Happy FRIDAY, wonderful people. The week is coming to a close on a rather busy note, both in our neck of the woods and beyond.
The future of Saudi Arabia’s fall events calendar is looking a bit more certain, even as the Houthis continue to attack airports and other infrastructure. The Kingdom is set to implement a hybrid format for its Future Investment Initiative, which runs 26-29 October, but Reuters says people are still expecting the physical rooms to be filled. The move to open up remote attendance for the event comes after a handful of execs bowed out of the WPC Energy Conference in Riyadh earlier this week.
The pressure extends to the sports calendar: The Asian Tour said it is monitoring the security situation, with its season-closer, the PIF Saudi International, due at Riyadh Golf Club from 18 to 21 November, Reuters reports. The tour is in talks with partner Golf Saudi and will announce any schedule changes once it settles on a course of action.
Debt investors are losing patience with the AI build-out. Bonds backing some of the biggest US data center projects, including Meta’s Hyperion and Microsoft-leased Project Excalibur, have slid well below par in recent weeks as investors question whether AI revenues can cover the debt, the Financial Times reports. Neoclouds have been hit hardest: CoreWeave, which has taken on more than USD 51 bn of debt and obligations, has seen its bonds fall to distressed levels, and Nvidia has lost about USD 270 bn in market value over the past week. Allianz’s CIO called it a “Darwin moment” for the weakest borrowers.
The revenue picture is mixed. At an investor day ahead of its IPO, Anthropic told prospective investors that 3Q revenue rose 45% q-o-q to USD 16.8 bn and that it turned an adjusted profit, Reuters reports. That’s strong growth, but well short of the previous quarter’s near-tripling. Anthropic is targeting a valuation of more than USD 2 tn in a listing that is likely to come after next month’s US midterms and ahead of rival OpenAI’s, which has been pushed to next year. –Salma
The steepest jump in refinancing costs in the Gulf is hitting its strongest credits, not the Dubai developers whose bondscratered in March. Aramco, DP World, Emaar, and the Sharjah government locked in money at 2.7-3.9% in 2019-21. Rolling that debt at market rates as of 12 October 2026 would cost them roughly 180-335 bps more a year — a steeper increase than the region’s weakest borrowers face — even though investors now charge them less for credit risk than when they first borrowed.
Blame it on US Treasury yields: The 10-year hit a 24-year high of 5.35% intraday on 8 October, and because Gulf currencies are pegged to the USD, regional borrowers pay that increase in full.
“Borrowing costs for all borrowers are 75-200 bps higher, driven primarily by rates,” Abdul Kadir Hussain, managing director of fixed income asset management at Arqaam Capital, tells EnterpriseAM.
And a reckoning is right around the corner: GCC issuers have some USD 491 bn in bonds and sukuk maturing through 2030, peaking at USD 143 bn in 2029, according to Bloomberg data compiled by Kamco Invest.
The UAE alone has USD 46 bn due that year. Within that, more than 725 corporate bonds worth some USD 117 bn mature in 2027-30, and USD 99.4 bn of them are investment grade, Kamco’s data shows.
Aramco’s credit spread is tighter today. Its 10-year sukuk was priced at 120 bps over treasuries in 2021, against around 80 bps over for its longest-dated paper, according to our calculation based on DIB’s indicative prices.
The same pattern holds true for Emaar, DP World, and Sharjah. Investors demand about 155 bps less over treasuries from Emaar, now rated Baa1/BBB+, than when it issued in 2019. It still faces a refinancing bill roughly 180 bps higher. DP World (+250 bps) and Sharjah (+265 bps) tell the same story on their 2029 sukuk.
“The Treasury curve sets what everyone pays. The balance sheet determines who pays more or less than that,” Patrick Drum, fixed income lead and portfolio manager at Saturna Capital, tells EnterpriseAM.
The peg also rules out a local escape. Three-month EIBOR stood at 4.34% at the end of September, up from 0.62% after the Fed’s March 2020 cut, so swapping bonds for bank loans buys no relief. Because Gulf central banks move in step with the Fed, “the Gulf gets less insulation from US rates than a floating-currency market might,” Drum notes.
