Happy FRIDAY, friends. Two western banks moved on the region this week in what look like opposite directions, an Emirati may be about to run for the top job at the UN, and Elon Musk has talked himself into a problem.
Barclays is pressing ahead in Saudi Arabia and the wider region, Asia-Pacific CEO Jaideep Khanna told Bloomberg TV in Singapore. “We are a big believer” in the opportunity, he said, with the bank “growing and investing in our aggregate Middle East presence.” It is seeking a financial services licence for a full platform in the Kingdom, aiming to open a regional headquarters this year, and building out in Turkey alongside that. CEO CS Venkatakrishnan said in April that Barclays was pushing ahead in Saudi, and he was on the FII speaker list before the conference was pushed to next year.
JPMorgan’s Turkish securities unit is surrendering its license, which is tidier than it sounds. JPMorgan Menkul Degerler will halt capital markets activities and give up its intermediary status pending Capital Markets Board approval, according to Bloomberg. The unit has carried out no capital markets activity or provided investment services in Turkey since July 2015, and the firm said cancelling the license brings its legal status in line with that. The Istanbul branch continues to operate.
The brokerage held TRY 67 mn (USD 1.4 mn) of assets at the end of 2025 against an operating loss of about TRY 7 mn (USD 140k), and the filing rules out any connection to current conditions in the market. Those conditions are poor, with the Borsa Istanbul 100 down more than 15% since mid-September on a fund scandal that has frozen half a mn people’s investments and taken some USD 100 bn off the market value of Turkish stocks.
UAE State Minister Lana Nusseibeh is in the race to succeed António Guterres as UN secretary-general after the UAE formally nominated her, the campaign announced, confirming previous reports from the Financial Times. She has taken leave from her government post to campaign. If she gets the seat, she would be the second secretary-general from the Arab world, after Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who held the post from 1992 to 1996. –Salma
Strategy hiring across the GCC turned positive in 3Q 2026 for the first time in roughly 10 quarters, and the recovery is going to in-house corporate teams, not to consultancies, Cooper Fitch CEO Trefor Murphy tells EnterpriseAM.
Strategy roles, whose function is similar to roles usually contracted out to consultants, grew 6% q-o-q, according to the Cooper Fitch 3Q 2026 Gulf Employment Index seen by EnterpriseAM. The recovery includes senior-level appointments, reversing the cautious attitude towards senior levels that businesses took through 1H 2026 as they prioritized delivering existing initiatives over new strategic work.
But don’t write off the consulting jobs just yet. The recruitment agency still expects the consulting sector to begin partially recovering in 2027. “I don’t think it’ll ever get back up to where it was in 2021-2023, but I think it’ll show some of the 2018 or 2019 kind of size and scale,” Murphy says.
REMEMBER- Consulting work is facing AI-driven pressures even prior to the war after gigaproject plans in Saudi Arabia drove a surge in demand for the top global players. Source Global Research (SGR), a London-based analyst firm that tracks the professional services industry, had the GCC consulting market at USD 8.3 bn in 2025, growing 12% y-o-y — a slowdown from 13.3% in 2024, with two-thirds of GCC clients allocating more than 30% of their 2025 consulting budgets to AI adoption. The Gulf market is “beginning to shed some of the breakneck speed of its earlier expansion,” said SGR senior research analyst Dane Albertelli. “AI is creating greater efficiencies for doing consulting, but it’s not driving demand for more consulting,” SGR co-founder Fiona Czerniawska told Axios earlier this summer.
The surge in strategy hiring comes as overall hiring in the Gulf recovers in 3Q, driven mostly by UAE and Saudi activity. GCC hiring overall rose 2% in 3Q, reversing a 3% contraction in 2Q, with the UAE doing nearly all the work at 4% growth and Saudi Arabia the only other sizable positive contributor at 1.5%. Oman was marginally up at 0.5%. Qatar (-1%), Kuwait (-2%), and Bahrain (-2%) each shrank, with Kuwait and Bahrain hiring contracting for the second consecutive quarter, driven mostly by a conflict cooldown, Murphy adds.
But the case in Qatar is more structural than cyclical: “They’re not necessarily pushing for job creation. They’re pushing for wealth creation. And everything they do has a long-term nature to it. Jobs aren’t their priority,” he tells us, pointing to Qatar’s smaller population.
