Good morning, wonderful people. If you, like so many other people we know, are struggling with a bit of AI anxiety, we have a little bit of (maybe) reassuring news as we prepare for a week in which the big business story globally is likely to be the volatility of the AI industry.
US tech giants are rethinking their messaging about the jobs-apocalypse after spending more than a year warning that AI would wipe out white-collar work. OpenAI boss Sam Altman (reportedly currying favor with the Trump administration with an offer to hand the state a 5% stake in his outfit) now says the industry “underestimated how much we’re going to be able to keep people at the center of everything,” the WSJ reports. And the share of US CEOs expecting AI to drive big headcount cuts has fallen from c. 46% in January 2025 to 20% in May, an EY-Parthenon survey found.
Maybe CEOs “realized it was simply bad business to say that your great new product will destroy the economy,” as MIT economist David Autor suggests?
Duelling studies provide little clarity: A Ramp-Revelio Labs study of nearly 22k companies found the heaviest AI adopters grew headcount about 10% faster than comparable firms that didn’t adopt it, with entry-level roles up 12% at tech-forward firms. Goldman Sachs research counters that AI probably resulted in the loss of 16k or so net US jobs per month over the past year, concentrated among Gen Z and entry-level workers.
Why it matters: AI is an-ever-more-important player in the Gulf’s collective economic strategy — and this week is shaping up to be interesting. SpaceX, fresh off the world’s largest IPO, enters the Nasdaq 100 tomorrow — and chipmaker SK Hynix plans to raise USD 29 bn through an ADR sale on Friday. Traders have the jitters after Bloomberg reported that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta plans to sell excess GPU capacity as a product — news that sent AI cloud compute player CoreWeave’s shares off a cliff and caused South Korea’s Kospi to swoon. The checkpoint to watch right now: Samsung’s preliminary 2Q financials tomorrow.
Companies in the UAE are now facing a new question on Emiratisation requirements — beyond hitting the quota, they’re now looking at whether they can retain the Emiratis they hire. The UAE had set a 30 June deadline requiring all private sector companies in the country with 50 or more employees to ensure Emiratis account for at least 9% of their workforce (from 1% previously). With that deadline now in the rearview mirror, it’s becoming clearer that retaining local talent, integrating them meaningfully, and moving beyond compliance to genuine value creation is where the real divide is opening up. That divide is also wider for small and medium-sized enterprises, which are falling behind larger firms.
Companies met the deadline with varying degrees of readiness. “We are seeing a mix of preparedness and last-minute activity. Many larger organizations have been planning for these requirements for months, but there are still a number of companies, particularly within the mid-market segment, that are working to finalise hiring and contract amendments before the deadline,” Pedro Lacerda, senior vice president at TASC Outsourcing, tells EnterpriseAM.
Some procrastinated, leaving hiring until the last minute, which inevitably adds to the constraints of finding the right candidates. “Those that invest in graduate programs, internships, mentorship initiatives, and long-term talent pipelines are generally better positioned to attract and retain skilled professionals,” Lacerda tells us.
The workforce localization scheme known as Nafis has clear timelines and targets, making compliance easier for companies as they set out their annual plans. “You have to be ahead of time; you have to plan your hiring over a year, six months, or three months in advance,” Cooper Fitch CEO Trefor Murphy tells EnterpriseAM.
The now-extended localization mandate addresses the challenge of a large number of companies competing over a much more limited pool of Emiratis seeking employment in the private sector. Some sectors and roles are harder than others — for example, new technologies such as AI require specific training that may not be as developed yet in the UAE.
But if hiring is the visible test, retention is the one that actually separates the leaders from the laggards. “We work with a lot of consulting firms, and they would say they need to hire 100 or 200 nationals every year. I would ask, ‘Out of those 200 graduates you hire every year, how many of those are in place 12 months in?’ Small numbers — 10 or 20 left,” Murphy tells us.
