Crude awakening

1

OPENING NOTE

The message from the UAE: It’s extra BAU

Good morning, wonderful people. It’s another week in the books for us all, and the message from the UAE two months into this senseless war is that wallah, wallah it’s BAU. Extra BAU, in fact:

Exhibit #1: The fanfare yesterday about the 42 km, AED 34 bn Gold Metro line expected to open by September 2029, which will come into service at around the same time that the AED 20.5 bn Blue Line extension does.

Exhibit #2: “Voices of Pride: Messages of hope and progress from UAE business titans.”

Exhibit #3: From a press release we will not be “running,” thank you: “Uber places ‘Pass It On’ notebooks in vehicles for Dubai riders to share messages of solidarity and appreciation for the UAE.”

Better to simply let the facts speak for themselves: Investors placed orders for 5x more than was on offer in the UAE’s AED 1.1 bn Islamic treasury sukuk auction yesterday, as we note in this morning’s Opinion piece, below. That’s how you close a week. –Patrick

Crude awakening

A growing number of international businesses are signaling that it’s time to get in on the ground floor in post-conflict Libya: Even with two competing governments in place, dilapidated infrastructure, and a messy basket of fiscal problems, oil and gas majors are now following in the footsteps of Egyptian construction players — and there are signs players in other industries are putting out feelers, analysts and execs tell us.

Proximity, politics, and a proven ability to take on and mitigate risk saw Egyptian players move in first, including state-backed Arab Contractors and players with close government ties, such as El Argany (a key player born out of post-insurgency Sinai) and Wadi El Nile.

From energy to oil and dry ports: Egypt is in talks to scale its electricity interconnection to Eastern Libya to a 2 GW line from c. 150 MW today, we previously reported — a ramp-up that could help solve eastern Libya’s chronic blackouts and unblock bns of USD in Egyptian-led reconstruction work in Benghazi and Derna, where projects have been hamstrung by a fragmented grid. Egypt has locked-in a good chunk of Libya’s crude output to make up for lost supply thanks to the war in the Gulf. And Libya announced a planned dryport late last year as a prelude to a joint free zone with Egypt — officials in the east have consistently signaled more infrastructure contracts are coming Egyptian contractors’ way.

More adventurous European outfits came in next — and global oil majors and big African outfits are following. Italy’s Eni and Spain’s Repsol, which had paused drilling in Libya for more than a decade thanks to the war, were early pathfinders, resuming exploration in 2024 and 2025. A recent bid round saw Nigeria’s Aiteo and Chevron clinch exploration concessions.

And service providers are taking note: Switzerland-based engineering services firm Sulzer recently said it plans to set up shop in Libya and build an on-ground equipment maintenance facility in Misrate to serve the sector, we previously reported.

“The broad interest now visible across sectors like healthcare, infrastructure, telecom, and construction has a straightforward explanation: both Libyan governments have been spending at an extraordinary rate,” Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, told EnterpriseAM.

Libya has two governments: The UN-recognized government in Tripoli in the west and the Benghazi government in the east, which maintains close ties to Egypt.

Most of the interest from non-oil actors stops short of them committing significant capital to Libya — it’s about servicing contracts, not building new plants. Interest is skewed towards players from “countries that already have a political stake in Libya, like Egypt, the UAE, Italy, and Turkey,” Connor Coleman, senior MENA analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told us. This enables them to navigate risks that would scare off most Western players, he added.

It’s all about the geology…

To understand why the investment outlook for Libya’s oil and gas sector outpaces others, you need to turn to geology. “It’s all about the geological quality of Libya’s reserves, both onshore and offshore,” Harchaoui says. “For companies operating on time horizons of 15 to 25 years, the calculus was straightforward: They needed to be present. Libya offered experienced technical crews, limited uncertainty regarding reserves and exploration prospects, and vast untapped potential — particularly offshore, but also in large onshore patches that remain essentially untouched,” he adds.

This geology is Libya’s competitive advantage: Unlike the complex, capital-intensive deepwater fields in the region like Egypt’s Zohr, Libya’s shallow onshore fields can be quickly brought into service and have much lower costs of production.

