Good afternoon, ladies and gents. As we hit “send” on today’s issue, the US is edging towards the final counts in its 2026 midterm elections. Everyone in our neck of the woods will be watching to see what the outcome means for us, and more specifically, the US’ war with Iran.
Democrats have flipped both the House and the Senate. They needed four Senate seats and have taken seven, according to Bloomberg’s count, including upsets in Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Kansas. We’re still waiting for the final call in Michigan, but it’s looking almost certain that Abdul El Sayyed is beating Mike Rogers.
A critical point in the voting direction: About 60% of exit-poll respondents said the US made the wrong decision in attacking Iran. US President Donald Trump has been flip-flopping on what Washington will do once the elections are over, saying in early September that “the war is going to end immediately after the election,” before saying late last month that “most people seem to think it’s after the election, and we’re going to see what happens. The New York Times reported on 28 October that US and Israeli planners have options for a short but intensive campaign against energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities and missile and drone capabilities, and US officials have privately warned regional partners to prepare for renewed strikes and Iranian retaliation while stressing that no final decision has been taken.
Iran, meanwhile, has said the two countries are still a ways away from reaching an agreement to end their war, Reuters reports, citing an unnamed Iranian official. –Salma
Turkey is building a state-owned Islamic bank big enough to knock the market hegemon, the Kuwait-backed Kuveyt Turk, off the top of the league table. On 7 October, state-owned Islamic banks Ziraat Katilim and Halk Katilim signed agreements to transfer their 99.9% stakes to Participation Finance Investments, a subsidiary of the Turkey Wealth Fund (TWF), with the transfer due to close by year-end.
Scale is the strategy. Islamic lenders hold about a tenth of Turkish banking assets, and Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek wants Turkey in the global top five for Islamic finance. A state champion is the vehicle. “[Consolidation] could improve the competitiveness of the merged entity as it could benefit from economies of scale, and synergies,” Mohamed Damak, global head of Islamic finance at S&P Global Ratings, tells EnterpriseAM.
The aim is a bigger pie, not a bigger slice. “In effect, the merger aims to increase Islamic finance’s share of the overall banking system rather than to take market share from other participation banks,” EFG Hermes tells EnterpriseAM.
And size is the pitch to investors. The new bank could attract external capital “if it draws more customers, and improves efficiency, profitability, product range, and the overall competitiveness of the [Islamic] banking sector,” Ahmet Kilinc, director at Fitch Ratings, tells us.
Vakif Katilim, another major Turkish Islamic bank, is next in line for consolidation. The new merged entity is set to also absorb Vakif Katilim at a later stage. Once this is done, the new entity will account for roughly 36% of Turkey’s Islamic banking segment, or 3.4% of total banking assets.
REMEMBER- The merger is just one step in a multi-phase plan Turkey is rolling out to create an Islamic banking behemoth. Emlak Katilim, a fourth state-owned participation bank left out of the merger, filed for an IPO in April and is still waiting on regulatory approval.
The IPO route is already open — and the market is warm. Fitch said in June that a successful merger and that IPO could both draw new outside capital. The Participation Index on Borsa Istanbul, which groups listed Islamic finance institutions, had gained 37% YTD by mid-June and 67% over the previous 12 months — a signal of investor appetite that both the Emlak IPO and any future merged-entity equity raise would capitalize on.
And the state champion isn’t the only new entrant pressing the sector. Turkey’s largest discount retailer, BIM, secured regulatory approval in June to establish an Islamic bank with USD 215 mn in founding capital — the first major conventional-adjacent operator to move into the segment. Fitch flagged the entry of conventional operators as a parallel competitive driver that could lift the segment overall but tighten the ground under incumbents.
Why this matters for GCC banks
Three of Turkey’s nine operating Islamic banks are Gulf-owned — Kuwait Finance House’s (KFH) Kuveyt Turk, Bahrain’s Al Baraka Group’s Albaraka Turk, and Saudi National Bank’s (SNB) Turkey Finans. The biggest of the bunch is KFH’s Kuveyt Turk, which holds about 30% of the market.