The upside is that Gulf sovereigns’ revenues and debts are effectively USD-denominated, which spares them the exchange-rate shocks that hit elsewhere in emerging markets.
Investors haven’t lost faith in the region’s best names. “Spreads are pretty much back where they were before the war after seeing a sharp war-led spike in March-2026,” Junaid Ansari, head of investment strategy and research at Kamco Invest, tells EnterpriseAM. “The better-rated corporates and GREs are pricing at roughly 100 to 130 bps over treasuries again.” That’s a turnaround from August, when UAE corporate spreads were wider than at the war’s peak.
For the largest issues, the extra cost is small against earnings. Aramco’s additional c. USD 100 mn a year is under 0.1% of its 1H 2026 net income, on an annualized basis. Emaar booked AED 998 mn in net finance income during the period, earnings more on its cash than it pays on its debt. “A higher coupon on a small stock of debt is a manageable cost, not a solvency question,” Drum argues.
Further down the ratings scale, the sums are larger against what issuers already spend. Sharjah, rated Ba1/BBB-, would add about AED 159 mn a year just by rolling its 2028 and 2029 sukuk. That’s roughly 2.4% of the AED 6.7 bn it has budgeted for loan repayments and interest in 2026. Bahrain, rated B, already pays upward of 7% for 10-year money. “The ones who’ll feel it most are Bahrain … high-yield corporates, and real estate developers,” Ansari adds.
The riskiest borrowers got off lightest
Most Dubai high-yield developers sold their older sukuk at 8-9.6% in 2022-24, so refinancing costs them little more than they already pay. At current prices, Damac’s and Arada’s 2027 sukuk would actually refinance about 40 bps cheaper. “As a percentage of the higher yield that they have to pay anyway, the move higher is less than for IG borrowers,” Hussain explains.
Access is the bigger constraint for them: High-yield borrowers “face higher costs and some will not even be able to access the market right now,” Hussain warns. “Second-tier Dubai Real Estate developers will face a more challenging market when it comes to new issues.”
Binghatti faces the nearest test of that access. Its four sukuk trade at roughly 13-15%, and a USD 500 mn, 9.625% sukuk falls due on 28 February 2027. Moody’s put the developer on review for downgrade in August after unrestricted cash fell to AED 393 mn by end-June, about a fifth of the AED 1.84 bn principal. Binghatti points to AED 10.2 bn in escrow (ring-fenced for projects), some AED 2.4 bn in handover inflows expected through 2026, and first-half profit up 64% to AED 3 bn.
Sukuk lacks a deep pool of distressed-debt investors, Drum notes, so any spread pressure from the maturity wall “is most likely to show among high-yield issuers.” High yield makes up USD 17.2 bn of the corporate bonds maturing in 2027-30, Kamco’s data shows.
Issuers are moving early
Top issuers aren’t waiting for the Fed, which hiked on 16 September for the first time in three years. In September alone, Saudi Arabia returned to the sukuk market, DP World refinanced its EUR notes and Qatar raised USD 3 bn. Ansari sees a rising probability of a third Fed hike in 2027 and expects more issuers to follow: “The current tight spreads and massive investor appetite make prefunding too attractive to pass up.”
Whether the largest borrowers refinance at all is contested. Ansari reckons many of these borrowers “don’t actually need to roll the debt,” arguing that sovereigns and the big GREs can repay from buffers built during the last oil cycle. Hussain is less convinced. “As long as access is available we expect most will refinance,” he says. And that access is thinner than it was: “Asian buyers in particular have become very selective on regional borrowers due to the geopolitical situation.”
Early signals from Bahrain’s private K-12 sector are pointing to the same resilience that most of GCC’s leading educators showed during the fall semester. The American School of Bahrain, one of the Kingdom’s leading international schools, started the fall term with less than 4% off enrollment projections, kept its teachers through a two-month shutdown, and says campus expansion is still on the table.
Why this matters: Education is important for the Bahraini economy. It contributes about 4% of the GDP, with some 288 institutions serving about 1.5 mn people. The private sector runs 76 of those schools, accounts for 3% of the private sector workforce, and sits on one of the highest Bahrainization rates of any sector. Bahrain also hosts the oldest regulated school system in the Gulf — the first modern school in the region opened there in 1919.