Case in point: Italian energy giant Eni announced two offshore natural gas discoveries with a 1 tn cubic feet (tcf) in the Metlaoui Formation, some 16 km south of the operational Bahr Essalam field. While the specific reserve volumes are modest compared to the East Mediterranean’s massive fields, these shallow fields are quick to get into production and cheap to operate. And now, all eyes are on the soon-to-be announced outcome for the gas exploration drilling carried out by an Eni-BP JV in the Al‑Matsola‑1 offshore field in the Sirte basin.

But even with all this progress, major challenges remain: Libya may have the capacity to ramp up crude output as planned this year to 1.6 mn bb/d, but its target to go up to 2 mn bb/d within the next few years will be very difficult to achieve with the current flows of infrastructure investments, Ayed Guembri, the former director of Baker Hughes North Africa, tells us.

The infrastructure problem

Libya’s 2 mn bb/d target is physically constrained by a decade of infrastructure decay despite its theoretical viability, as many brownfield projects can afford improvement in production. “The infrastructure is quite affected by the war,” Guembri said. “I’m talking about the old pipeline that is linking all the infrastructure ... it was quite damaged, and it’s an old one, impacted by corrosion.”

“We need new roads, new laws, security, and a reliable customs system,” Peter Loshi, the Libya Director of the Malta-based oil logistics provider MedservRegis, tells us. “Libya is a huge country. If somebody has to drive 2k km, they might as well get a plane,” he said, arguing that many of the oil fields that await tapping into would need investment in new airstrips and small airports in the desert. Otherwise, these projects remain “just an idea on paper,” he added.

And Italy’s fleet of rigs is an issue: There were 50 available in Libya before the war — and 20 today, Guembri told us. Bringing in more rigs adds to both expense and lead time.

The elephant(s) in the room with us

Banking and the repatriation of profits remain key challenges. “Libya doesn't have a banking system, it’s very primitive,” and decoupled from the global system, MedservRegis’ Loshi tells us. “If you send a payment from one institution to another, it stays a week in the bank... You cannot run a business like that.”

For most players, that means taking local payment in one of two forms. Behind door number one: Taking cash in-country, with all of the risk that comes with it — from theft and fraud to your board asking why they can’t use that money to finance other operations or pay dividends. When does that cash get out of the country? How? It could take years to sort that out.

Behind door number two: Taking what Eni, a multinational player with a long history in Libya, would describe as “equity hydrocarbon” — payment in crude, not cash. Few players have the risk tolerance for either approach to payment.

Libya’s divided government and longstanding issues with corruption are the biggest obstacles to a large-scale return of investments. Libya has two competing governments in the east and the west — and parallel spending reached a level that ultimately contributed to the collapse of the currency last year. Corruption also remains a pervasive issue, with “large volumes” of crude oil slipping out through unofficial channels “before they can be monetized and deposited as USD revenues” with the state, Harchaoui said.

Libya has been sending some positive signals on these fronts. A Tripoli court sentenced a former marketing executive at national oil company NOC to 10 years in prison on corruption charges, and NOC recently terminated a co-development agreement with Arkenu Oil Company, also amid allegations of corruption.

A joint budget? Then there’s the prospect of a ‘unified’ budget — Libya’s first in 13 years. “[The budget] implies a degree of revenue sharing … covering expenditures for both rival governments,” EIU’s Coleman tells us. “Progress on the budgets is real, but it sits within a political order that is still very transactional,” adds. “There are real positive steps and a cleanup of the political order, but they're not a clean break with the old system. The power brokers haven't changed.”

What’s next?

The Libya business story in 2026 isn’t really about security, but whether the governing institutions can turn building momentum into something that lasts. “I think a lot of players will come in as soon as big American companies like Chevron, BP, and Shell are back,” Guembri said. But some of these players, as in the case of Chevron or Exxon, are only back on paper for now. “They're not moving in tomorrow. They are studying the country and taking their time,” Loshi said.

