Good afternoon, friends. We’re ending the week with a clear geopolitical theme, as three tankers have been hit in the Strait of Hormuz this week, two of them managed out of Abu Dhabi, and Washington is moving a third carrier group into the region.
Three Liberia-flagged tankers were struck by unknown projectiles while transiting Hormuz between Monday evening and Wednesday, Reuters reported yesterday. The tankers included oil products tanker Al Ruwais and VLCC Mersin Prosperity, both managed by ADNOC Logistics & Services, and the Aframax Sinbad, managed by Anglo-Eastern. One was set alight, but the fire was put out, the crew is safe, and the vessel continued its voyage. UK Maritime Trade Operations has since reported a 2.5 mn bbl supertanker hit by a projectile and set on fire, according to Al Jazeera.
The US now has three carriers and two landing groups deploying around Iran. The Roosevelt strike group and the Makin Island force, carrying 2k Marines, have left San Diego, and a US official told Al Jazeera the buildup should be in place by November. The Pentagon is weighing further reinforcements.
Meanwhile, leaders in the region are talking de-escalation. UAE National Security Advisor Tahnoon bin Zayed was in Muscat on Wednesday, meeting Sultan Haitham bin Tariq, who also holds the office of prime minister, according to Oman's state news agency. The two discussed de-escalating regional tensions through diplomacy and safeguarding national security. The visit follows Sheikh Mansour’s visit to Riyadh and Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Sheikh Mohamed in the UAE, which puts Abu Dhabi on three channels at once. Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian said this week that Tehran “has never avoided” dialogue with Washington, while noting it has been attacked three times during negotiations. Where’s that offramp, again? –Salma
Whether the UAE’s domestic payments system delivers the cheaper, more resilient payments it was built for depends on how much spending migrates onto it, and that migration has barely started. Real-time payments account for 1.5% of UAE transaction volume, according to ACI Worldwide, with the share projected to reach 3.6% by 2028. There is no public data yet on how much card volume has moved off the international schemes since Jaywan went nationwide in July.
REFRESHER- Jaywan is the card scheme piece of Al Etihad Payments (AEP), the Central Bank-owned company that also runs the Aani instant payment service and the UAESWITCH domestic switch, which processes every Jaywan transaction made inside the country. Co-badged Jaywan cards still carry Visa, Mastercard, or UnionPay, which take over when the card is used outside the UAE.
The infrastructure is in place, and so is the distribution. Central bank rules will make every debit and prepaid consumer card issued during 2027 a Jaywan card, with existing international-scheme cards reissued on the domestic scheme.
Migration decides the payoff: Lower pricing on domestic card transactions, resilience from running them at home, and savings that banks either keep or pass to merchants and customers.
“Many countries have a domestic switch, many have instant payments, some have domestic schemes,” Zilvinas Bareisis, director of retail banking and payments at Celent, tells EnterpriseAM. “What’s notable about the UAE’s approach is the coordinated, state-backed packaging of the three layers: A card scheme, instant payments, and a national switch.”
What AEP runs
The infrastructure has come together quickly. Aani had more than 12.5 mn registered users and 74 participating financial institutions by April, and supports instant transfers of up to AED 50k. Jaywan’s card rollout is phased: More than 10 financial institutions are issuing, with the rest of the licensed institutions scheduled through December.
The switch underneath is the oldest piece. “UAESwitch has been around for many years,” Bareisis says. “Jaywan and Aani are newer services launched as part of the UAE’s Financial Infrastructure Transformation (FIT) Program.” What AEP has changed is the ownership: All three now sit in one state-backed company.
Where a Jaywan payment goes
Routing is the core of the design. “All Jaywan transactions within the UAE, whether from a mono-badged or co-badged card, are processed through UAESWITCH,” Andrea Cianchetti, chief products officer at AEP, tells EnterpriseAM. A co-badged card can still carry Visa, Mastercard or another international scheme, but that network only takes over when the card is used outside the country.
Co-badging is what makes the scheme palatable to cardholders, Bareisis says. “It tends to genuinely hold as co-badging lowers adoption friction because consumers retain global acceptance. Domestic schemes can be very popular at home, but consumers want that same consistent payment experience abroad.”
AEP is leaving the format to the banks. Issuers can choose between mono-badged and co-badged Jaywan cards, customers can request a mono-badged card, and AEP is working with UnionPay on international acceptance for mono-badged cards. “There is no prescribed end state in which either format becomes the standard,” Cianchetti says. “Issuers determine their issuance model.”