The UAE extended the Nafis Emiratisation program to 2040 and expanded financial support under it for women and children, which Lacerda says “provides businesses with greater certainty and reinforces the UAE’s long-term commitment to workforce participation and skills development.” Since its launch in 2021, the program has been implemented in 2% increments towards a target of 10% by the end of this year. Smaller companies (20 to 49 employees) in fast-growing sectors are also included in the Emiratisation targets, which require them to hire at least one Emirati employee each year from 2024.
By the numbers: About 176k Emiratis are now employed in the private sector, with 112k women participating through the program. Since its launch, the number of Emiratis in the workforce is up almost 400%, we previously reported. The current figures surpass the program’s initial target of employing 75k Emiratis in the private sector.
Signing up has its benefits for Emiratis seeking employment, including a salary support scheme that depends on education level. The government recently raised the monthly minimum wage to AED 6k for private sector employees in January.
And non-compliance is costly: Companies that miss the target face penalties from 1 July of up to AED 120k annually for every Emirati they didn’t hire. A fine for failing to implement the minimum wage hike was to be enforced at the same time, adding to the list of criteria companies had to meet by the end of June.
“Non-compliance can create operational challenges that directly impact a company’s ability to hire, grow, and respond to business demands. Restrictions on work permits and changes in company classification can affect workforce planning and create additional administrative burdens,” Lacerda tells us.
From box-ticking to value creation
The penalties explain why companies comply. They don’t explain why the smart ones are going further — and that gap is becoming the real story of Emiratisation. Fake Emiratisation schemes exist but are not seen as prevalent. Some reported cases were detected by the ministry in the first half of 2025 through field inspections and digital monitoring. Analysts we spoke with played down their prevalence, including cases of keeping an employee on the books who doesn’t actually do the work.
“While there might have been a few cases, the UAE has made it clear that it expects businesses to create real opportunities for Emirati talent, and recent enforcement measures reflect that. After an era of treating talent localization as a box-ticking exercise, the conversation has now shifted from whether companies should embrace Emiratisation to how they can do it in a way that creates lasting value. Businesses that invest in developing Emirati talent are building stronger teams today while positioning themselves for long-term success,” Lacerda tells us.
Murphy makes the same point from the other direction: “The bottom line is having people on your books, employing them and paying them, but not expecting them to do a day’s work is counter-intuitive to what nationalization is supposed to stand for, which is to help level up nationals to expat levels,” he explains. Whistleblowing by other employees or self-reporting by affected staff may deter such attempts at “defrauding the system.”
AI once again fills the gap
The rush to hire Emiratis has also created openings for other sectors, such as an AI-powered recruitment platform called Rabet. The pre-seed startup launched around eight months ago, aiming to fill a perceived gap created by rising demand for Emirati nationals that traditional recruitment methods fail to capture.
The platform vets candidates by sector and matches them with companies with open positions, typically within 48 hours, founders Aymane Najib and Hajar Najib told us. “We’re basically the middleman,” Aymane says, describing a process that scans CVs, then interviews hundreds of candidates to produce ranked results based on their skills. Rabet is also programmed to run interviews in both Arabic and English to cater to a market where some roles require standard Arabic.
Even so, the hardest roles remain hard to fill. “For example, we had a situation where they asked for AI senior Emirati people that have more than 12 years in AI and data plus other stuff. We didn’t find anyone. There was no one. And we told them there was no one and we gave them the other list of the non-Emiratis, and there were a lot,” the founders say.
State policy meets cultural factors
“The government agenda is to reduce that number [workers in the public sector] because it’s a very heavy, not-for-profit payroll. The private sector is expected to do some of the heavy lifting there. The banks have led the charge in that for a long time,” Murphy explains, adding that likely around 80% of nationals work in the public sector, and an even higher proportion in the federal government.
While government policy is clear on expanding local participation in the private sector, cultural factors slow the process. “If you’re going into an organization in your home country to be one, two, three, or four of a couple of hundred people, it is genuinely very difficult to assimilate into a culture that’s not your culture,” Murphy says. Proper onboarding and specific programs for nationals are needed, but he notes that “whilst they [Emiratis] understand why they’re there, they also don’t want to be given special treatment.”
