Want to come have lunch with us in Dubai?

Good afternoon, friends. We start today on a positive note for the UAE’s capital markets as DIP Holding, the Dubai Investments unit that owns Dubai Investments Park, began trading on the DFM today in the country’s first listing of 2026. Dubai Investments priced the 20% float mid-range at AED 1.12 a share, raising AED 1.9 bn and valuing the company at AED 9.7 bn. The opening price offers the first signal for the UAE on how much appetite investors have for new paper since the war began.

DIP’s start of trading is a sense of some degree of a return to normalcy in the UAE — a general sentiment that’s becoming more widely felt as the UAE’s fall and winter conference calendar moves ahead at breakneck speed this month. That will only pick up momentum as we roll into December, with Abu Dhabi Finance Week, Dubai’s Capital Market Summit, GITEX Global, and more scheduled to take place in just the first week of the month. Speaking of which…

Would you like to have lunch with us on Thursday, 10 December? We’re setting a table in DIFC for a very small and exclusive group of readers and business leaders in the UAE. If you’d like to be there, just hit reply to this email, tell us who you are and what you do, and we’ll take it from there.

Wait, lunch? Yes, lunch. Two hours, one table, no panel, no slides, just an open conversation among peers. We want to hear how the people running businesses in the UAE see the next twelve months: what’s working, what’s getting harder, and where the money is actually going now that the region is open for business again. Expect good food, good company, and the kind of conversation nobody has on stage.

Seats will be strictly limited and the lunch is invitation-only, but we’re planning on doing this more often. So, yes, we won’t be able to accommodate everyone unfortunately.

Everything that will be said at the table stays at the table under Chatham House rules. We’ll be in touch with the people we’re inviting over the next two weeks or so with the details.

MEANWHILE- Lenders are cooling on AI debt. Banks and credit investors are scrutinizing AI-related financing more closely and are wary of adding exposure to borrowers. Some say they would be hesitant to fund more transactions, even with guarantees from the biggest names in tech, Reuters reports, citing banking and credit sources. The pullback follows a selloff that wiped USD 2.5 tn off the Nasdaq 100 on Thursday, plus worries that the midterm results would bring more oversight on data centers.

Spying reports are rattling Nvidia investors. The chipmaker’s shares fell more than 5% yesterday after the company opened an investigation into reports that CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation. China has denied trying to entrap Huang, dismissing the allegations as “unsubstantiated” and “nothing but smears against China.” –Salma