Routing domestic payments domestically hands the state a set of levers. “If domestic payments can be routed domestically by default, the country gains leverage over pricing, resilience, dispute rules, sanctions/force majeure risk, and operational continuity,” Bareisis says. He puts the UAE in a wider group of governments trying to reduce reliance on external payment infrastructure. “The desire is to ensure that a credible domestic alternative exists,” he says.
Aani’s user numbers are the figure most often cited as evidence that it’s working, and they measure sign-ups rather than money. A registration says nothing about how much payment value moves through the system, and AEP has not published a volume share for either Aani or Jaywan.
What it costs the banks
For UAE banks, the first effect is integration work: Connecting to the domestic rails while maintaining their international relationships, which means spending before any savings from domestic routing arrive.
The good news is that they can afford it. The 10 largest domestic banks reported an average cost-to-income ratio of 27.7% and return on equity of about 19% at end-June 2026, according to S&P Global Ratings. That should allow most banks to “absorb modest implementation costs without a material impact on their efficiency and profitability,” Puneet Tuli, associate director at the ratings agency, tells EnterpriseAM.
Beyond that, the economics turn on migration. “We expect bank profitability should remain broadly stable,” Tuli says, but the impact will depend on “the volume of transaction migration, the pricing differential and how much savings banks retain vs. pass through to merchants and customers.” Banks with large UAE retail and credit card franchises stand to gain most, he says, because their volumes can offset the upfront investment.
AEP doesn’t set the full price either. For debit and prepaid cards, “the IRF is set by the regulator and applies across card schemes,” Cianchetti says, while the merchant discount rate “is the fee agreed between the merchant and its acquirer or payment service provider.” How much of any saving reaches merchants and consumers is a matter for banks and acquirers.
Acceptance was built before the launch rather than after it. “Jaywan acceptance was developed simultaneously across government-related and private-sector merchants,” Cianchetti says. “A sufficient level of acceptance across different merchant types was necessary before Jaywan could launch as a national card scheme.” Since then the acquiring side has widened: Network International and Telr added Jaywan to their gateways, Majid Al Futtaim took it across more than 200 of its UAE destinations, Emirates began accepting Jaywan for flight bookings in mid-September, and Checkout.com has integrated the scheme into its acquiring platform.
How the UAE differs from its neighbors
Domestic schemes are standard in the Gulf: Kuwait has KNet, Bahrain has Benefit, Qatar has NAPS, and Saudi Arabia’s version is mada. The UAE’s distinction is that one state-owned company holds the scheme, the instant payment service and the switch together. Bareisis puts the country in “a relatively small cohort of jurisdictions treating payments as a full-stack national utility, not a single-rail project.”
Tuli reads the intent the same way. “The initiative is fundamentally about building greater domestic resilience and sovereignty over critical payments infrastructure,” he says, while for banks it remains “a compliance and integration exercise” requiring investment alongside their existing network relationships.
Saudi Arabia is developing a new oil pipeline to Oman’s Duqm port, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, according to TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné. While no additional information was shared, VP at Rystad Energy Rahul Choudhary told AGBI the pipeline to Duqm is at the feasibility-study phase with an estimated development cost of up to USD 7 bn. About a week ago, Saudi Arabia resumed crude loadings from its Red Sea port of Yanbu, after restarting operations on its East-West pipeline just 10 ays after being shut following drone attacks earlier in September. The Kingdom began loading nearly 10 mn bbl of crude at Yanbu and nearby Al Muajjiz, satellite imagery captured on 27 September showed.
The move to develop another pipeline signals Riyadh’s push to diversify export routes and reduce exposure to one of the world's most strategically vulnerable chokepoints. Duqm is already home to Oman's largest refinery, making it a natural anchor for expanded Gulf export infrastructure. OQ plans to double its onshore oil storage at the Arabian Sea port to 10 mn barrels within three years, CEO Ashraf Al Mamari tells Bloomberg. The state’s energy company OQ is also weighing two VLCCs that could add another 4 mn barrels of floating storage.
BACKGROUND- Duqm’s pitch as a Hormuz bypass goes back decades. A cross-peninsula pipeline carrying Saudi crude directly to the Arabian Sea, with Duqm pitched as the endpoint, has been floated on and off since the 1970s and never built — though it's already got a live energy link with Kuwait: OQ and Kuwait Petroleum International jointly own the Duqm refinery.
Abu Dhabi’s newest wealth fund is set to become the main vehicle for routing the emirate’s trade around the Strait of Hormuz. L’imad Holding is likely to spend USD tens of bns on new port infrastructure outside the strait, focused on Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, Bloomberg reports, citing people it says are familiar with the matter. The emirate calls the strategy “Zero Hormuz.” L’imad has already moved to take AD Ports private, saying the group’s next phase would be “complex, capital-intensive and long-term.”