KFH has the most riding on Turkey. “KFH is by far the most exposed to Turkey,” EFG Hermes says. Kuveyt Turk delivered about 27% of the group’s bottom line in 9M 2026, up from 18.5% a year earlier, and holds nearly a third of its deposits, KFH’s investor presentation shows. Albaraka Turk and Turkey Finans are, however, much smaller, with single-digit contributions to their parent companies’ bottom lines.
The new merged entity means more competition for GCC-backed players: A bigger state-backed bank “could intensify competition for Gulf-owned participation banks, potentially affecting their margins and market share,” Damak says. But KFH’s core business is shielded. The merger should strengthen the combined entity’s position in larger-ticket lending, given its larger capital base, EFG Hermes says — larger than either state bank on its own, if still smaller than Kuveyt Turk’s. But the firm doesn’t expect that to materially hurt KFH, whose retail and SME business centers on smaller-ticket loans.
And that means they will have to capitalize on their niches: “Foreign-owned banks often leverage their parent institutions to specialize in niche areas such as trade finance or services for expatriates from their home countries,” Damak tells us.
Generous backing from owners will also hedge against tightening competition: GCC Islamic banks in Turkey may also use parents’ balance sheets to participate in financing transactions that exceed local capacity — an advantage the new state champion is less likely to replicate, Damak says. “We do not expect the merger to affect parental support from GCC parents for foreign-owned Islamic banks where relevant,” Kilinc adds. No exit on the table. SNB hasn’t discussed selling Turkey Finans, and EFG Hermes doesn’t expect a move soon. The Gulf parents have already ridden out a decade of high inflation and lira depreciation, along with hyperinflation accounting that has dragged on their own bottom lines. “Despite these headwinds, the banks remain optimistic about the medium-term prospects of the Turkish economy and its banking sector,” the firm says.
BACKGROUND- Gulf capital built Turkey’s Islamic banking market from the ground up. Turkey’s 1983 Interest-Free Banking Decree opened the sector, and Albaraka Turk and Faisal Finans, which was backed by Saudi Prince Mohammed Al-Faisal’s Dar Al-Maal Al-Islami, received the first two licenses and started operations in 1985. KFH’s Kuveyt Turk followed in 1989 and later became the market’s biggest player. Those three Gulf-founded institutions were effectively the entire Turkish Islamic banking sector for roughly 25 years. SNB only arrived in 2008, buying 60% of Turkiye Finans — the successor to Faisal Finans after a 2005 restructuring. The state didn’t enter the segment at all until Ziraat Katilim and Vakif Katilim launched in 2015, with Emlak Katilim following in 2019.
Regional multilateral money also backs both Gulf and state-owned players: The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) holds a 8.4% stake in Kuveyt Turk alongside KFH’s 57.8%. IDB was also a founding shareholder in Albaraka Turk alongside Al Baraka Banking Group and local industrialists, and it seeded Vakif Katilim with a USD 300 mn commitment on launch.
All paperwork, little punch… for now
Halk Katilim is a bank in waiting. TWF-owned Halkbank set it up in September 2025 with TRY 11.5 bn paid in cash and applied for an operating license that November. A year on, it still doesn’t have one, so it can’t take funds or lend, but it’s still bringing sovereign capital to the table.
“As Halk Katilim is not operational, the main consolidation will be between Vakif Katilim and Ziraat Katilim,” Kilinc says. “Execution risk will therefore be more relevant for these two entities, given the overlap and scale of their branch networks, customer bases and systems.”
Vakif Katilim consolidation will tip the scales when, and if, it happens. At TRY 922.4 bn (USD 18.4 bn) in assets, it’s the sector’s second-largest lender. Add it to Ziraat Katilim’s TRY 885 bn (USD 17.69 bn) in assets, and the new merged entity holds about TRY 1.8 tn (USD 36 bn). This is roughly 37% of participation banking assets by our count — against Kuveyt Turk’s TRY 1.5 tn (USD 30 bn), which accounts for 30% of the market.