REMEMBER- Private education recovery in the GCC came in uneven, as we laid out last month. Qatar’s premium networks filled their seats on the back of single-gender Qatari demand; Kuwait saw enrollment slip under a tightening citizenship regime and a fee-cap system squeezing operator margins; the UAE’s largest operators — Gems, Taaleem and Nord Anglia — reported their strongest retention in a decade. ASB’s experience lines up towards the top end of that spectrum
That’s the backdrop to our conversation with Tammam Abushakra, advisor to the chairman and board member at Esol Education, the Dubai-headquartered network behind ASB. Esol runs 10 schools across six countries — the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Cyprus and Lebanon — serves 12.5k students, and marks its 50th anniversary this academic year. In Bahrain, Esol holds a majority stake in ASB, now in its seventh year, and is a minority shareholder and strategic partner in the American University of Bahrain, which opened in 2019. Edited excerpts of our conversation over email:
ENTERPRISE: How does ASB’s day-one attendance and finalized registration compare to your pre-season benchmarks?
TAMMAM ABUSHAKRA: We opened the academic year strong, with new enrollment consistent with prior years. ASB’s 2026-27 enrollment is less than 4% below our projections, and we expect mid-year entries to close most of that gap, as is typical for the cycle. The community has remained stable, with growing demand in middle and high school and some grades even having enrollment waitlists.
E: What did the operational disruption look like on the ground, and how did it hit things like teacher retention and curriculum pacing?
TA: ASB moved to online learning as soon as guidance came down and resumed in-person classes within seven weeks. Having opened in 2020-21 and run online from day one through the Covid pandemic, the pivot was familiar — online in early March, back in-person in mid-April, with minimal impact on curriculum coverage. There also hasn’t been a systemic impact on fees payments — we handled individual fee queries case-by-case under applicable regulations and didn’t need a blanket accommodation policy.
The culture Esol and ASB have built since launch has translated into high teacher retention and a strong cohort of new hires for 2026-27. ASB benefits from shared expertise, resources, and central support across the Esol group.
E: What’s ASB operating at today, and has this period shifted how Esol evaluates Bahrain as a K-12 investment market?
TA: ASB is at about 70% of campus capacity in 2026-27, in line with our seventh-year projections. We have a plan to expand the campus as we approach capacity. Bahrain remains an important market for Esol, and we see long-term value in the Kingdom. That’s why Esol is among the largest foreign investors in Bahrain’s education sector. Our focus in Bahrain for the coming years will be the continued growth and development of ASB and AUBH.
The Houthis have told shipping companies, workers, and civilians to clear Saudi airports and oil facilities, saying they will keep striking both in the coming days. The group claimed responsibility for recent attacks on Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery and Dhahran facilities and King Khalid International Airport.
The coalition intercepted a cruise missile overAl KharjGovernorate and a ballistic missile launched atRiyadh. The Houthis also said that the Saudi-led coalition carried out an airstrike on a state oil company facility in the Ras Isa port area of Hodeida, killing two people and wounding two others. Intercepting everything isn’t realistic, however, analysts tell the Independent, given the size of the Kingdom and the number of interceptors available. Former US ambassador Michael Ratney said Riyadh had assumed civilian targets such as airports were off-limits, and now has to respond without triggering a spiral.
Riyadh is seeking out wider regional support: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi, in the first visit by a foreign leader to the Saudi capital since the Houthi strikes on King Khalid International Airport, SPA reported. The visit comes after Egypt said it will back Saudi Arabia “without any reservation” as Riyadh taps regional allies, including the UAE, Turkey, Pakistan, and others.
Hormuz attacks ramp up
Attacks on ships near Hormuz are running at their fastest pace of the war, and the bill is landing on the tanker market. Gulf crude is still getting out through bypass routes and ship-to-ship transfers, but each barrel now takes more ships and more money to move. Average global supertanker earnings hit a record USD 805k a day last week.