By the sector
Hiring was concentrated on resuming paused searches and securing specialist capability rather than broad expansion. Energy led all sectors at 7%, as mandates stalled during the war returned, powered by a multi-year Saudi unconventional gas services contract awarded in July and USD 8.2 bn in construction contracts for a UAE gas processing expansion in August.
ICYMI-We previously reported that firms were running searches to the final stage and then not making the hire, with mandates piling up unclosed as the stop-start rhythm of the war ate away at hiring confidence. In 3Q, those searches began to close. “A lot of stuff went on hold and came back online in 3Q,” Murphy tells us, adding that fresh mandates also went on hold by the end of the quarter.
Saudization-driven demand also helped prop up GCC finance sector numbers, with the sector’s overall hiring rising 5% and senior positions up by 6% as demand for Saudi accountants rose on Saudization deadlines. Software (4%) and cloud (2%) also returned to growth after 2Q declines, as firms reopened searches they had deferred during the war.
The surprise swing happened in investment management, which moved from 6% growth in 2Q to a 5% contraction in 3Q — a move Murphy attributes to earlier over-hiring and the regional IPO drought rather than the war. “They’ve had two very busy quarters before now, and I’d say they’ve gotten ahead of their hiring plans,” he says. “We’ve had no IPO activity, since that’s a big subsector within the overall frame of investment management for us.”
Full recovery is not here yet
While 3Q is showing recovery, the full year figures could remain negative. “If we didn’t have the conflict, we probably would have seen job growth between 4 and 5% this year across the GCC. Now we have a negative number,” he tells us. “That could be four, five, six percentage points lower than we expected. That’s a massive adjustment in a market that was moving a particular direction. And that is all conflict-related.”
And 4Q is more likely to not follow the same recovery track of 3Q: “A number of big entities have asked us to slow down completely or put a pause on stuff,” Murphy says. “That’ll predominantly hit October’s numbers and into November, December.”
Confidence is the biggest factor behind this — and it’s the one that the war hit the most: “Recruitment and inflation; there’s no correlation. Recruitment and central bank activity, no correlation. Recruitment and confidence is the biggest factor.” A period of relative calm across the region in the summer restored enough confidence to make September the strongest hiring month in 3Q, with growth concentrated in the quarter’s last five weeks. The first six weeks of the quarter had seen none of the usual seasonal pickup, Murphy adds. The Cooper Fitch report notes that by September, UAE new export business was growing at its fastest pace in almost two years.
UAE could — just barely — become the growth exception in 4Q: Cooper expects Saudi hiring to contract “for sure” in 4Q as Houthi attacks on the Kingdom escalate, with Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain shrinking for a third consecutive quarter and Oman holding flat. “It causes an overhang in confidence for the rest of the GCC,” he adds. “I could see UAE maybe flat or maybe a small percentage up for 4Q.”
Non-essential US diplomats and their families have been ordered to leave Saudi Arabia for safety and security reasons, US State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said on Wednesday. The decision comes as “Iranian-supported Houthis have increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on civilian airports and other critical infrastructure resulting in civilian casualties and severe travel disruptions,” Pigott said.
The official line is that the move is Saudi-specific, with Pigott denying that the order extends to diplomats across the Gulf, following reports from AFP and Reuters that the State Department plans to pull US embassy staff and their families in the UAE, Jordan, Qatar, and Bahrain.
Aramco also ordered an immediate evacuation of its Dhahran headquarters yesterday, telling remaining essential staff to work from home until further notice, three sources told AFP. Most employees had already gone remote after an attack on the HQ complex last week, leaving only essential personnel on site. Aramco has not commented publicly, and there is no indication of how long the arrangement will last or whether operations are affected. It is the first full evacuation of the company's headquarters since the war began.
The attack that preceded it was the first fatal strike on a Saudi oil field. A drone intercepted over Aramco’s Shaybah field in the Eastern Province on Wednesday killed two contractors and injured two others. The Energy Ministry said there was no impact on operations at the field. The Houthis have since claimed attacks on the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
Turkey is moving toward boots in the Kingdom. Ankara submitted the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement to parliament for ratification this week and is preparing a mandate to deploy military personnel to Saudi Arabia once the bill passes, a ruling AK Party lawmaker told Reuters — a notable shift from Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan's line two weeks ago ruling out offensive deployments.