These factors feed straight back into the retention problem — and, ironically, better employers pay the highest price for solving it. As companies improve onboarding and training, a pattern emerges of higher turnover among graduates who switch employers within the year. “When organizations have got better L&D, better programs, and better infrastructure to hire nationals, they’re being targeted by other private sector companies to take those people,” Murphy says.
The deadline has come and gone, and localization mandates are here to stay, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE leading the push as part of their economic diversification strategies. But the deadline was only ever the floor. The companies that pull ahead will be the ones that treat Emiratisation not as a quota to clear but, in Lacerda’s words, as a way “to create lasting value.”
Baghdad has been on an agreements-signing spree with American energy companies. In a single cabinet session on Saturday, Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi’s government approved agreements with Chevron covering West Qurna 2 field (formerly owned by Russia’s Lukoil), mandated a US-Qatari consortium to study two strategic export pipeline routes (a Basra-Ceyhan route through Turkey and a Basra-Baniyas link through Syria), and fast-tracked KBR's consultancy on the Basra-Haditha crude export line. Days earlier, Oil Minister Basim Al Abadi signed a five-year integrated management contract with Halliburton for the Bin Omar and Sinbad fields, targeting a combined 250k bbl / d.
Read together, these moves form Al Zaidi’s pitch deck for Washington. US President Donald Trump is expected to host the Iraqi PM at the White House in mid-July, Al Zaidi’s first foreign trip since taking office. The message Baghdad wants to deliver: Iraq is open for American capital, particularly in the energy sector, and the country is happy to get all the investment it can get into its energy infrastructure to help it bypass Hormuz after the crisis exposed its over-dependence on the chokepoint.
REMEMBER- We reported last month that securing US investment for the Syria-Iraq pipeline — estimated at USD 8 bn — would be at the top of Zaidi’s Washington agenda, with TI Capital named in previous reports as the lead for this possible development. Earlier last week, Washington resumed USD air shipments of Iraqi oil revenues after months of withholding them — another signal the bilateral temperature is warming.
And on the Gulf front, GCC Secretary-General Jassim Al Budaiwi visited Baghdad last week andendorsed Zaidi's reform and anti-corruption agenda, signaling that Gulf capital — which has long demanded stronger investor protections before scaling up in Iraq — could follow if the governance push holds.
IN CONTEXT- Zaidi said recently the Cabinet is planning to launch an energy and development fund seeded by the Central Bank of Iraq and open to subscription from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Western institutions.
Our take: Al Zaidi appears to be laying the groundwork for a multilateral investment push in critical energy infrastructure, putting his eyes on a mix of American and Gulf capital — and the recent anti-corruption drive and warming signs in the relationship with the American government and businesses could generate just the right momentum to get there.
MENA construction is heading for its sharpest contraction in years — and the pain is very uneven. Construction gross value added (GVA) across the Middle East and North Africa is estimated to shrink 3.3% in real terms in 2026, reversing a pre-war forecast of 3.2% growth, according to a report from BMI, Fitch Solutions’ research arm, seen by EnterpriseAM. The US-Iran conflict and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz are feeding into construction through four channels: direct attack-related disruptions, supply-chain pressure, weakened public investment capacity, and softer private-sector demand, BMI says.
The headline number obscures a growing split: BMI sees the GCC contracting 6.2% in aggregate, with Bahrain (-10.2%), Qatar (-9.7%), and Kuwait (-7.6%) the worst hit, followed by the UAE (-6.8%) and Saudi Arabia (-4.7%). North Africa, by contrast, keeps growing at 2.2%, shielded by continued access to global trade routes and the absence of direct attacks.
The dividing line is Hormuz dependence, not market size. “The risk of supply chain disruptions to projects is most pronounced in markets such as Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and to a lesser extent the UAE,” BMI Head of Infrastructure Research Matteo Addonizio tells EnterpriseAM. Oman is the GCC outlier, contracting just 2.2% — its Gulf of Oman ports give it alternative sea-lane access, and it has faced fewer direct disruptions.