Sunday was the worst day yet, with six vessels hit, according to the Financial Times’ count of UK Maritime Trade Operations reports. Three were refined product tankers, two were crude tankers owned by China’s New Treasure Shipping and South Korea’s Sinokor, and one was an Indian container ship, maritime security firm Vanguard says.
That puts the attack rate at nearly double the war’s previous peak. Some 24 ships were hit in the two weeks to earlier this week October, compared with 13 in the first two weeks of March, the next most intense stretch, the FT reports, citing UKMTO reports and European security sources.
October wiped out September’s recovery: Gulf oil outflows averaged 15.5 mn bbl / d in September, their highest since the war began. Only 2.9 mn barrels moved through the strait earlier this week, the lowest daily figure this month, according to Kpler data published on Tuesday. The seven-day average is running about 43% below pre-conflict levels, though Kpler says it may revise Sunday’s number upward as satellites pick up more vessels.
Ship traffic tells the same story, at about a fifth of normal: Vessels made c. 29 transits a day in the 72 hours to Sunday, against a historical average of c. 138, according to US naval data relayed by the Joint Maritime Information Center.
Some owners who sent ships through the strait for the high rates are now taking them elsewhere. At least 10 VLCCs and several Suezmax tankers have halted or reversed course near Fujairah in recent days. Some have sailed for US Gulf ports, where a global tanker shortage keeps rates high at a fraction of the risk, the FT adds.
IN PERSPECTIVE- A supertanker voyage now costs more than a rocket launch: Slow tanker transfers and longer routes mean the market needs more tankers to move the same quantity of oil. Between the detours, rising cargo volumes, and long-haul Red Sea flows, crude tanker demand is up more than 13%, Clarksons estimates.
On one US route, freight now costs almost half as much as the oil itself. One US booking was accepted at about USD 41 / bbl, roughly 45% of WTI’s price near USD 91, against an average of USD 4.50 last year. A US-to-China supertanker voyage costs about USD 80 mn, more than the USD 74 mn price of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch.
OUR TAKE- The Hormuz squeeze is now about tanker capacity as much as crude supply. The bypass routes are doing their job, but every extra day at anchor off Oman takes another ship out of service, and the market is paying for it at record rates.
Iraq finally has a full cabinet: Iraq’s parliament filled 11 vacant minister positions and approved three deputy prime ministers yesterday, rounding out Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi’s cabinet nine days after Baghdad devalued its currency to be able to meet public payroll.
Who’s who: Nayef Al Shammari is now defense minister, while Yasser Al Maliki — the son-in-law of former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki — is taking the interior ministry. One of the new deputy prime ministers is Laith al-Khazali, a senior leader of Asaib Ahl Al Haq. The US designated the Iran-backed group a foreign terrorist organization in 2020, and Al Khazali and his brother Qais as specially designated global terrorists, and has accused it of attacks on US and coalition forces in Iraq.
The political blocs are pressing for more chairs around the table, including a ministry for AI or digital investment and a split of the culture, tourism, and antiquities portfolio, former MP Amir Al Maamouri told Shafaq News. The new seats would be handed out under the quota system “to satisfy the parties,” he said.
The state is already struggling to pay its bills, and public servant salaries are a significant portion of that burden — without adding more ministries to the tab. Running the state costs about IQD 10 tn a month, Al Zaidi told parliament earlier, saying the alternatives to devaluing the IQD were paying salaries every 45 days or borrowing on top of public debt that has already passed IQD 208 tn. Every new ministry adds deputies, advisers, buildings, and guards to that bill, former Planning Minister Nouri Al Dulaimi warned. The draft 2027 budget, moves contract and daily-wage workers onto permanent payrolls and adds 100k new contract jobs, a Finance Committee member told Shafaq.
Morocco wants development banks to help cover a rail program it has raised to MAD 134 bn (c. USD 13 bn) by 2030, Transport and Logistics Minister Abdessamad Kayouh said at a forum on financing African rail in Rabat on Wednesday. The figure is MAD 38 bn above the plan King Mohammed VI launched in April 2025.