What to watch: How the unified budget unfolds. A key signal is whether the competing governments stay the course and take real steps toward ending parallel spending. “The unification of the budget is a good signal for everybody…. [It] will help stabilize and overcome the challenge of illegal sales of oil,” as well as currency pressures, Guembri believes.

The catch: The budget can’t be a paper tiger. It needs to translate into fiscal discipline: “If you end up with a unified budget, but parallel spending starts again? Then the pressures reemerge,” Coleman concludes.

A swap, not a sop

Does the UAE really want what some in the press have framed as a “loan” from the United States? And if it does, why the hell would it need a so-called currency swap when it’s sitting on foreign currency reserves of around USD 300 bn?

Nobody has answers, but let’s follow the breadcrumbs together, ‘cause we’ve got a theory. The long and the short of it: The UAE probably has opened talks on a currency swap — it’s an entirely sensible technocratic move that’s being filtered through (a) financial illiteracy (and poor headline writing) in the global press and (b) a separate leak that’s all about geopolitical posturing.

Let’s start with the facts:

Fact #1: The UAE has plenty of greenbacks in the bank, thank you very much. The Central Bank of the UAE had c. USD 300 bn in foreign currency reserves at the end of February, just before the war began, according to Trading Economics data. It won’t have burned even a fraction of that despite the drying up of FX revenue streams since the war began.

Fact #2: Abu Dhabi Inc has continued to deploy capital abroad throughout the conflict, writing multiple multi-bn USD tickets across industries and continents, as regular readers of our Markets + Deals column will know.

Fact #3: The UAE has easy, affordable access to the global debt market. To pick but one recent data point: Investors placed bids for nearly 5x more than was on offer in the UAE’s AED 1.1 bn Islamic treasury sukuk auction yesterday. The Finance Ministry priced the 2033 tranche at a 10 bps spread over US Treasuries, anchoring the long end of the AED curve.

Okay, so where’s all this talk of a “loan” for the UAE coming from? From Washington to London and New Delhi, journalists who just don’t know better have written in various combinations that the UAE has asked for a “bailout,” a “loan,” and a “lifeline.” The New York Times, which should know better, positioned it as “financial support.”

A report in the Wall Street Journal seems to have set it all off. Wall Street’s favorite newspaper wrote this week that CBUAE Governor Khaled Balama “raised the idea of a currency-swap line with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Treasury and Federal Reserve officials in meetings in Washington last week.” The Journal, which should really know better, wrote that UAE officials had said “they had so far avoided the worst economic effects of the conflict but might still need a financial lifeline.”

The Donald pumped oxygen into the story. Asked if a currency swap might be in the cards, Trump told CNBC’s Squawk Box that “it is” and then added, “I mean, I'm surprised, because they are really rich. If I ⁠could help them, I would, I mean, we're helping them much more with what we're doing with the war.”

Bessent told the US Senate that the UAE was one of several Gulf and Asian countries that had asked about a swap.

But the UAE insists it doesn’t need financial backing: “Any suggestion that the UAE requires external financial backing misreads the facts,” Youssef Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to DC, said on X. “The UAE is one of the world’s most financially resilient economies, underpinned by more than USD 2 tn in sovereign investment assets,” Otaiba said, adding that “we very much appreciate President Trump’s recognition of the UAE as one of America’s most important economic [and] trade partners.”

We still believe the UAE asked for a swap. Why? Why would you need a “financial lifeline” if you have USD 300 bn in the vault? Think of it this way: Most of the UAE’s USD holdings are parked in the central bank or locked up in big sovereigns including ADIA, Mubadala, ADQ, L’Imad. Meanwhile, the banking system is being starved of USD inflows from the oil trade and tourism thanks to the war — but banks still need to clear trade, settle payments, and roll their own USD liabilities. Oh, and the swap? It costs nothing and may never be used. It’s cheap insurance.

What the UAE wants is the country-level equivalent of a secured credit card. The UAE is facing a “liquidity mismatch,” not running out of cash, says Ryan Lemand, a former advisor to the UAE government and founder and CEO of wealth manager NeoVision. He writes in a LinkedIn post that “No one is giving anyone money. It's a currency loan, secured by a currency deposit, with no credit risk on either side.” The Fed, he notes, has standing swap lines with the EU, Canadian, Japanese, and UK central banks. “None of those counterparties were receiving ‘aid.’”