Still, the new merged entity may end up with less lending capacity than Kuveyt Turk. Kuveyt Turk ended 2025 with TRY 121.3 bn in standalone equity, against TRY 46.4 bn at Vakif Katilim and TRY 29.2 bn at Ziraat Katilim. Even with Halk Katilim’s capital, the group will have about TRY 87 bn in equity — roughly 30% less than Kuveyt Turk. SOUND SMART- Equity is a better indicator to estimate a bank’s lending liquidity than assets. It doesn’t account for liabilities that a bank owes, unlike assets.
Inflation is the pain point
Inflation eats capital fast. In 1H 2026, Vakif Katilim grew assets 17.6% and Ziraat Katilim 15.1%, versus Kuveyt Turk’s 8.8%. Whether that reflects pricing, public-sector deposits, or just a smaller base isn’t clear from the published numbers. “Rapid nominal growth due to high inflation can quickly strain banks’ capital positions,” Damak tells EnterpriseAM.
“Banks typically address this by seeking capital injections from shareholders or issuing AT1 or Tier 2 instruments in capital markets. Issuing in foreign currency can help mitigate the impact of local currency depreciation on capital buffers.”
The precedent is already there: Vakif Katilim raised a USD 500 mn AT1 instrument in October 2025, Damak notes — showing the merged entity has a market-tested path to shoring up capital in FX without new state money or an outside strategic investor.
Still, issuances as a tool to hedge against inflation is a much weaker instrument compared to having income denominated by foreign currencies. Most of Turkey’s state banks are inward-focused, a fact that sits awkwardly against Ankara’s ambition of positioning Istanbul as a global Islamic finance hub. Ziraat Katilim is the exception — it operates two overseas branches, in Mogadishu and Khartoum, but that’s still a very weak base and its value is more geopolitical than commercial.
The Gulf-owned, Turkey-based players are the more outward-facing side of the sector. Kuveyt Turk runs KT Bank AG in Germany — the Eurozone’s first interest-free bank, with EUR 190 mn in paid-in capital and branches in Frankfurt, Berlin, Mannheim, and Cologne — alongside a Bahrain branch and three sukuk issuances in Malaysia. Albaraka Turk operates branches in Iraq’s Erbil and Baghdad, specializing in Turkish-Iraqi trade finance.
Our take
Is there a place for GCC capital in this consolidation push? Well, it’s unlikely. “Historically, GCC banks have preferred acquiring majority stakes in Turkish lenders rather than minority positions,” Damak says. A minority stake in a state-controlled rival to your own Turkish unit is a harder sell still.
And the Gulf parents aren’t blinking. It’s “too early to say” how they respond, EFG Hermes says, noting that consolidation is common, including in the GCC, which has seen a string of bank mergers in recent years. “Banks will remain focused on profitability and adapt to evolving market conditions. They do not necessarily need to reduce focus on Turkey just because two banks are going to merge.”
Our take: Gulf strategic money could, after the merger proves itself. For now, TWF is the likelier near-term funder, as it’s always been for these state-owned players. It pumped TRY 21 bn of core capital into Ziraat, Halkbank, and VakifBank in 2020, and its TRY 51.5 bn package in 2022 included a quasi-equity loan to Ziraat Katilim.
The US struckIran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, even as President Donald Trump talked up the prospect of a diplomatic agreement, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing US officials. This was the latest in a string of small-scale strikes that Washington has carried out against Iran in recent weeks, the officials said, and comes even as Trump told reporters he doesn’t plan on restarting military strikes after the midterm elections. Qeshm sits at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz and is home to an Iranian naval base, a major desalination plant, and a large underground missile facility.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)said on Monday evening that it had brought down two US MQM-170 reconnaissance drones south of Qeshm using electronic warfare systems. The IRGC said that brings the number of these drones it has downed to four, and it called the incident a fresh failure for US Central Command, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). The IRGC did not provide further details about this incident.
Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuzunless its conditions are accepted, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the IRNA on Monday. After “dozens of phone calls and intensive shuttle diplomacy,” Iran sent a clear plan for diplomacy to the mediators, Qatar and Pakistan, he said. Iran’s top diplomat added that the “ball is in Washington’s court” to choose between “a wise path of negotiation” and repeating the “mistakes of military aggression.”
Washington haswarned several Gulf statesto prepare for a brief but forceful US military operation against Iran once the US midterm elections are over, The Wall Street Journal reported in late October, citing sources in the know. The US is also shipping a Patriot missile defense system from Texas to Israel, and has pulled troops away from exposed bases in the Middle East to prepare for possible escalation.
Gulf barrels outrun demand again: The region’s oil market is showing signs of surplus for the first time since July. Dubai’s nearest timespread, which sets the price for nearly all crude exported from the region, slipped into contango this week, with the November contract trading c. USD 2 / bbl below December, traders tell Bloomberg. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait shipped a combined 15.53 mn bbl / d of crude in October, up 10% from September and roughly in line with pre-war levels, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
SOUND SMART- Contango means prompt oil trades below later-dated oil and is a sign there’s no rush for barrels today.
Saudi Arabia did the heavy lifting last month, raising exports 13% to 7 mn bbl / d, with Red Sea port Yanbu up 35% to 3.07 mn bbl /d after its East-West pipeline came back from a September attack launched from Iraq. Iraq added 9.5% to 3.35 mn bbl, Kuwait boosted shipments by a third to 1.44 mn bbl / d, and the UAE edged up to 3.74 mn bbl / d, its highest since July. Iran shipped nothing for a second month under the US naval blockade.
Physical markets are softening across the board. Spot deals in S&P Global’s Dubai trading window, which usually price at a premium, came in near parity with the benchmark, and a North Sea cargo offered below Brent found no buyers. A month ago, such cargoes fetched premiums. “This time, the increase is more gradual,” June Goh, senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities, tells the business information service. In June, she said, a backlog of oil sitting on supertankers exited the Gulf all at once. Brent crude futures are holding above USD 100 a barrel-mark amid reports that Washington carried out an attack on Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday.
Oman wires itself into Chinese capital: The Oman Investment Authority (OIA) signed a package of agreements worth USD bns during Sultan Haitham bin Tarik’s visit to China on Monday. All the agreements carrying a value are jointly managed funds, and two of them will invest in Chinese technology rather than in Oman, according to Oman Observer.
OIA set up a OMR 307.6 mn (USD 800 mn) joining investment fund with China’s Silk Road Fund, with most of the capital earmarked for Oman, and a separate OMR 115.4 mn (USD 300 mn) fund with China Merchants Bank on equal contributions, following a 2019 vehicle the two built to buy Chinese tech. Other agreements include a USD 200 mn fund with Templewater, whose innovation fund is putting USD 60 mn into Chinese technology, and a USD 250 mn fund with EWP Partners that brings the overall partnership to USD 275 mn.
The two countries’ central banks also signed the settlement line to go with all of these agreements. The Central Bank of Oman and the People’s Bank of China agreed a currency swap during the visit, and separate memoranda cover central bank digital currencies and regulatory coordination between the two securities and futures markets, Gulf News reported. Neither side disclosed the swap’s size or tenor.
OIA ran the same structure in Central Asia last week, launching a USD 500 mn fund for Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, the first multilateral vehicle Oman has led there, pooling other sovereign funds’ capital under an Omani manager.
Abu Dhabi’s investment arms are buying into three separate asset classes, none of which are in the Gulf. XRG has gone to Australian LNG it can ship to Asia without passing Hormuz, Adic into European corporate and infrastructure lending alongside Apollo, and Adia into Tunisian-founded financial software on Advent’s buyout.