Kayouh asked lenders for loans matched to rail’s long payback periods, guarantees to pull in private investors, and funding to run the network rather than only build it. Public budgets can no longer carry the cost alone, ONCF Director General Mohamed Rabie Khlie told the forum. The African Development Bank (AfDB) lent EUR 205 mn for the Kenitra–Marrakech high-speed corridor in September.
The program covers that corridor, a link to Nador West Med port, more commuter services in the big cities, and 168 trainsordered last year for MAD 29 bn. It feeds state operator ONCF’s Rail 2040 strategy, which targets 43 cities by 2040, up from 23.
Gulf funds have backed Moroccan rail before. Four of them financed 22% of the USD 2.3 bn Al Boraq line, and the UAE pledged in 2023 to invest in Moroccan high-speed rail without naming a figure. The AfDB said financing offers for ONCF’s plan topped USD 13 bn, against the USD 8.8 bn Morocco sought.
The forum closed yesterday with a Rabat Declaration backing public-private partnerships, blended finance and green bonds, and the launch of MoveCredits, a coalition set up by the International Union of Railways to let rail operators earn carbon-market revenue when traffic shifts off the roads. The UIC puts the potential revenue at USD 27-72 bn by 2050.
For every net new Saudi hired into the Kingdom’s private sector over the past year, employers added roughly 3.4 non-Saudis. The private workforce grew 7% y-o-y to 13.6 mn by end-2Q 2026, with Saudi nationals up by 204k to 2.689 mn and non-Saudis up by 691k to 10.921 mn, according to quarterly data from the National Labor Observatory (NLO) (pdf). The Saudi share of the private workforce barely moved — from 19.5% in 2Q 2025 to 19.8% a year later.
Headline indicators are up — but so is expat intake: Saudi employment grew 8.2% y-o-y, outpacing the 6.8% rise in non-Saudi hiring. But Vision 2030’s gigaproject phase is pulling in labor at scale, mostly for elementary jobs Saudis are less likely to do — the NLO snapshot shows 5.73 mn non-Saudis against just 57k Saudis in those roles, a 100-to-1 ratio.
Saudi gains are concentrated at the top: Of the 204k Saudis added over the year, roughly 190k went into high-skill roles — taking high-skill Saudi workers to 1.6 mn. Saudi high-skill employment is now 51% of all high-skill roles, from 47% in 2Q 2023. ICT and real estate led sector-by-sector growth at 28.4% and 29.3% y-o-y, adding some 40k Saudis together. ICT Saudization is at 59%; real estate just 35%.
Pay follows the same divide. Average Saudi private-sector wages rose 5.4% y-o-y to SAR 9.5k, roughly 3.5x the SAR 2.7k non-Saudi average. Some 87.7% of non-Saudis earn under SAR 4k a month, while 68.1% of Saudis sit in the SAR 4-8k band.
Saudi women are gaining faster than men. Saudi women in the private sector grew 9.9% y-o-y to 1.1 mn, outpacing the 7.0% rise among men to 1.6 mn. Women now make up 42% of the Saudi private-sector workforce and hold 33% of Saudi senior-management roles. Saudi men, however, still out-earn Saudi women in the sector, at SAR 11.5k against SAR 6.7k. Non-Saudi women grew fastest of all, up 16.7% to 523k.
Saudi is ahead of the UAE on localizing financial sector talent: The Central Bank of the UAE put total Emiratisation in the banking, financial, and insurance sectors at 31% at end-2025, with the banking sub-sector’s critical roles climbing from 31% to 41% between 2022 and 2025 and targeting 45% by end-2026. Where Saudi finance Saudization is saturated, UAE banking Emiratisation is scaling fast from a lower base.
The Kingdom is also now the GCC’s labor-market outlier during the war. Cooper Fitch’s Gulf Employment Index for 2Q 2026 showed regional hiring down 3% q-o-q, with the UAE posting its first private-sector employment decline in more than four years at 4%. Only Saudi Arabia and Oman grew, both at 1% — a sharp deceleration from the 4.5% q-o-q Saudi growth Cooper Fitch recorded in 4Q 2025.