Iran is now threatening US bases directly… The IRGC Navy said it struck seven vessels in the northern Gulf overnight Thursday and blamed the growing US naval escorts running ships through Hormuz. “The US military must know that if this trend continues, the conflict will extend to its bases in the region,” the IRGC said. The claim follows a run of attacks that has already sunk two container ships this month, and US Central Command continues to insist it controls the strait.
… And is simultaneously asking for a way out. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an op-ed for the Financial Times that Tehran would give diplomacy another chance if Washington lifts the naval blockade and returns to June’s Islamabad MoU — releasing frozen oil funds and easing sanctions in exchange for reopening Hormuz. President Masoud Pezeshkian was blunter, saying, “Our nation today does not trust the United States and believes that if we negotiate, they will attack us again.”
The eastern Mediterranean’s maritime borders are causing a schism in the region as Turkey, Libya, Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt joust over competing interests. Turkey has an eastern Libyan sponsor for its 2019 maritime memorandum and the backing of both Libyan administrations, while Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, and the EU are answering with claims and legal steps of their own.
Background: The memorandum, which Istanbul signed in November 2019 with Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA), draws a maritime boundary between the Turkish and Libyan coasts across a stretch of the eastern Mediterranean where gas discoveries have produced overlapping claims. The GNA was dissolved around two years later. Libya’s eastern House of Representatives, which rejected the agreement in 2020 while Ankara was arming the Tripoli government against Khalifa Haftar’s forces, voted unanimously on Tuesday to adopt it and scrapped the two 2020 resolutions that had rejected the Turkish accords and cut political ties with Ankara, the Associated Press reports.
Cairo and Athens are consulting on widening the geographic scope of the maritime boundary agreement they signed in 2020, with Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and his Greek counterpart George Gerapetritis agreeing to pursue the extension under that agreement’s provisions. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry ministry called the Turkish memorandum “null and void” with no consequences for its maritime rights, while leaving room to negotiate with Ankara.
The infrastructure stake is as live as the gas. Athens and Nicosia view the memorandum as an attempt to block the Great Sea Interconnector, the USD 2.1 bn subsea power cable linking Greece to Cyprus and later Israel, already delayed by the dispute over waters off Crete, Sotirios Zartaloudis of the University of Birmingham tells Al Jazeera. For Cairo, the larger concern is likely the possibility of a Turkish military presence in eastern Libya, security and policy analyst Wolfgang Pusztai says.
How far the memorandum travels depends on Libyan institutions rather than on the vote. Anas El Gomati of the Sadeq Institute expects implementation to run through bodies such as the National Oil Corporation under pressure that is “diplomatic and slow,” and links the reversal to Ankara’s standing with the Haftar camp and to Saddam Haftar’s own route to power, Reuters reports. The vote followed this month’s replacement of long-serving speaker Aguila Saleh, long seen as Egypt’s ally in the chamber.
Social sustainability is where ESG shows up in people’s lives. It comes down to access to opportunity, the dignity of work, financial inclusion, health, education, safety and stronger communities. For financial institutions, commitments are not enough; the real test is whether big decisions on capital, technology and workforce change improve those outcomes.
AI raises the stakes. It can lift productivity and open up new ways to grow, but it also changes which jobs exist and what skills they require. A plan that only counts efficiency savings misses the more important question: whether people end up better off.
The European Commission’s concept of Industry 5.0 helps here. It builds on Industry 4.0 around three priorities: human-centricity, sustainability and resilience. It places workers’ wellbeing, skills and empowerment at the center, within environmental limits. Technology should serve people, not the other way round.
So responsible AI is also a workforce issue. Where technology changes roles or removes tasks, leaders need to invest in upskilling, reskilling, career mobility and responsible workforce planning, so employees share in the value the technology creates. Planned early, alongside AI adoption and enterprise strategy, the transition is easier to afford. Left until roles are under pressure, both its human and financial costs can rise.
Handled well, that transition can also feed growth. As organizations evolve, reskilling and internal mobility can carry existing knowledge into new roles. Hiring still matters, but not every new need calls for a new hire.
The same applies to the businesses we finance, which face their own technology transitions. Our client engagement and sustainable-finance strategies can weigh skills, livelihoods and inclusion alongside productivity and environmental performance.