The UAE paradox
The UAE remains MENA’s top-ranked infrastructure market, which is precisely why its pullback is so telling. BMI ranks the UAE first regionally and sixth globally with an RRI score of 32.3, reflecting deep financial markets, experienced contractors, and strong foreign investor participation. But the UAE also saw the sharpest equity pullback among GCC markets since the conflict began — a function of its unusually large base of mobile foreign capital. “It has particularly high reliance on foreign investment precisely because of its attractiveness as an investment destination,” Addonizio tells EnterpriseAM.
Attractiveness and exposure are two sides of the same coin: “The market’s attractiveness remains despite the challenges faced since the start of the conflict in February,” but that view depends on a sustained recovery in Hormuz shipping and a calming of regional tensions, Addonizio says. “There are certainly risks to the market's attractiveness for private investment in infrastructure over the medium term,” he adds, if those conditions don't come together.
Egypt: best growth story, worst risk profile
Egypt is at the other end of the risk-reward spectrum among top-performing markets. BMI gives it MENA’s best Industry Rewards score (20.1 out of 100), reflecting its large construction market and deep project pipeline, but its Risks score of 65.1 is dragged down by weak contract frameworks, high labor-market risk, and elevated country-level macroeconomic exposure.
The near-term picture has deteriorated. BMI has cut Egypt's FY2025-26 construction growth forecast to 0.4% from 5.6%, after the sector contracted 0.3% y-o-y in 1H 2025-26. Interest rates above 20%, rising steel and cement costs compounded by energy subsidy reforms, skilled-worker migration to the Gulf, and a government pulling back from infrastructure spending to manage debt in line with IMF commitments are all stacking pressures. The conflict is compounding, not causing, the problem: Elevated energy prices and risk-off sentiment are softening the Gulf-backed FDI Egypt’s megaproject pipeline — New Administrative Capital, Ras El Hekma, industrial zone expansions — depends on.
The medium-term view is still positive: BMI projects annual average real growth of 6.0% between FY 2027-28 and FY 2030-31. But the downside risks are material — a re-escalation would hit Egypt through energy import costs, portfolio outflows, weaker tourism, reduced Suez Canal revenues, and softer GCC investment.
What to watch
Everything hinges on the one variable we all know. “The key factor that we need to see is a sustained normalisation of trade through the Strait of Hormuz,” Addonizio says, noting it will be critical both for supply chain relief and for the oil and gas revenues that fund government spending capacity.
BMI's base case assumes a preliminary US-Iran agreement by the end of June, with the worst construction impacts contained within 2026 — and so far that’s what we have now. In this scenario, the GCC would rebound 6.0% in 2027, and MENA construction GVA would grow 5.1%. But BMI's Country Risk team assigns a 45% probability to escalation.
And even the base case is not a snapback. Shipping takes months to normalize and input-cost inflation won’t cool down right away. Meanwhile, private capital is expected to remain cautious on some projects. Infrastructure is defined by long-term commitments, Addonizio notes, which should insulate from immediate capital flight, but that would mean “increased caution toward large-scale projects through 3Q and potentially beyond, in particular impacting projects which have yet to start construction.”
Lebanon’s Banque du Liban (BdL)filed two new criminal complaintstargeting former executives at the country’s two biggest private banks, alongside its former Governor Riad Salameh. BdL did not name the defendants, but Lebanon’s French daily L’Orient identified them as former Bank Audi CEO Samir Hanna, former GroupMed chairman and BankMed CEO Mohammad Ahmad Hariri, former BankMed executive general manager Mohammad Ali Beyhum, and investor Alaa Al Khawaja, who acquired a 42% stake in BankMed’s parent company in 2017.
The central bank said the defendants “exploited their positions … to implement a coordinated scheme, premeditated and designed, aimed at transferring funds belonging to Banque du Liban … leading to the squandering of the bank’s funds for the benefit of private material and functional interests and causing serious financial damage to the Bank of Lebanon, its reputation, and the public interest.” The alleged actions could constitute “fraud, breach of job duties, illicit enrichment, embezzlement of funds, bribery, and forming an organized criminal group,” BdL added.