Algeria splits a super-ministry: President Abdelmadjid Tebboune named Ibrahim Murad as Minister of State and Interior and Local Authorities Minister, and Saïd Sayoud is now Transport Minister, APS reports. Sayoud had run a combined Interior and Transport Ministry since September 2025 and now keeps only transport, the portfolio he first took in November 2024 after serving as wali of Oran. Murad, a former provincial governor and national ombudsman, returns to the Interior Ministry, which he ran from 2022 to 2025. Tebboune also named Lounes Magramane his chief of staff.
Chinese lenders are back in size across the Gulf, on the heels of QatarEnergy’s USD 3 bn facility from four Chinese banks. They offer large commitments, competitive borrowing costs, and longer repayment periods even through regional disruption, Natixis’ Alicia Garcia Herrero tells us.
Our friends at Mashreq raised CNH 1 bn in their first Dim Sum bond, pricing 45 bps inside guidance. The three-year senior unsecured notes carry a 2.50% coupon, from initial guidance in the 2.95% area, according to a press release. Orders from regional and international investors peaked at CNY 2.3 bn, more than 2x the deal. The paper lists on both Nasdaq Dubai and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. Mashreq announced the issuance on 13 October and ran a one-day virtual marketing exercise, a two-day turnaround it says held pricing through a volatile market.
ADVISORS- Bank of China, China International Capital Corporation, China Securities, Guotai Junan International, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Standard Chartered were joint lead managers and bookrunners.
FAB has issued and settled AED 1 bn of three-year digitally native green notes at 5.75%, maturing in October 2029, through Euroclear’s distributed-ledger Digital Financial Market Infrastructure, per a statement. FAB calls it the first digital green bond out of MENA, with proceeds going to projects with environmental or climate-related benefits.
MNT-Halan closed subscriptions yesterday 16x covered, on the biggest order book the EGX has seen in years. Retail and institutional investors put in EGP 125.9 bn (c. USD 2.4 bn) of orders against the EGP 7.84 bn on offer, according to our math on preliminary data from Thndr’s app — triple what this year’s other two listings, Gourmet and Korra Energi, drew between them.
Retail did most of the late work. Individuals covered their 48 mn-share slice 43.6x by yesterday’s close with some EGP 51.3 bn of orders, more than triple the 13.5x they had reached a day earlier. Institutions had already closed 11.2x covered on Tuesday at some EGP 74.6 bn.
What’s next: Banque du Caire, which filed on 11 October, now has a demand figure to be measured against.
Agility Global is selling all of its 65.12% of Tristar to India’s Aegis Logistics, 23 years after buying in for about USD 7 mn. The transaction values the Dubai energy logistics operator at USD 1.5 bn including debt and its equity at USD 882 mn, according to a disclosure (pdf). The Abu Dhabi-listed seller takes up to USD 581 mn in three installments — USD 425 mn at closing, USD 110 mn a year later, and USD 46 mn if agreed conditions are met. Aegis is also buying smaller holdings from Gulf Investment Corporation and Diamond Holdings, taking it to 89.8% of Tristar for USD 809 mn.
Tristar was turning over USD 13.5 mn when Agility bought it and booked USD 1.4 bn last year on USD 1.7 bn of assets. It was 27% of Agility’s revenue and 13% of its assets at end-1H 2026.
DAE is after USD 2.1 bn from mostly Asian banks. Dubai Aerospace Enterprise wants a seven-year loan for working capital, with Emirates NBD, Bank of China, OCBC, and China Construction Bank Asia arranging, Bloomberg reports. A USD tranche could price at 110 bps over SOFR and an AED tranche is guided at 95 bps over EIBOR.
It follows a step change in the fleet. DAE closed its USD 9 bn purchase of Macquarie AirFinance less than three months ago, making it the world’s third-largest aircraft lessor and adding commitments for nearly 150 aircraft with deliveries running into the 2030s. The new money adds to USD 4.4 bn of available liquidity at end-June, according to its 1H results.
QIA is concentrating its money in a handful of big manager relationships. No new fund transactions are “on the radar,” head of funds Mohsin Pirzada tells Semafor, and the USD 580 bn sovereign fund instead expects a “handful” of large platform arrangements with managers it has worked with for years, like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. It signed a USD 20 bn partnership with JPMorgan last month after setting a USD 25 bn investment target with Goldman in January, and today named Activate Capital the 13th venture firm in its USD 3 bn Fund of Funds.