On the balance sheet, the “S” takes concrete form. Financial inclusion can bring more people into the formal economy. Financing for healthcare, education and affordable housing can strengthen essential services, while support for small businesses can protect livelihoods and local resilience. Where social outcomes are built into financing structures, the measures need to be transparent, relevant and verifiable.
Banks already have the tools: capital allocation, risk assessment, long-term financing and partnerships. What matters is how well we use them. Credibility comes from what those decisions produce on the ground, not from how much ESG language surrounds them.
One question cuts through all of it: who is better able to prosper because of this decision? If that is hard to answer, the gap between reporting and impact is probably still too wide. The “S” is working when people can see the difference in their work, skills, finances and communities.
Banque du Caire has upsized its IPO to 45% and signed the EBRD and the IFC into the private placement, the Egyptian state-owned bank said yesterday (pdf). Across the EGP 4.82-5.30 range that takes the sale to roughly EGP 36.4 bn (c. USD 680 mn) against EGP 22.1-24.25 bn at 30%, which would make it the largest Egyptian IPO in more than a decade. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation are each signing up for up to 15.74% of the private placement, with final allocations set once that tranche is priced. At the top of the indicative pricing range, that’s about 1.04 bn shares each, or EGP 11.07 bn between them, by our math.
The retail tranche was 1.98x covered as of Thursday’s close, with buy orders totaling 454 mn shares, a senior government official tells our Egypt desk.
Some would-be investors in DIP Holding’s DFM listing want Dubai Investments to cut its valuation expectations and sweeten the terms further, even after it committed to some AED 2.2 bn of dividends over three years, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Banks are pitching AED 11-14 bn, which at the top end and DIP’s AED 700 mn 2026 payout gives a 5% dividend yield, in line with Salik and Parkin. The bottom end puts it nearer Dubai Residential REIT. Some investors want something closer to Emaar’s 9%, while others argue the long-term leases and steady rent justify a lower yield. No valuation decision has been made.
Dubai Investments CEO Khalid bin Kalban told Bloomberg the company would “definitely be looking” at pricing below the banks’ fair value estimates to lift the yield. He rejected the Emaar comparison, saying developers are exposed to market demand and cyclicality while DIP carries no capex and covers maintenance through tenant service charges, which puts it closer to an infrastructure play.
A Moroccan solar builder is raising up to MAD 375.4 mn on Casablanca to fund an expansion into West Africa. Jet Energy is going public on the Casablanca Stock Exchange with a 20% stake in the company, it said in its prospectus (pdf), which the country’s capital markets regulator, AMMC, cleared on Wednesday, the exchange said yesterday (pdf). The company is looking to raise as much as MAD 375.4 mn (USD 38.3 mn) with an indicative price range of MAD 125-143 (USD 12.75-14.59) per share. The subscription period runs from 2-5 November.
Where the money goes: About MAD 175 mn of the expected proceeds are earmarked for EPC logistics, equipment, and construction pre-financing, including possible minority stakes in IPP or hybrid projects. Around MAD 130 mn goes to industrial integration — metal structures, solar trackers, and civil and electrical engineering equipment — and about MAD 70 mn to Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin.
Adia took 10.73% of the anchor book in an Indian hospital operator’s IPO, a bigger slice than any single domestic mutual fund scheme. Its Stable unit was allocated 1.01 mn shares at INR 693 apiece, worth nearly INR 700 mn (c. USD 7.4 mn), in Paras Healthcare’s INR 14.5 bn (c. USD 153.4 mn) listing, per a stock exchange disclosure (pdf). The anchor book came to about INR 6.5 bn (USD 68 mn).
It is the fourth Indian offering in a fortnight with Gulf money in the anchor book, after Zetwerk, Bonfiglioli Transmissions, and Jio Platforms. Adia has been in three of them.
QNB has raised QAR 750 mn (USD 206 mn) from Japanese investors in its second QAR-denominated Shogun bond. The bank says the three-year paper is the largest QAR-denominated Shogun issue to date, up from the QAR 500 mn it raised in its February 2025 debut, AGBI reports. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation arranged the issue, which QNB frames as part of a push to diversify its funding sources.
SOUND SMART- A Shogun bond is issued in Japan by a foreign borrower and denominated in a currency other than the JPY.