XRG is buying Shell’s 16.7% of Australia’s North West Shelf LNG project for a base USD 1.4 bn, its first move into Australian gas. A milestone-linked contingent payment sits on top of that, the two companies said in statements (XRG and Shell). The non-operated stake gives Adnoc’s international energy arm gas it can send into Asia without passing through Hormuz.
The war has sharpened a push that predates it. XRG wants to rank among the world’s top five LNG suppliers, and the disruption to Gulf energy flows has made finding assets elsewhere more urgent for the region’s producers, Bloomberg says, with Qatar doing the same to cut its Hormuz exposure. XRG says North West Shelf puts it close to demand growth in Asia-Pacific.
It gets the whole chain, from upstream gas interests through pipeline and midstream infrastructure to offtake arrangements and Shell’s share of liquefaction capacity, along with Shell’s decommissioning obligations. North West Shelf, Australia’s first LNG project and operated by Woodside, can liquefy 14.3 mn tons a year, almost 3% of global capacity, Bloomberg reports. Shell’s share is about 2.4 mn tons a year, putting the base price at roughly USD 590 a ton of annual capacity, by our math. The sale “realizes value from a mature, non-operated asset,” Shell integrated gas president Cederic Cremers said, and the company plans to grow its LNG sales 4-5% a year to 2030.
Emaar Properties is weighing a buyout of the 21% of Emaar Development it does not own, at a cost of as much as USD 3.2 bn. The listed unit is worth more than USD 15 bn at current prices and Emaar already holds just over 79%, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. An announcement could come within days, with the board meeting this week on the proposals to create shareholder value that Emaar said a month ago it was evaluating. Nothing is final and Emaar declined to comment.
Why it matters: Emaar Development is the group’s biggest source of funds, and owning all of it would give Emaar more freedom to direct that money into recurring-income assets, international expansion, and dividends, CI Capital analysts wrote, with the cost and timing of the funding weighing on the decision. Emaar has plenty to fund — it pledged AED 65 bn over five years last year and has since unveiled a AED 200 bn mixed-use Dubai project on top of its Egypt work.
DIP Holding priced at AED 1.12, the midpoint of its range, valuing it at AED 9.7 bn on listing. Dubai Investments sold 1.7 bn existing shares for a total offering of AED 1.9 bn, with bookbuilding and subscriptions closing on 3 November, according to its pricing announcement (pdf). The parent takes the net proceeds and keeps 80%, and listing is expected on 11 November.
The book was covered within minutes of opening and the offering was significantly oversubscribed, though no multiple has been given, and the range itself had already been set below both management’s earlier valuation and the banks’ estimates. Chairman Khalid Jassim Bin Kalban said demand from local, regional, and international investors “across the entire price range” endorsed the business. At AED 1.12 the AED 700 mn 2026 payout works out to a 7.2% yield, with the three-year AED 2.175 bn commitment averaging about 7.5% a year, by our math.
Abu Dhabi Investment Council is backing a new Apollo-led European lending platform with more than EUR 10 bn of financing capacity. Adic is among a group of global investors in the European Credit Company, which will lend to businesses and infrastructure projects across the continent, according to an Apollo statement. The size of Adic’s investment was not disclosed, and the commitment adds to the emirate’s growing exposure to European private credit.
Adia is taking a minority stake in Tunisian-founded financial software group Vermeg as part of Advent’s acquisition of the company. The US private equity firm is buying out UK investor Charterhouse Capital Partners and founder Badreddine Ouali, who keeps a stake and stays on as vice chairman, according to a statement. Neither the size nor the value of Adia’s stake was disclosed.
ALSO WORTH KNOWING
Syrian food tech company Percent Labs closed a seed round at a valuation above USD 1 mn, taking the money from Syrian angel investors based abroad with the amount undisclosed, according to Wamda. Founded in 2025 by Khaled Al Hosini, Soubhi Bakri, and Jawad Shebli, it runs several delivery-focused food brands off shared cloud kitchen infrastructure and applies AI to its operational data.
