Abu Dhabi capital fans out into India + US AI as G42 weighs US ownership

Abu Dhabi’s balance sheet is pointed in three directions this morning — Indian mid-caps, US AI infrastructure, and an Egyptian port operator that could end up with almost nothing trading. G42 is the exception: There, the open question is who ends up owning Abu Dhabi’s AI champion.

Investcorp is hunting two to three India deals a year, at USD 50-75 mn a check. Investcorp — the USD 62 bn alternative asset manager backed by Mubadala — is deploying a USD 500 mn India-focused fund with four or five deals left in it before it goes back to market for the next one, head of India investment business Gaurav Sharma tells The National.

That fund sits inside c. USD 1 bn Investcorp has put into Indian mid-market companies over the years: NephroPlus and Global Dental Services in healthcare, FreshToHome in e-commerce, and Unilog and NuSummit in tech. Last month it added logistics platform 20Cube 3PL Solutions for c. USD 53 mn.

Where the next money goes: Healthcare, pharma, consumer, business services, and industrials are the priority sectors, Sharma said, with manufacturing — through portfolio company Canpac — a likely focus for the next fund. Investcorp takes 10-40% minority positions or outright control, screening more than 150 Indian companies a year to land its two or three.

Abu Dhabi’s G42 is again said to be weighing US ownership. The emirate’s national AI champion is in exploratory talks over selling a majority stake to US companies as it looks for a permanent fix to Washington's chip-access strings, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

BACKGROUND- G42 has spent two years managing US concerns about its China exposure — divesting Chinese holdings and taking a USD 1.5 bn investment from Microsoft in 2024 that came with security conditions attached. Selling control would go considerably further than any of that.

The last piece of Egypt’s blocking stake in Alexandria Container and Cargo Handling (ALCN) is formally off the table. The General Authority for Alexandria Port, which holds 7.63% of the EGX-listed port operator, has told ALCN it has no intention of selling any of its shares to AD Ports subsidiary Black Caspian Logistics, according to an EGX filing (pdf). ALCN disclosed the letter alongside a restatement of the Holding Company for Maritime and Land Transport's refusal, putting the full 43.9% state bloc on the record.

That leaves a tender aimed at a sliver of freefloat. With ADQ’s side at 51.33% and the state at 43.9%, ALCN's freefloat is c. 4.8% — and Black Caspian is tendering for up to 4.3% of the company. Full acceptance would leave the port operator with almost no tradable stock against the EGX’s minimum freefloat requirement, a question the FRA will have to answer before the offer clears. At EGP 27.47 a share, the offer sits c. 17% below the EGP 33.20 the stock is trading at, which gives freefloat holders little reason to tender anyway.

Energean has four weeks to turn a roughly USD 1 bn indicative offer for BP’s Egyptian upstream assets into a firm bid, after entering exclusive negotiations in late August. The clock is ticking as its own balance sheet is under nearly as much scrutiny as the deal itself, MEES says.

The strategic case is strong: BP’s West Nile Delta assets sit next to Energean’s Abu Qir, North El Amriya, and North Idku concessions, and combined they’d give Energean a ~99k boe/d Egypt base alongside Israel’s 113k boe/d. It’s also a comeback: Energean terminated a USD 945 mn sale of the same Egyptian assets to Carlyle just a year ago after regulatory approvals fell through.

The balance sheet won’t stretch easily — and it’s Israel that makes it stretch at all: Net debt of USD 3.3 bn, pushing leverage to 2.9x EBITDAX, already triggered a Fitch downgrade to ‘B+’ last month, and a Negative S&P outlook in April. Strip Israel out and net debt falls to USD 718 mn — Karish / Katlan alone generated 913 mn of adjusted EBITDAX last year, equivalent to 73% of group output. That’s the earnings power keeping a BP-sized bid feasible. But the risk is that a 41-day shutdown at Karish this year already tested Fitch’s tolerance for outages beyond three months.

ALSO WORTH KNOWING TODAY-

Mubadala Capital is backing Crusoe again, joining a USD 3 bn+ round that values the US AI infrastructure builder at c. USD 30 bn post-money — up from just over USD 10 bn 10 months ago, on a pre-money of c. USD 27 bn. Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners co-led the finalised round; Mubadala Capital’s check size wasn’t disclosed, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

Saudi Arabia’s Dar Al Balad Business Solutions signed a non-binding MoU to explore buying up to 100% of two UAE-based AI firms — Clouding Computer Systems and Clouding Intelligence Computer Systems — the company said in a Tadawul disclosure. This is a six-month MoU for due diligence, with no price tag or financial obligation if DBS walks away.

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