Geopolitics rears its ugly head

So where does geopolitics come into this? For starters, the US doesn’t want to see countries around the world — squeezed by the fallout from its war on Iran — start dumping treasuries. Bessent told the Senate that “swap lines, whether it’s from the Federal Reserve or the Treasury, are to maintain order in the USD funding markets and to prevent the sale of the US assets in a disorderly way. The swap line would both benefit the UAE and the US.”

The Wall Street Journal also warned that the UAE had intimated it was considering pricing oil in RMB, and that claim spread like wildfire, feeding into a multiyear story arc that has seen actors including Russia, China, and in some emerging markets picking at the USD’s position as the world’s currency of choice for trade and reserves.

Why would the UAE float pricing oil in RMB? It’s about a better position at the bargaining table. On the one hand, no US administration can accept a challenge to the dominance of the petrodollar. On the other, the UAE is looking to bolster its bargaining position on a host of issues including continued access to AI chips and compute (a thorny issue until Abu Dhabi turned its back on Chinese tech), the restocking of air defense systems, finally getting access to the F-35 program (still stalled), ensuring that UAE investments in the US (demanded by Trump) get preferential treatment by prickly regulators (hello, CFIUS — and pre-cleared investment corridors or AI and critical tech infrastructure), and a seat at the post-war regional table. There’s a reason, friends, that the crown prince of Abu Dhabi was in Beijing last week.

We wouldn’t be surprised to see tariffs on Emirates Global Aluminium ease in the months ahead as EGA starts working to repair damage to its production lines incurred during the war…

Chokehold

Alumina cargoes that would normally feed Gulf smelters are being diverted to China as regional players are unable to take delivery thanks to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The supply-side shock is compounded by the damage that several production lines have taken as a result of Iranian airstrikes in the war.

Refresher: The Gulf typically accounts for 9% of global aluminum output, but production fell roughly 6% m-o-m in March and remains suppressed. Qatar’s Qatalum has been operating at roughly 60% capacity since mid-March, while Bahrain’s Alba has dropped closer to 30%, from 81% before the war.

China can absorb the raw material, but it can’t fix the output shortage. “China’s domestic refineries are already running an excess — we’re talking 95-100 mn tonnes of alumina,” Andy Farida, senior metals analyst at Fastmarkets, tells EnterpriseAM. Even as more refinery capacity comes online in China — with previously delayed projects there starting to ramp up — that higher capacity, which Farida estimates at 4-5 mn tonnes, smelters ultimately face a 45 mn tonne output cap in China.

Raising output caps would be a significant policy shift for China that risks putting it in the line of fire for anti-dumping and protectionist measures in other markets, Farida notes. “Part of the reason for the 45 mn cap is due to their strong desire to have better control of the market,” he said, in addition to balancing the environmental impact of the industry as Beijing looks to hit net zero targets by 2060.

In other words: More alumina in China doesn’t mean more aluminum for the rest of the world.

The road to recovery for GCC players is long and complicated: Neither Qatalum nor Alba have their own sources of alumina (the crucial feedstock for producing metal aluminum), and typically rely on imported feedstock, Farida notes. These companies “now have to source from neighboring partners” transported by truck through Oman, which is keeping their production lines running for now but “is not feasible in the long run.”

Restarting production lines is a six- to twelve-month process — and that’s assuming the ceasefire holds and no further damage is inflicted, Farida says.

Beyond the logistics hurdles, energy is also a roadblock for Qatalum, as QatarEnergy’s suspension of gas production threw another spanner in the works. “Rebuilding that infrastructure will take years,” Farida notes.

“The supply shock is already here. The risk now is that prices become too high — and that’s when demand starts to pull back,” Farida said. Prices are hovering around their highest point since the war broke out at USD 3.6k per tonne, with some forecasts suggesting they could breach the USD 4k mark.