European private markets firm EQT is in talks with sovereign wealth funds in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to co-invest in AI infrastructure and data centers, its global chair Jean Eric Salata told The National. EdgeConneX — EQT’s 106-facility data center portfolio company — serves as the primary vehicle to expand its AI infrastructure footprint across the Gulf. Salata framed the region’s physical constraints, particularly around chips, energy, and data centers, as a prime opening for long-horizon capital. EQT, which has more than USD 400 bn in AUM, already co-invests with Adia and Mubadala.
Qatari capital, meanwhile, is going the other way. Brookfield Asset Management and the Qatar Investment Authority are jointly investing EUR 2.5 bn (USD 3.4 bn) in a data center project alongside UK power generator Drax Group. The initial phase — targeting up to 100 MW via Drax’s existing grid connection in northern England — could go live by 1Q 2028, while subsequent phases through 2031 will draw power directly from Drax’s 2.6 GW biomass fleet. Drax wants 500 MW between 2028 and 2031, drawing on the site’s 2.6 GW of dispatchable generation and 4 GW of grid access.
Appetite for Gulf AI infrastructure has held through the seven-month war on Iran, during which Iranian retaliatory drone strikes damaged Amazon data centers, as our AI + Innovation desk reported last month. Gulf operators are buying anti-drone defense systems to protect built and pipeline sites against renewed strikes.
A single scale is set to replace the differing salary grades Libya’s public institutions currently run on, with base pay from LYD 1-1.2k (USD 156.68-188.01) at the lowest grade to LYD 4,312-4,912 (USD 675.69-769.60) at the highest. Specialization allowances of up to 70% could also be layered on top, as part of the draft unified salary law the Government of National Unity’s Finance Ministry published.
The allowances decide who gains: Members of oversight bodies get 70%, university faculty and researchers at research centers and higher institutes get 50%, allied medical professionals and armed forces officers get 30%, and enlisted personnel get 20%. Non-permanent staff get no allowance at all, and judicial pay rates stay with the Supreme Judicial Council.
Both carve-outs follow pressure. The University of Tripoli’s academic staff union threatened to suspend teaching outright if the bill cut existing salaries, and the Tripoli Court of Appeal warned against changing judicial pay without consulting the Supreme Judicial Council. Teachers, already in industrial action, want the law passed without further delay. Parliamentary finance committees have finished their review and the House of Representatives was due to take the bill up in Sabha on Monday. Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah said in early October that the scale would take effect with that month’s pay.
Arcapita brings its money home: Bahrain’s Arcapita will put another USD 1.5 bn into GCC warehouses and industrial sites over the next 24 months, the firm said. That’s on top of the more than USD 2 bn it already runs in the sector across the Gulf.
Built to order, leased for decades: Arcapita will build and buy, but the emphasis is build-to-suit, with facilities designed around a single occupier and tied to long-term leases. Lintara Properties, the development and asset management arm it launched in October 2025, runs the pipeline. The flagship is a forward-funded hub at Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Energy Park for ASMO, the Aramco-DHL joint venture. Arcapita owns it, and ASMO leases it for 22 years. In Jebel Ali Free Zone, Arcapita delivered a warehouse for DSV in May and broke ground on one for DP World.
Why it matters: Arcapita is selling into demand for “supply chain resilience, regional self-sufficiency and operational redundancy,” Isa Al Khalifa, head of MENA real estate and Lintara CEO, said. It also points to a shortage of institutional-grade space in several GCC markets. A year in which war largely shut Hormuz makes that an easy sell.
The money is coming home. At last year’s Gateway Gulf, Arcapita pledged more than USD 1 bn for US and UK warehouses and data centers. Its GCC book has roughly doubled since Lintara launched with more than USD 1 bn, hitting the USD 2 bn target it set for 2025 behind schedule. The competition is bigger: Lunate and Blackstone’s GLIDE is targeting USD 5 bn of Gulf warehouses.