Hanna is already deep in the legal quagmire. He has been under domestic investigation since January, when BDL’s new Governor Karim Souhaid filed a separate complaint alleging illicit enrichment via offshore companies in the Cayman Islands. France’s National Financial Prosecutor has opened a parallel probe into a suspected USD 154 mn fraud involving Bank Audi, Hanna, and Salameh. Hanna has since resigned as Bank Audi CEO.
But the inclusion of the BankMed executives and Al Khawaja is new. It marks an expansion of BDL’s legal pursuit to come after more names in the private-banking network that allegedly facilitated the scheme that ultimately culminated in the collapse of the country’s banking sector — not just pursuing Salameh alone.
The thread connecting Bank Audi, BankMed, and Khawaja runs through a 2017 transaction. Al Khawaja — a Jordanian-Palestinian-Lebanese businessman, confidant of former PM Saad Hariri, and owner of Egypt-based production and distribution house Al Arabia Cinema — bought Ayman Hariri’s 42.24% stake in GroupMed, BankMed’s sole parent company, for USD 535 mn. But according to an investigation by the left-leaning, independent Lebanese outlet Daraj, the transaction was financed by a loan from Bank Audi — and BDL had granted Audi a matching, uncollateralized loan of c. USD 550 mn at the same time. Daraj’s sources said Khawaja never repaid the loan, and that the transaction may have breached Lebanon’s Code of Money and Credit.
BDL was careful to shield the banks, stating the complaints “are directed exclusively against the natural persons who committed these acts, and do not target in any way the commercial banks in which they worked.” The central bank said its goal is “financial justice” and recovering stolen funds for depositors rather than prison sentences.
Happy Monday, everyone. It’s a busy (and M&A-heavy) column despite it being the start of the week, so we’re going to jump right in:
Global M&A hit a record USD 2.8 tn in 1H 2026 thanks to a flurry of megadeals that sent transaction values up 49% y-o-y even as the number of deals fell 9% to c. 24k, a six-year low, the Financial Times reports, citing data from LSEG Just 47 transactions worth more than USD 10 bn accounted for over USD 1.3 tn — nearly half of global deal value. Bain’s midyear outlook tells a similar story, finding that strategic M&A value rose 36% y-o-y despite the total number of transactions ticking up just 2%.
Companies, not private equity outfits, are placing most of those bets: Financial sponsor value fell 9% even as strategic buyers pushed ahead, the Bain report shows. The group points out two things to watch for next: The usual “post-acquisition integration” challenges go way up with megadeals — and every transaction now needs an AI lens and an AI cost line. Bain has full-year dealmaking on pace for USD 5.3 tn, just short of 2021’s USD 5.6 tn record.
Goldman bankers are laughing all the way to the bank: The 1H bragging rights go to Goldman Sachs, which captured 44% of EMEA’s USD 676 bn M&A market — its largest share in nearly a decade.
MEANWHILE- We think plenty of the M&A activity Bain expects in the back half of the year is going to be driven by Adnoc, which Bloomberg reports is reviewing a list of 10 banks to whom to throw business — raising hopes at Goldman and elsewhere and causing a pucker moment for Moelis & Co. and PJT Partners, which advise Adnoc today.
AND- Could the next Saudi M&A wave come from insurance? Saudi Arabia’s new risk-based capital regime takes effect 1 January 2027, and seven listed Saudi insurers already carry accumulated losses above 20% of share capital. S&P analysts expect the rules to force consolidation among the weakest. The Saudi insurance market has already shrunk from 33-34 companies a decade ago to 25 listed today — against just 11 listed banks.
The Sisi administration thinks state-controlled EgyptAlum is worth a lot more than the market is paying and wants to see the EGX-listed aluminum producer’s valuation rise 3-4x before deciding between a stake sale or a transfer to the Sovereign Fund, a senior government official tells EnterpriseAM. Officials say serious acquisition interest is already on the table, with one offer from a Gulf buyer and two from Europe.