Istanbul prosecutors have ordered the detention of 31 suspects over trading in four listed companies, with 26 now in custody. The warrants follow complaints from the Capital Markets Board and cover Isiklar Enerji ve Yapi Holding, Visne Madencilik, Odine Solutions, and Tera Finansal Yatirimlar Holding, Reuters reports. Those detained include 16 executives and staff of portfolio managers already named in the case, and Altınbaş Holding owner Nusret Altınbaş remains at large.
It is the latest turn in the scandal that broke last month, when regulators put 131 funds with 455.8k investors and some USD 18 bn of assets into liquidation.
ALSO WORTH KNOWING
UAE healthtech startup Vitalls has a USD 1.5 mn seed pledge from Singapore’s EST Growmore, the investment arm of EST Group, as anchor investor, with an option for a further USD 1 mn, according to a press release. The pitch is distribution: EST Group brings telecom and healthcare networks that would open new markets and customers to the startup.
Kuwaiti consumer research platform theQA has raised more than USD 550k in a pre-seed round from an unnamed Kuwaiti family office and strategic angels, Wamda reports. It uses AI to build surveys and reach targeted audiences in Kuwait.
The GCC’s non-oil economy is set to contract 0.8% this year before growing 4.5% in 2027, according to the IMF’s Regional Economic Outlook report for the Middle East and Central Asia (pdf). The bloc as a whole is forecast to shrink 4.8% this year before rebounding 9.1% in 2027, a 6.8 percentage-point cut from the 2% growth the IMF expected in April.
The rebound next year won’t make up for lost ground. Jihad Azour, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, said last week that Gulf output would still be below its pre-war trajectory in 2030, citing lasting damage to some sectors, disrupted infrastructure, and the extra spending needed to build resilience.
The Gulf’s financial cushions are getting thinner. The GCC’s combined fiscal deficit is set to widen to 2.3% of GDP this year from 0.8% in 2025, and its current-account surplus to narrow to 1.3% of GDP from 5%. Subsidies, price controls and currency pegs have limited how much of the jump in commodity prices reaches consumers, but at a fiscal cost. Meanwhile, GCC inflation is projected to rise to 2.7%.
The squeeze varies by country. The World Economic Outlook last week projected that the UAE’s current-account surplus will shrink to 4.8% of GDP this year from 13.3% in 2025, and Qatar’s to 7.1% from 16.4%. Kuwait’s surplus narrows to 18.3% from 22.7%, and Bahrain’s to 3.6% from 5.0%. Saudi Arabia’s deficit widens to 3.5% from 2.6%. Oman is the exception, swinging from a 1.1% deficit to a 5.0% surplus, consistent with its being the only GCC economy still growing.
Gulf energy finds detours: Saudi Arabia and Qatar are pushing more oil and gas around the Strait of Hormuz, but both are still far short of pre-war volumes.
Saudi crude exports rose 7.9% m-o-m in August to 4.451 mn bbl / d, their highest since March, even as production fell to a record low of 6.24 mn bbl / d from 8.135 mn bbl / d in July, according to Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) data. Saudi exports have recovered from a May low of c. 3.4 mn bbl / d but remain well below February’s 7.3 mn bbl / d. The kingdom has kept barrels moving through terminals on its Gulf and Red Sea coasts.
Doha has taken its gas offshore: In the war’s first six months, the few Qatari cargoes that left did so because buyers had negotiated passage with Iran. Qatar now runs ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman: Its tankers hand off cargoes and return to Ras Laffan to reload, Bloomberg reports. With that shuttle, QatarEnergy restored exports to about a third of pre-war levels in September, according to Bloomberg. At least 20 cargoes have cleared Hormuz since early September, and one tanker is sailing for Poland via the Red Sea.
Both economies are paying for lost volumes: The IMF expects Qatar’s economy to contract 15.6% this year and Saudi Arabia’s 3.3%, even as oil prices are soaring. Brent rose 1.2% to USD 110.1 / bbl early Thursday and continued climbing to USD 113.73 after further Houthi attacks in Saudi Arabia prompted Washington to order some diplomats and their families out of the kingdom, as we note in this morning’s War Watch, above. LNG prices, meanwhile, are surging as inventories dwindle ahead of the northern winter.
Even as the short-term view is looking choppy, energy execs in the Middle East have a more bullish view on the industry’s outlook than their peers globally, according to research commissioned by ADIPEC. The report indicates that nearly three quarters of respondents see the Middle East becoming “more important in global energy over the coming decade.”
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