Abu Dhabi doesn’t want to foot the bill alone: The emirate is looking outward for third-party capital, the sources tell Bloomberg, which is why the USD 30 bn infrastructure partnership with BlackRock’s GIP, Temasek, and Adnoc matters, and why L’imad Capital is preparing to raise third-party money as early as next year.
Exporters are already shifting east: Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) signed an agreement with Gulftainer to ship up to 250k tons of aluminum in the first year and as much as 300k tons in the second from the UAE’s east coast, the company said in a statement. However, EGA has said shipments won’t return to pre-strike levels until the strait reopens, though other corridors will reduce its reliance on the waterway over time. AD Ports and Borouge agreed in May to explore an alternative petrochemicals export hub on the east coast, and Gulftainer announced a USD 2 bn investment across Khor Fakkan and inland infrastructure in July. The company says it could absorb up to 90% of UAE container demand if Hormuz is blocked again.
MENA sovereign wealth funds put USD 102 bn to work in the first nine months of 2026 across 245 transactions. That accounts for 39% of all dealmaking by state-owned investors globally, coming in below where the region sat in 2023-25 in both total value and global share, according to Global SWF’s 2026 MENA Playbook.
As the Gulf caught its breath, the rest of the world’s SWFs sped up. The region lost ground relative to the global total as sovereign and pension funds outside the region invested USD 160 bn by the end of 3Q 2026, totaling more than they managed in all of 2025, according to the report.
At the current pace, MENA funds are set to finish the year with a total of USD 136 bn deployed. That would fall short of the 2025 total, but come as the second-highest annual total on record — although the total was inflated by PIF’s takeover of EA. Dealcount is projected to close at 327, second only to 2019, pushed by smaller and more frequent technology cheques.
Mubadala was the most acquisitive fund at USD 26.2 bn, counting capital deployed by ADIC, Mubadala Capital and MGX, which took part in the multi-bn financing rounds at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks. PIF follows at USD 14.0 bn, then ADIA at USD 12.2 bn, L’imad at USD 10.8 bn, and QIA at USD 10.3 bn.
Most Gulf funds — with the exception of PIF — are tracking above their 2020-25 annual averages. The Saudi fund is projected to end the year at USD 18.7 bn against an average of USD 21.4 bn, as it slows down outside the Kingdom and concentrates what it does spend. Its holdings in EA (USD 51.4 bn), SpaceX (USD 26.4 bn), and Warner Bros stake (USD 10.0 bn) would account for roughly half its international book, which Global SWF says no other sovereign fund comes close to matching.
Four-fifths of the money went abroad. The US took 45% of total value at USD 45.6 bn, followed by the UAE at USD 18.2 bn, China including Hong Kong at 10%, and the UK at 7%. Technology, including AI rounds, made up 28% of deal volume and almost 30% of value, ahead of infrastructure at 22% and financial services at 14%. Real estate fell to 5% of volume and 11% of value.
Governments are now starting to draw on the funds themselves, with Global SWF expecting industry assets to drop for the first time since 2015. Kuwait reported a USD 23.1 bn budget deficit in 1Q 2026, and Qatar’s 2Q 2026 deficit came in at USD 5.8 bn, which the firm reads as pointing to fresh withdrawals from KIA and the first tap of QIA.
The AUM outlook: MENA SWFs manage USD 6.1 tn today, and the firm still sees that reaching USD 8.8 tn by 2030.
Fatima Zahra El Mansouri is Morocco’s first woman prime minister, after King Mohammed VI appointed her as the country’s new head of government on Tuesday, Morocco World News reports. El Mansouri was tapped for the position after parliamentary elections earlier this week saw the liberal, centrist party she led, PAM, earn a majority with 97 seats out of a total 395.
El Mansouri is now tasked with putting together a cabinet and has spent the last few days meeting with the leaders of Morocco’s different political parties. Morocco’s constitution does not set a timeline or deadline for a prime minister to form their cabinet.
MNT Halan is the first live IPO the region has seen since Omifco, and the biggest name Egypt has sent to market in years. Foreigners have been net sellers of EGX equities all year, so what the book does here sets the tone for other major listings in the pipeline, including state-owned Banque du Caire. Elsewhere, Dubai’s Airtel Money priced in London, and the Paramount-Warner Bros agreement is finally pushing through.