Enter… Russia? With few alternatives, buyers are starting to look at options that would have been off the table not too long ago. Russia is emerging as the fastest — and in many cases the only — way to plug the gap. But it’s not exactly a comfortable shift for many, even though it’s one of the few sources where volumes are immediately available, Farida says.

That leaves the market stuck between limited supply and difficult trade-offs. Market rumors suggest there is enough high-quality Russian materials to “flood the market,” which could actually end up being good news for the GCC. “It would give the GCC smelters time to repair and get back on their feet, but it’s [an unpopular] solution,” Farida says.

That wasn’t so bad, was it?

The UAE’s two biggest banks, each of them state-backed, turned in healthy earnings that beat analysts’ pre-conflict expectations for profits. The earnings are the first reports out of the banking sector since the war began nearly two months ago and reflect one month of the impact from the conflict.

Emirates NBD said its net income rose 3% to AED 6.4 bn while revenues surged 21% to a record AED 14.4 bn. Deposits grew 6% in the quarter and the trend continued into April, the bank said. ENBD saw its gross loans grow even faster (+7% compared to the same period last year), but it’s unclear how much of the loan or deposit growth was driven by activity with government or government-related entities.

ENBD also signalled that its big Indian acquisition is on track, with CEO Shayne Nelson quoted as saying in the group’s earnings release (pdf), “Our international expansion strategy remains a core pillar as we look forward to closing the RBL transaction and welcoming them to the Group.” A the start of this month. India’s bank regulator gave Emirates NBD the nod for the more than USD 3 bn acquisition of up to 74% of RBL Bank.

First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) saw net income slip 2% y-o-y to AED 5.0 bn in 1Q 2026, even as operating income rose 6% to AED 9.3 bn, according to its management discussion and analysis report (pdf). The drag came from higher provisioning rather than weaker core activity, with net interest income climbing 12% to AED 5.61 bn.

FAB said it is booking impairment charges of AED 1.1 bn “in response to the evolving external environment,” a more than 50% increase over last year. Emirates NBD booked impairments of AED 1.1 bn.

IN OTHER EARNINGS NEWS: UAE Telco du’s net income rose 15.5% y-o-y to AED 834 mn in 1Q 2026, on revenue of AED 4.1 bn, up 6.9% y-o-y, according to its earnings release (pdf).

Buying time

Lebanon and Israel agreed to a three-week ceasefire extension for three weeks following talks at the White House overnight, with Lebanon’s Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expected to follow up with another round of talks for a more permanent peace deal. As part of the agreement, the US will “work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah,” US President Donald Trump said after the agreement was reached, without giving further details on what that help could look like.

Meanwhile, the US and Iran don’t seem to have made much progress on their own ceasefire talks, with Trump saying he is seeking the “best deal” with Iran to make it “everlasting.” Trump has also suggested that the progress on an agreement with Iran could be slow-moving because Tehran’s leadership is in disarray — a claim that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said was part of “the enemy’s media operations.”

Iran and the US are still very much fighting over control of the Strait of Hormuz, with traffic halted earlier this week after Tehran attacked three ships, escorting two of them into Iranian waters. Beyond the strait, US forces attacked at least three Iranian-flagged tankers in Asian waters, signaling that Washington’s naval blockade is active despite its ongoing ceasefire with Tehran. Partly laden with crude, the vessels were rerouted from their locations off the coasts of India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia.

Washington appears to be working on dismantling Iran’s reach in the region in other moves, including reportedly blocking the delivery of USD 500 mn to Iraq as payment for oil sales, the Wall Street Journal reports. The suspended payment — the second since the war began — comes as the US pressures Iraq to “dismantle powerful Iranian-backed militias,” including groups that attacked US facilities in Iraq during the war.

Saudi equities, Euro access

Asset managers at Gulf sovereigns have had a busy week, running private credit lines through PIMCO while public issues get indexed by JPMorgan. Meanwhile, Saudi equities are getting a Europe-ready ETF wrapper and a Dubai shisha maker is taking the SPAC route to Nasdaq, and there are more signs that Egypt’s IPO pipeline may finally be taking real shape.

