, but the optics will frustrate policymakers in Cairo.

Autonomous-delivery startup CargoX has come out of “stealth” with a USD 250 mn raise led by Abu Dhabi’s BlueFive Capital, per a press release. It’s being run by former Talabat CEO Tomaso Rodriguez, who took that company through its USD 2 bn 2024 IPO, and is now at the helm of a driverless-freight platform already piloting on UAE roads. For BlueFive it’s the second mobility bet in as many months after a 49% stakein Massar Solutions from Taqa. This looks more and more like a regional mobility roll-up taking shape in real time.

Adia is adding insurance software to its global portfolio, with a unit of the fund taking a significant minority stake in Sapiens, an Israeli-founded insurance-software firm, according to a press release.

Jordan’s Amman Stock Exchange has gone live on Tabadul, the ADX-anchored cross-market platform, becoming its seventh exchange and letting investors trade both bourses through a single pipe.

Cairo VC firm A15 is days from closing its tenth exit — and has already returned 10.2x DPI (cash actually back to investors versus what they put in) with the fund still active, Managing Partner Karim Beshara tells our Egypt desk — that’s good enough to make the fund in the top decile globally. You can read the full story here.

ALSO WORTH KNOWING

UK-based energy services company Petrofac closed the sale of its UAE unit, PetrofacEmirates, to a group led by US investment firm Mason Capital Management and London-based hedge fund manager Pearlstone Alternative, according to a press release.

Green Palm Bidco — the BlackRock-led vehicle that bought into Aramco’s Jafurah gas field — has opened books on a debut USD bond worth as much as USD 2 bn, Global Capital reports. HSBC, Citi, and JP Morgan are running the transaction.

EBRD is mulling up to USD 200 mn in finance for UAE-based Alcazar Energy’s 500 MW Ras Ghareb wind complex in Egypt — up to USD 100 mn each for the NIAT and Rasgha projects (here and here) — covering much of the USD 450 mn debt behind the USD 600 mn build, on a 25-year grid offtake. The GCC has accounted for more than 60% of wind and solar FDI in Egypt since 2015.

BinDawood Holding completed its acquisition of a 51% stake in Vaza Food for SAR 217.9 mn (USD 58 mn), per a Tadawul disclosure. It’s the retail giant’s first push upstream into food processing.

Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) cleared a regulatory hurdle on its USD 2.2 bn acquisition of France’s Aluminium Dunkerque, with the European Commission signing off.

Positron AI, a US maker of hardware optimized for AI inference rather than training that has raised more than USD 300 mn including a USD 230 mn Series B, has opened its first office outside the US at the DIFC.

Market Snapshot

Tadawul +0.1% • ADX -0.3% • DFM -0.7% • EGX30 -0.2%

Brent USD 95.99 / bbl • Gold USD 4,517 / oz • USD / SAR 3.75 • USD / EGP 51.2