EgyptAlumhas a market capof around EGP 118 bn (USD 2.4 bn) today, and the case for a richer multiple is based on how much pipeline risk investors are willing to carry — an agreement with Trafigura could double capacity to c. 600k tons a year and the company argues there’s a USD 3 bn alumina refinery with Bahrain’s Alba in the works for which lenders have appetite.
A Saudi agri-and-food-security platform in the making? PIF-owned Salic is folding Continental Farmers Group into Olam Agri, moving its wholly-owned Ukrainian unit into the Singapore agrifood giant it took 80% of for USD 1.8 bn, according to a statement. There’s no new money changing hands — this is Saudi making an integrated agrifood play to help offset the risk it runs from importing 70-80% of its food.
SOUND SMART- Abu Dhabi pioneered the play a few years back when ADQ built out an agrifoods play centered on Louis Dreyfus and Al Dahra. We think the Saudi move could be a prelude to more M&A.
BlueFive Capital co-led an almost-USD 3 bn round for Chinese video-generation outfit Kling AI at a USD 18 bn valuation, alongside a range of big-name Chinese players, among them CPE, Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba Cloud, according to a statement. It was the Abu Dhabi investment manager’s third transaction in a single week — after a controlling stake in Dubai dredger Gulf Cobla and a cross-border ownership swap with Saudi’s Al Murjan Group. The transaction is also its fourth move in China in under 12 months.
Egypt’s central bank is tightening the rules on bank investments in corporate and securitized bonds, with new measures on concentration caps, a BBB- rating floor, risk weights of up to 300%, and a bar on holding paper you’ve guaranteed, according to a circular (pdf). It could have a big impact on Egypt’s real estate industry: The requirement that developer securitizations be backed by delivered units cuts against how the market actually issues.
Why it matters in MENA+: Egypt runs the deepest securitization market in our region — it’s how consumer and small-business lenders as well as real estate companies turn to instead of bank debt. The deep, well-regulated market has Riyadh and Abu Dhabi studying it as they write their own rulebooks. Tadawul has drafted amendments that would give asset-backed issuances their own framework, while UAE lenders are closing private deals with the bulge bracket — think Deem Finance’s USD 400 mn securitization with JPMorgan — while they wait for rules that cover private placements.
GO DEEPER- We mapped all three markets, including Egypt’s regulatory correction, last month.
ALSO WORTH KNOWING THIS MORNING-
Egypt’s Badreldin family paid EGP 4.1 bn (c. USD 83 mn) for the remaining 40% of the holding company behind West Cairo’s Arkan Plaza, buying out two funds tied to Kuwait’s Public Institution for Social Security, according to a report.
Raya Holding closed its EGP 641 mn sale of 90% of Ostool Transport to Qalaa’s Ascom Geology & Mining, according to regulatory filings (here, pdf and here, pdf), netting a 30.5% premium to fair value and the end of a six-year exit saga for a company Raya and Qalaa founded together in 2010.
The IFC is weighing a USD 25 mn loan to EGX-listed snackfoods giant Edita to more than double capacity at its Baghdad plant by 2028, according to a project disclosure.
Khobar developer Rikaz is weighing an IPO to bankroll a 13 mn sqm warehousing and logistics buildout across the Kingdom, CEO Khalid Al Gahtani said, according to a report.
Egypt’s tire manufacturing base gets another Chinese player: Chinese steel manufacturer Zenith Steel is investing USD 300 mn in the Chinese-operated Teda zone at Ain Sokhna, according to a statement. The company — a subsidiary of Chinese conglomerate Zhongtian Group — will produce 120k tonnes of steel cord and 50k tonnes of bead wire annually — the steel reinforcement used in vehicle tires.