All of this comes as allocators across MENA+ continue to push beyond their home markets, war or not: Saudi’s Sumou is making a move in Egypt, Masdar has appetite for Montenegro, M42 is investing in Brazil, and a Sawiris-led consortium into Morocco.

Up first:

Boston-headquartered asset manager State Street rolled out a Saudi-focused equity ETF in Europe anchored by the Public Investment Fund (PIF). The ETF, which launched with USD 100 mn in assets, is cross-listed on Xetra in Germany and the London Stock Exchange under the ticker SAQL. The move is part of a broader push to turn Tadawul into a default allocation in emerging market portfolios — the exchange has so far failed to get significant traction with active fund managers.

SOUND SMART- The ETF is structured as a UCITS vehicle, meaning it’s accessible to institutional and professional investors across Europe (including asset managers, pension funds, and private banks), as well as retail flows in the markets where it’s registered — a swath of Western Europe spanning 13 countries from France and Germany to Ireland.

Gulf sovereigns and state-linked issuers have quietly tapped PIMCO for more than USD 10 bn in private debt since the regional war began, Bloomberg reports — including up to USD 2.5 bn in Abu Dhabi government bonds. Top-tier Gulf issuers are paying up for discreet private credit to bridge wartime funding gaps.

Saudi’s SAR-denominated sovereign sukuk will be joining JPMorgan’s emerging markets government bond index (EMGBI) starting 29 January 2027. The sukuk will be added incrementally to EMGBI, eventually comprising 2.5% of the index. Eight Saudi sovereign sukuk — totaling nearly USD 69 bn — currently meet the requirements for inclusion.

After exiting several investments in Egypt two years ago, Kuwaiti franchise giant Alshaya Group opened its first global talent center in Cairo to manage its tech and customer service operations across MENA, according to a press release (pdf). The facility will serve as a central hub for IT solutions, digital marketing, and multilingual customer service, covering MENA, Turkey, Central and Eastern Europe, Greece, and Cyprus, it said.

Alshaya pulled back from Egypt in 2024 amid an FX crisis that saw the operator of brands including Shake Shack, Starbucks, and H&M pull back to limit its losses.

In context: The Communications and IT Ministry has been pushing hard to turn Egypt into a global destination for what the industry now calls “global capabilities centers” — what we called “outsourcing” a generation ago. Last year alone, Egyptians doing digital, back-office, and customer service work for the rest of the world brought a staggering USD 7.4 bn into the country, of which USD 4.8 bn came from outsourcing services.

Manara Minerals shifts gears: PIF-backed Manara Minerals is reportedly shifting from its global M&A agenda to pursue debt investments and JVs with global trading firms, unnamed sources told Bloomberg. This shift will see Manara prioritize loans to miners in exchange for offtake rights, securing future production benefits without requiring upfront equity.

A new school of thought for Saudi investment? The move dovetails neatly with the PIF’s new strategy to prioritize investments that directly accelerate local economic growth, which should be the hallmark of the sovereign fund’s next five years.

Dubai-based flavored tobacco giant Advanced Inhalation Rituals (AIR — get it?) is pushing ahead with a US Nasdaq listing at a USD 1.75 bn valuation via a merger with Cantor Equity Partners III, a Spac. Shareholders of the Spac will vote on12 May to merge with AIR after getting SEC clearance yesterday, per a statement. The shisha maker is seeking a USD 1.75 bn valuation in the transaction, which was first announced last November. Regional issuers had largely written off the Spac route to market back in 2023 — AIR is the latest to signal that it may be worth revisiting.

Saudi’s Sumou Holding is making its Egypt debut with an EGP 70 bn mixed-use project in New Cairo, launched via a JV between its investment arm Adeer International and Egypt’s Paragon Developments, according to a press release (pdf). Sumou Boulevard — at 500k sqm — is a template for marrying Saudi capital with Egyptian execution, and a model the two sides will look to replicate across the region.