The war “hasn’t impacted our progress,” Pirzada said. State revenue fell 42% in 1H 2026, per the Emir, and the IMF — which expected a contraction of about 6% when we looked at QIA’s strategy in June — now sees 15.6%. Iranian strikes on Ras Laffan took out about 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity, and QatarEnergy says its expansion starts producing in 1H 2027.
Adia took a small anchor ticket in an Indian industrial equipment maker’s IPO. The fund put INR 149.5 mn (c. USD 1.7 mn) into Bonfiglioli Transmissions’ INR 25.34 bn (c. USD 286 mn) offering through its Monsoon vehicle — about 255k shares, or 1.97% of the anchor book — according to a bourse filing (pdf). The anchor book raised INR 7.59 bn in all, nearly 13 mn shares at INR 586, the top of the price band, with BlackRock, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Canada’s PSP Investments also in. It is the second Indian anchor book Adia has been in this week, after Zetwerk.
ALSO WORTH KNOWING
Tamimi Energy is preparing a Tadawul listing. Group CCO Yahya Balhareth said initial preparations are under way, with no CMA filing, timeline, or size yet, Argaam reports.
Foodics has taken a stake in Funding Souq, with neither the amount nor the size disclosed. The shariah-compliant SME financing platform, founded in 2020 by Martin Jaouni and regulated by SAMA and the DFSA, will lend to Foodics’ restaurant merchants and underwrite them on sales and performance data, Wamda says.
Morocco’s InnovInvest program has mobilized more than USD 70 mn of private capital for startups. The USD 50 mn World Bank-backed initiative, run through national financing agency Tamwilcom, seeded four VC funds and drew in the IFC and France’s Proparco alongside domestic private investors, the World Bank said. It is now being replicated across MENA and Pakistan in projects worth more than USD 500 mn.
Aramco’s China mega-refinery takes its first Saudi crude: Saudi Aramco and its Chinese partners have received the first Arabian crude shipment at their Hapco refining and petrochemical complex in Liaoning province, and commercial operations could begin in 1Q 2027, Bloomberg reports. The cargo arrived aboard the Kassab after loading at Saudi Juaymah port. The complex pairs a 300k bbl/d refinery with a capacity of around 1.6 mn tons of ethylene and 2 mn tons of paraxylene annually.
Aramco will supply most of the crude the refinery runs: The firm holds a 30% stake in Hapco alongside North Huajin (51%) and Panjin Xincheng (19%), and has the right to supply up to 210k bbl / d of crude to the complex.
Full steam
Acwa Power and Saudi Energy awarded a USD 2.2 bn contract to build the 2.3 GW Rabigh 2 expansion on the Red Sea coast, with the gas-fired plant due to begin commercial operation in May 2029. The engineering, procurement, and construction contract went to a joint venture between Egyptian company Elsewedy Electric’s power systems arm and PowerChina’s Sinohydro, according to a press release (pdf).
The JV is delivering the plant turnkey for Al Mourjan Two for Electricity, the project company of which Acwa and Saudi Energy (formerly Saudi Electricity Co.) each hold 40%. That covers everything from design to commissioning and testing, plus the civil works and the grid connection. The gas-fired combined-cycle plant will run on six Siemens gas turbines and two steam turbines, and it’s built to take a carbon capture unit later.
Back to court
NMC founder B.R. Shetty is launching a new USD 15 bn court battle against Bank of Baroda. The UAE-based businessman filed a lawsuit against the Indian state-owned lender and 25 other defendants in the Bombay High Court, alleging that bank officials helped facilitate fraud behind the collapse of NMC Health, Reuters reports, citing court filings.
What’s the case? Shetty alleges that bank officials facilitated circular fund transfers, ignored more than 100 anti-money laundering alerts, and accepted forged signatures on personal guarantees he says he never authorized. He’s seeking USD 5 bn each in direct damages, consequential losses, and reputational harm — bringing the total claim to USD 15 bn — plus 18% annual interest, according to Gulf News.