This is part of a wider supply chain localization play. In addition to plans to export 30% of the output to the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas, the new plant will supply raw materials currently being imported for Egypt’s growing cluster of tire factories. Zenith is setting up next to the Chinese tire makers already inside Teda — like Sailun’s USD 1 bn plant, which broke ground last year. The plant also comes amid a larger push by the government to advance its auto sector beyond assembly by tying incentives to local content, with the revamped Automotive Industry Development Program (AIDP) setting local-content requirements at 20%, and recent auto projects already building in feeder-industry facilities.
ICYMI- Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) is set to welcome a USD 291 mn tire plant to support auto component localization, while Chaoyang Langma Tire is lining up a USD 190 mn facility for heavy-truck and passenger-car tires.
It’s PMI time once again, folks: Saudi Arabia’s non-oil economy sped up in June while the pinch deepened in the UAE. We think readings in both markets got a boost from spending by state institutions.
The Riyad Bank PMI rose to 53.3 from 52.8 in May, a three-month high, on domestic demand and a fresh round of project approvals. Export sales were sharply down thanks to the conflict in the Gulf and input cost inflation hit a 15-year high, prompting participating firms to raise their output prices at the second-fastest pace in nearly six years.
The S&P Global UAE PMI fell to 50.8 in June from 52.6 the month before — its weakest reading since February 2021 — with companies cutting jobs at the fastest pace since August 2020. Domestic spending and government investment kept the index in growth territory.
Tailwinds no more
Algeria and Libya are now bracing for lower crude revenues, as global oil prices stabilize on the heels of the US-Iran ceasefire. On Saturday, Libya’s flagship Sidr crude was trading at its lowest in 13 months at a discount of USD 0.3 per barrel compared to Brent, whereas Algeria also lowered its asking price to be at a USD 0.4 discount. The new pricing is a reversal of fortunes for the North African nations that produce premium light, sweet grades, which both benefited from unrestricted access to the global market despite the far-reaching disruptions in the GCC — the tailwinds were so big that Libya’s oil exports in May generated some USD 4 bn in revenues, its highest monthly figure in over 11 years.
OPEC+ is ramping up production just as Aramco floods the market: The seven core OPEC+ members agreed yesterday to raise August output quotas by 188k bpd — a fifth straight monthly increase. The new quotas come as Aramco offers hard discounts to win back Asian buyers: The first tankers to load at Ras Tanura in almost four months have exited Hormuz carrying 10 mn barrels, with the company switching to spot pricing to move volume fast, Reuters reported last week. Saudi has shipped 34 mn barrels through the strait since the 17 June ceasefire.
Watch this space: Aramco should announce its August official selling price any moment now…
Turkish conglomerate eyes US-made, fourth-gen nuclear tech: Turkey-based IC Holding is in talks with the US-based ARC Clean Technology for a licensing agreement to commercialize and localize small modular reactors (SMRs) tech. The plan could see IC Holding deploy up to 20 units of the ARC-100 — a 100 MW SMR that could cost some USD 300 mn a piece — across Turkey, the Middle East, and Europe.
This would be an agreement with a long-term horizon. SMR is still a nascent technology with very few use cases currently in operation. The tech promises compact, movable, and easily assembled nuclear reactors with up to 300 MW power capacity that could be used to power data centers and energy-intensive industries, especially in geographies with limited grid connectivity. Securing US-grown SMR tech can help Turkey meet its target to add over 20 GW of nuclear power by 2050.
Another outsourcing hub is coming to Egypt: London-based professional services firm Ernst & Young (EY) is building a regional IT and consulting hub in Egypt, with plans to create 1k specialized jobs over three years, exporting cybersecurity, data analytics, AI, and risk consulting services to the wider MENA region, according to a statement from Egypt's Communications and Information Technology Ministry. The move adds EY to a roster that already includes Deloitte and Concentrix — and to an outsourcing sector that doubled to USD 4.8 bn between 2022 and 2025.
The pitch sounds familiar — and that may be a cause of concern. EY’s hub sits squarely in the “climb the value chain” playbook we flagged last month as the region’s default response to the fast-tracked AI-driven displacement, especially in lower-value outsourcing exports. The question is now whether 1k jobs over three years moves the needle against a national target of USD 12 bn and 630k jobs by 2029.
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