MNT Tech Holding for Financial Investments, the Egyptian arm of fintech group MNT-Halan, is listing on the EGX. Parent company MNT Investments BV is selling 30 mn shares, 20% of 1.6 bn outstanding, in a fully secondary offering, according to an ITF issued yesterday seen by EnterpriseAM. Fresh capital comes afterwards from the parent, which will subscribe to a closed capital increase of up to EGP 4 bn at the offer price.
Only the Egyptian business is going public. The corporate parent — which also owns arms in Pakistan, Turkey, and the UAE — is staying private. None of those operations are part of the listing. That matters for anyone pricing off the group’s headline number: the parent reported a USD 1.4 bn valuation in June on the first close of a round led by Al Ahly Capital, the first time a commercial bank has taken equity in the business.
Why it matters: Foreigners have been net sellers of EGX equities all year, and bankers are betting this brings them back, which would open the door for Banque du Caire and Misr Life behind it.
The L’imad-backed Paramount takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery is nowset to closenext Tuesday. A California federal judge approved the settlement of a challenge from 12 state attorneys general, clearing the USD 110 bn merger, Bloomberg reports. The July suit went to competition, cinemas, distributors, and audiences. Paramount settled the challenge last week with commitments on film releases, USD 1.5 bn of extra US production spending, and new cable distribution agreements.
The debt: Paramount has c. USD 52 bn lined up on the back of that approval, Bloomberg reports — a USD 30 bn investment-grade bond maturing in 2066 at a yield of almost 9%, plus USD 9.46 bn of loans and USD 12.4 bn of high-yield bonds, with spreads narrowing across the offerings. L’imad, PIF, and the Qatar Investment Authority are providing c. USD 24 bn for minority, non-voting stakes.
Airtel Money priced its London IPO at GBP 1.9 a share, for a GBP 5.3 bn (USD 7.02 bn) market cap. The Dubai-headquartered fintech is set to list on 14 October in what could be the UK’s largest listing since 2021, Zawya reports. The offer covers 270 mn existing shares plus a 27 mn over-allotment option, leaving public investors with about 16.5% after admission, or 17.5% if the option is fully exercised. Group CEO Ian Ferrao told The National that a dual listing in the UAE stays open for the future.
FAB wants other banks to take a slice of its USD 5 bn Nigeria swap. The UAE’s largest lender is weighing syndicating part of its total-return swap with Nigeria, Bloomberg reports, citing people it says are familiar with the matter, as it looks to share exposure to one of its biggest African sovereign financings. FAB would likely stay on as Nigeria’s direct counterparty while picking up extra fees for bringing in other banks, one of the sources said. The bank remains committed to the transaction itself but is open to syndicating if there is enough market appetite. Nigeria’s Finance Ministry and the head of its debt office didn’t comment, and FAB said it doesn’t comment on client relationships as a matter of policy.
Mubadala sold more than half its Cube Highways stake into the Indian market. Its Seventy Second Investment Company disposed of 44.97 mn units in the listed infrastructure investment trust — 3.35% — at an average INR 153.3, raising INR 6.8 bn (USD 82.5 mn), according to BSE block deal data. That is a 0.93% discount to the previous close, and it leaves Mubadala with c. 2.65% against the 6% it held at the end of June.
Domestic money took all of it. Indian institutions absorbed the entire block, led by engineering group Larsen & Toubro at INR 1.5 bn (USD 15.6 mn), with mutual funds and life insurers taking the rest.
Turkey has started paying out investors trapped in its frozen funds. Holders in funds run by Tera, Pusula, Atlas, and Hedef Portföy get their full net investment below TRY 1 mn (c. USD 20.4k), and those above get TRY 1 mn for now, Reuters reports, citing a Capital Markets Board bulletin. These are advances, not settlements, and money market funds are paid first.
The hole: Some 455,758 investors wait on 131 funds holding c. USD 20 bn from seven managers the SPK pushed into liquidation on 17 September. Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz chairs a new board tasked with speeding up payouts.
Prosecutors: A fifth round of detention orders on 30 September takes those facing legal action to 217, 56 of them jailed pending trial. The Savings Deposit Ins. Fund has opened voluntary refund accounts for excessive gains from pre-liquidation sales, and Turkish law pardons manipulation offences if the offender pays the Treasury twice the benefit.
Uzbekistan’s Agrobank closed a USD 300 mn two-year syndicated term loan led by our friends at Mashreq, which acted as coordinator, initial mandated lead arranger, bookrunner, and documentation agent, according to a company statement. The facility launched at USD 140 mn and drew USD 365 mn of commitments from 19 lenders across MENA, the CIS, and the Far East — more than 2.6x the original target — before being capped at USD 300 mn.