The bank isn’t backing down: Bank of Baroda says it hasn’t been served with the suit and that the allegations remain untested in court. It has pledged to defend itself if served while separately pursuing Shetty for INR 28 bn (USD 295 mn) in outstanding dues through recovery proceedings in India and the UAE.
Two new fabs
Mubadala-owned GlobalFoundries will operate two new chip plants in New York under a US-Japan initiative worth up to USD 21 bn, it said in a statement. Japan will put up the money, while GlobalFoundries will supply the technology and run the fabs at its existing site in Malta, New York. An initial investment of around USD 10 bn will fund the first fab, which is expected to come online in 2029 and add some 900k 300mm wafers of annual capacity once fully operational. A further USD 10 bn or so would fund a second fab of roughly the same size.
Kuwait is studying access to a pipeline route through the UAE to Fujairah as it looks to bypass the Strait of Hormuz for its oil exports, Deputy CEO for Planning and Innovation at Kuwait Oil Company Mohammed Al Abduljaleel tells EnterpriseAM. It’s also in talks to connect to a proposed Saudi pipeline running to the Red Sea so that it could serve both countries.
Both are early: Neither route has reached feasibility-study stage, leaving costs and capacity estimates undetermined. Al Abduljaleel says Kuwait would pursue the projects as long-term investments regardless of whether regional tensions ease, with most crude continuing to move through existing Gulf ports under normal conditions.
Back on tap?
Gulf oil exports rebound in September: Crude exports from Gulf producers, led by Saudi Arabia, jumped 4.4 mn bbl / d to 13.9 mn bbl / d, more than 75% of pre-war levels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its October Oil Market Report. That lifted global supply by 2.5 mn bbl / d to 102.3 mn bbl / d.
Saudi led, the UAE set a record, and Kuwait slipped. Saudi crude output rose to 8.3 mn bbl / d from 5.97 mn bbl / d in August, while UAE total output climbed 400k bbl / d to a record 5.3 mn bbl / d, Bloomberg reports. Kuwait bucked the trend, with crude output falling 550k bbl / d to 1.49 mn bbl / d, according to the IEA.
The oil moved through Hormuz and around it — but that route is now under fire: Flows through the strait rose 3.7 mn bbl / d to 10.9 mn bbl / d, helped by ship-to-ship transfers off Oman. The restarted East-West pipeline lifted bypass exports to 5.6 mn bbl / d. Twelve vessels were attacked around Hormuz between 5 and 11 October, according to a UKMTO tally. The IEA kept its forecasts for the rest of the year largely unchanged; global stocks sit 509 mn bbl below pre-war levels.
Footing the freight bill
Qatari factories get a freight cushion: State-owned Qatar Development Bank (QDB) will cover up to 80% of the war-driven increase in their raw material shipping costs through a non-repayable grant, AGBI reports. The bank has expanded the Logistics Support Fund behind it to QAR 400 mn (c. USD 110 mn). QDB plans to gradually redirect the fund toward its primary objective, supporting exports, once import logistics costs return to normal.
Uptake is already strong: Some 154 factories have applied so far, and QDB has approved 436 applications. Factories can claim more than once, and manufacturers in every sector qualify.
Brussels looks east
The EU has signed an additional EUR 25 mn (c. USD 29 mn) in funding to expand migration cooperation into Libya’s Haftar-controlled east, Reuters reports, citing a letter from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to EU leaders. The money will fund border management, search-and-rescue, and anti-smuggling work.
The east is where the pressure has shifted. Libya-to-Crete was the most active corridor on the Eastern Mediterranean route in the first eight months of 2026, Frontex data shows. The route logged more than 24.2k crossings over that period, even as total irregular crossings into the EU fell 35% y-o-y to nearly 75k.
The EU still formally recognizes only the Tripoli-based government. It has stepped up contacts with the east since last year, and decided to set up a Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Benghazi in July.
What’s next: Von der Leyen pointed to an upcoming EU-Libya meeting to keep cooperation going, but no date has been announced.
MENA+ Edition 
Egypt Edition 
UAE Edition 
Saudi Edition 
AI + Innovation (MENA) 
Logistics (MENA) 
Share Issue