The Egyptian government is readying big state-owned oil and gas players for possible listing on the EGX, our Egypt desk reports, saying as many as 10 petroleum-related companies could be on deck, including services giant Enppi (which has been on deck to IPO since before covid) and the General Petroleum Corporation. Administrative procedures could be in place by summer, including temporary listings, but the actual sell-downs will come one at a time as bankers test appetite and build the pool of potential strategic buyers.

MEANWHILE- CapitalMed is heading toward a 25% float on the EGX in 2Q 2026, targeting an EGP 2 bn raise, per reports in the press that confirm what former EGX head and FRA Executive Chairman Islam Azzam hinted at to EnterpriseAM earlier this year. The 144-acre Badr City medical complex — developed by Hassan El Kalla’s Egyptians for Healthcare Services (EHCS), with CIRA holding 28% — would list at around EGP 8 bn by our math.

Uhm, Enterprise… how is a preprofit venture going public? Article 7 of the Capital Market Law lets greenfield projects list without two years of audited earnings, provided they show a path to black within three.

Abu Dhabi-based AppliedAI is taking its enterprise AI model to Asia: UAE–based AI firm AppliedAI is expanding into Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong this month, along with launching its latest platform Opus 2.0, according to a press release (pdf). The firm counts state AI firm G42, Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, and tech and telecom giant e& among its backers. AppliedAI is targeting regulated sectors including banking, ins., and healthcare.

These markets stand out for their regulatory depth and sector concentration, founder and CEO Arya H. Bolurfrushan tells EnterpriseAM. The operating model is intentionally hands-on, he said, adding that “AI adoption will be extremely localized […] You want folks to be in the office with you, helping you go through this, because it is your core process.”

Abu Dhabi’s Masdar and Montenegro’s state utility EPCG agreed to set up a 50/50 joint venture, which will develop large-scale renewable projects in the Balkan nation. The JV will focus on solar PV, wind, hydropower, pumped hydro energy storage, standalone battery energy storage systems, and hybrid solutions. The JV will serve domestic demand and look to export power to the Western Balkans and Southeastern Europe.

ALSO WORTH KNOWING TODAY-

Ashmore Saudi Arabia’s Education Investment Fund closed its second acquisition, buying Matrix International Schools and Wahat Al Alson School in Riyadh. The fund is working to build a scalable K-12 platform and deploy c. SAR 1 bn into the sector, with an eventual Tadawul listing potentially in the cards.

A consortium led by Samih Sawiris’ SOSTNT is deploying EUR 200 mn to restart the long-stalled Mogador resort in Morocco — joined by the UAE’s Al Nowais, Egypt’s Sunrise Resorts & Cruises, and the Orascom Construction–Besix JV, per EnterpriseAM reporting. The build lines up with Morocco’s push to hit 26 mn annual tourists ahead of the 2030 World Cup.

AD Ports Group sold three warehouses in its Kezad Logistics Park to Aldar Propertiesfor AED 650 mn, completing 65% of its AED 1 bn asset-monetization target for 2026 in one go. The deal extends an asset-recycling loop between the two Abu Dhabi heavyweights — Aldar gets scaled logistics yield, AD Ports frees up the balance sheet.

Abu Dhabi healthtech conglomerate M42 pushing deeper into Latin America, with renal-care subsidiary Diaverumacquiring four dialysis clinics in Brazil’s São Paulo state. The deal brings Diaverum’s Brazilian network to 18 clinics and 220k treatments a year.

Market Snapshot

Tadawul -1.2% • ADX -0.4% • DFM -0.67% • EGX30 0.79%

Brent USD 106.13 / bbl • Gold USD 4,708 / oz • USD / SAR 3.75 • USD / EGP 52.52

A new shortcut

Watch this space

An idled Iraq-Turkey pipeline link could reopen — soon? Iraq is finalizing pressure testing on an idled pipeline connected to Ceyhan in Turkey — and is saying it would start pumping crude through it soon. The pipeline, out of service since 2014 after it was damaged during fighting with ISIS, has been undergoing intense repairs over the last month.