ALSO WORTH KNOWING
Egypt and the UAE renewed their AED-EGP currency swap agreement for another five years, keeping a AED 5 bn facility in place to support bilateral trade and financial settlements, Wam reports. The facility is intended to support greater use of the two countries’ currencies in cross-border transactions.
Egyptian asset managerZaldi Capital Investmentis preparing to submit an application to establish a hedge fund targeting an initial size of roughly EGP 300 mn, Al Borsa reports, citing founder Mohamed Negme.
London-based private markets investor Pantheon set up shop in Abu Dhabi, with an ADGM office to target regional appetite for private equity, infrastructure, and private credit strategies, according to a press release. The asset manager, with USD 84 bn in AUM, appointed Firas Mallah — formerly head of MENA at Sagard — as MD and head of Middle East to lead the new onshore unit.
Syria has started building the stretch of the Arab Gas Pipeline that would link the Jordanian border to the Turkish one. The Syrian Petroleum Company is laying an 186 km, 36-inch section that will help complete a c. 566 km run between the two borders, QNA reports. The section comes with c. 8 mn cbm of operational gas storage and a compressor station that can move 11 mn cbm/d at first, expandable to c. 22 mn cbm/d.
Demand on the line is already growing: Jordan recently approved plans to move imported gas from Aqaba through the Arab Gas Pipeline via Syria to Lebanon for power generation. Egypt has also been sending c. 50 mmcf/d to each of Syria and Lebanon this year, using LNG regasified at Aqaba. The new section gives those flows more room and more flexibility as they grow.
Terminal velocity
The African Development Bank (AfDB) will provide EUR 270 mn to cover 31% of the cost of expanding and modernizing the airports in Marrakech, Agadir, Tangier, and Fez to handle a combined 25.6 mn passengers a year ahead of the 2030 World Cup, according to Morocco World News.
Morocco’s National Airports Office will cover the rest of the program’s estimated MAD 9 bn (EUR 863.4 mn) cost. The expansion program targets annual passenger handling capacities of 14 mn in Marrakech, 5 mn in Agadir, 3.6 mn in Tangier, and 3 mn in Fez. The work also covers air navigation systems and safety and security upgrades.
Six countries, one chequebook
The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) approved USD 938 mn in financing for six countries, led by EUR 335.5 mn (c. USD 387 mn, or c. 41% of the package) to extend a highway into Tunisia’s Kef and Jendouba, the Saudi Press Agency reports.
Also in the split: Uzbekistan gets USD 317 mn for the Kongrad wind-and-battery project and a farm mechanization program. Pakistan gets USD 100 mn for polio eradication, Kyrgyzstan USD 70.7 mn for rural water supply in Jalalabad, and Nigeria’s Katsina State USD 60.7 mn for farm centers. Syria gets a USD 2.9 mn grant for its road transport sector. The IsDB restored Syria’s membership in March 2025.
Flydubai has suspended all flights to and from Israel “until further notice” as authorities investigate Wednesday’s FZ1073 incident, which saw a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after an “altercation” on the plane’s flight deck, the airline said in a statement. Emirates followed suit by pausing its codeshare flights to Tel Aviv.
A specialized Public Prosecution team will investigate the incident following UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi’s orders, Emirati state news agency Wam reports. The team, working alongside the General Civil Aviation Authority and other Emirati authorities, has been directed to gather evidence and lay out the facts, circumstances, and motives behind the incident — including whether it was linked to any terrorist activity or involved prior planning. Wam noted that UAE judicial authorities have jurisdiction since the aircraft is UAE-registered and flies the UAE flag, meaning UAE law applies to crimes committed on board even outside the country’s territory.
Hold, please
Opec+ is expected to leave production targets unchanged for November at its Sunday meeting, Reuters reports, citing two sources with knowledge of the matter. The group has been raising its output targets for most of the year but kept them steady for October. In the six months prior, Opec+ approved consecutive quota hikes for September of 188k bbl / d, continuing identical quota hikes for August, July, and June.
The seven core Opec+ producers produced 25 mn bbl / d in August, up 630k bbl / d from July yet still roughly 5 mn bbl / d below pre-war levels in February. Reuters previously reported that Opec+ is likely to hold production increases for three months starting October ahead of talks to determine new production quotes among members.
Cutting out the middleman
Pilgrims can now book their Hajj for the current Hijri year directly with Saudi Arabia’s Hajj and Umrah Ministry, cutting out the external agencies that handle close to 1.7 mn foreign pilgrims a year, the Saudi Press Agency reports. A single online agreement on the ministry’s Nusuk Masar portal covers holy site arrangements, accommodation in Makkah and Madinah, transport, and catering.
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