We have a handful of leadership changes at major companies and banks across the region this morning, including two resignations in Turkey and Oman.
AD Ports appointed Afif Saif Al Yafei (LinkedIn) as group CEO, according to a press release. He succeeds Mohamed Juma Al Shamisi (LinkedIn), who had led the group since 2014. The statement didn’t mention a reason for the new appointment but noted that the group had grown into a global business under Al Shamisi’s tenure. Al Yafei joins AD Ports from Taqa Transmission, where he previously served as CEO. He also held senior positions at Tabreed, including as VP of asset management, and Adnoc Gas.
Turkey’s fund probe reaches Takasbank: Yunus Arinci has resigned as CEO of Takasbank, the clearing and custody bank at the center of Turkey’s capital markets, after prosecutors questioned him over the weekend, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Arinci was questioned over allegations that Takasbank’s money market liquidity financed some investors’ exits from funds, T24 reports. The probe stems from a September redemption crunch that forced regulators to liquidate 131 funds, hitting more than 455k investors.
Gokhan Elibol, deputy CEO for markets and operations, steps up as acting CEO, a role he held in 2019-21, Takasbank said. This is the third leadership shake-up at Turkey’s market institutions in days, after Borsa Istanbul CEO Korkmaz Ergun, also Takasbank’s deputy chair, was detained and the SPK got a new chairman.
Abdullah bin Zahran Al Hinai is stepping down as CEO of National Bank of Oman, citing personal reasons, the bank said in a statement (pdf). He will remain in the role until March 31, 2027. Al Hinai held this post since August 2020 when he was appointed after a lifelong career of over 20 years at Bank Muscat where he assumed various roles, ending with Chief Wholesale Banking and Strategic Growth Officer.
Dubai-based Al Habtoor Group is preparing to sell off its entire portfolio of Lebanese assets, taking its withdrawal from the country a step further after shutting down operations earlier this year, according to a company statement. The board-approved divestment covers the group’s hotels, commercial and residential properties, and other investments accumulated over more than two decades. Assets will be evaluated and sold individually according to market conditions, with no valuations, potential buyers, or sale timeline disclosed.
Egypt is back at the table with Brussels on the EU’s carbon border levy, seeking “preferential treatment that gives Egyptian exports a longer chance” as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) nears full application, a senior government official tells our Egypt desk. The government is also reviewing how countries in Asia and Latin America have handled the mechanism.
What Egypt wants: “A phased timetable aligned with a number of Egyptian environmental measures so that Egyptian goods in the designated sectors keep reaching the European Union more easily,” a second government official says — while acknowledging that “usually the European Union does not agree to grant exemptions.”
The alternative: One scenario under study has Egyptian exporters absorbing part of the cost in markets that apply the mechanism, rather than rushing a domestic carbon-pricing system into place. That route is hard to execute — it would require the technical and institutional capacity to measure and verify emissions, plus a domestic carbon-pricing framework.
US gas, via Qatar
India’s top LNG importer wants some of its Qatari gas to come from the US: Petronet LNG is in talks with QatarEnergy to source part of the 7.5 mn tons a year under their renewed contract from the US, group general manager Vivek Mittal told analysts, Reuters reports. Qatar is willing to consider offering a “certain portion of volume from other sources which they have tied up,” Mittal said, as India looks to diversify its supply after the Iran war disrupted imports.
QatarEnergy delivers cargoes to India under the new contract: The current contract expires in April 2028 and has been renewed for 20 years through 2048. Under the new agreement, QatarEnergy delivers the LNG ex-ship to terminals across India on its own fleet.
Qatar’s own US supply starts after the new contract does. QatarEnergy has recently agreed to buy 3 mn tons a year from Woodside’s Louisiana LNG project from 2030 and up to 4 mn tons a year from Cheniere’s US terminals starting in 2031. Both agreements kick in after Petronet’s renewal. If the Indian importer wants US cargoes from day one, QatarEnergy would have to source them elsewhere.
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