Uh, isn’t there already a 900-km Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline? Yes, but this pipeline is different-ish. While the pipeline ultimately moves between the same points, it’s more of a 300-km patch that connects to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline at Iraq’s Baiji and Turkey’s Fishkhabour, effectively bypassing Kurdistan altogether. It also has more capacity at 1.6 mn bbl/d — the Kirkuk-Ceyhan now moves just 200k bbl/d.

The revived pipeline would be a boost for both Iraq and the global oil markets, but only if there are sufficient flows to take advantage of it. Before the US and Israel started bombing Iran. Iraq accounted for some 20% of crude that shipped through Hormuz — more than 90% of Iraq’s 3.3 mn bbl/d of crude exports flow through the chokepoint. Iraq is now exporting just 580k bbl/d (an average of March exports), leaving a big hole in state coffers — 90% of state revenues come from hydrocarbon exports.

CALENDAR

April 2026

25 Apr — Sinai Liberation Day (public-sector holiday — government offices closed). Egypt

28-29 Apr — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

28 Apr-1 May — Syria HiTech International ICT Exhibition. Damascus, Syria

May 2026

12 May — Qatar Economic Forum (through 14 May). Qatar

21 May — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

25 May — Independence Day (public holiday, markets closed). Jordan

27-30 May — Eid Al Adha (public holiday, markets closed). Region-wide

28 May — Saudi Aramco ex-dividend date. Saudi Arabia

June 2026

7 June — OPEC+ ministerial meeting. Vienna/Virtual

9 June — King Abdullah II Accession Day (public holiday, markets closed). Jordan

10–14 June — Syria Buildex International Construction Exhibition. Syria

16-17 June — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

July 2026

5 July — Independence Day (public holiday, markets closed). Algeria

9 July — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

14 July — Republic Day (public holiday, markets closed). Iraq

23 July — Revolution Day (public holiday, markets closed). Egypt

25 July — Republic Day (public holiday, markets closed). Tunisia

28-29 July — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

30 July — Throne Day (public holiday, markets closed). Morocco

August 2026

13 Aug — Women’s National Day. Tunisia

20 Aug — Revolution of the King and the People Day (public holiday, markets closed). Morocco

20 Aug — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

21 Aug — Youth Day (public holiday, markets closed). Morocco

25 Aug — Prophet’s Birthday (public holiday, markets closed) — TBD. Region-wide

31 Aug-3 Sep — LEAP technology conference. Saudi Arabia

September 2026

7-9 Sep — AIM Congress. UAE

15-16 Sep — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

15 Sep — IMF’s eighth review of Egypt’s USD 8 bn EFF arrangement. Egypt

16-17 Sep — Middle East Banking Innovation Summit. UAE

23 Sep — National Day (public holiday, markets closed). Saudi Arabia

24 Sep — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

30 Sep-3 Oct — Cityscape Egypt 2026. Egypt

October 2026

3 Oct — National Day (public holiday, markets closed). Iraq

6 Oct — Armed Forces Day (public holiday, markets closed). Egypt

15 Oct — GCC Made in the Gulf Forum + Exhibition. TBD

25 Oct — Liberation Day (public holiday, markets closed). Libya

25-27 Oct — World Investment Forum 2026. Qatar

26-29 Oct — Future Investment Initiative. Saudi Arabia

27-28 Oct — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

29 Oct — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

November 2026

1 Nov — Revolution Anniversary (public holiday, markets closed). Algeria

2 Nov — Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition + Conference (ADIPEC) opens (through 5 Nov). UAE

6 Nov — Green March Anniversary (public holiday, markets closed). Morocco

16 Nov — Cityscape Global begins (through 19 Nov). Saudi Arabia

December 2026

17 Dec — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

Sections

About

Privacy & Support

Get EnterpriseAM daily

Crude awakening

An independent publication supported by

Today at a glance

The message from the UAE: It’s extra BAU

Related

Crude awakening

Related

A swap, not a sop

Related

Chokehold

Related

That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Related

Buying time

Related

Saudi equities, Euro access

Related

A new shortcut

Related

CALENDAR

Related

About

Privacy & Support

My EnterpriseAM

Sign in

Check your email! We've sent you a magic link to sign in.