Changing playbooks

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OPENING NOTE

All volatility, all the time…

Good morning, wonderful people. With no end to the war in sight and weeks to go before summer vacation season really gets underway, sentiment is drab across MENA+. (Maybe Morocco is the exception? They seem _relatively_ happy over there…?)

Two of the three big regional IPOs on which bankers had been counting have now pulled the plug after Saudi contractor Mutlaq Al Ghowairi yanked its USD 800 mn Tadawul offering. It did so shortly after our Egypt desk reported that Banque du Caire had decided to make it official and push to the fall window.

^^ We have the rundown, plus a look at how the Qatar Investment Authority’s strategy is changing as the war grinds on, in this morning’s news well, below.

No regional IPOS will mean just a little bit more liquidity from our part of the world chasing SpaceX shares. The world’s largest IPO is priced at USD 135 per share, with allocation set for Thursday and the start of trading to take place Friday. Elon is counting on retail investors all over the planet to make him the world’s first trillionaire.

Watch the volatility: BNP Paribas thinks investors around the world may liquidate as much USD 50 bn in other stocks to snap up positions in SpaceX — but CoinDesk says it has so far found no signs folks are selling-down their crypto holdings to take a piece of Elon.

Today’s point-counterpoint: With no sign that the war in the Gulf is about to end, our new reality is about positioning ourselves for the eventual (🤲) upswing while absorbing short-term pain.

POINT- Private credit heavyweight Blue Owl, facing redemptions amid stress in its core market, opened its regional HQ in Abu Dhabi, it said in a statement. By our count, it follows at least 15 other heavyweights including Bain, Barings, and Capital Group into ADGM and DIFC since the war began. Blue Owl already has deep roots in the UAE, including with Lunate and Mubadala.

COUNTERPOINT- One in four UAE employers plans to cut headcount in the third quarter (up from just 7% three months ago) and net hiring sentiment has collapsed 43 points q-o-q to +17%, according to ManpowerGroup’s latest Employment Outlook Survey (pdf) of UAE employers. (The UAE is the only Arab economy in MENA+ covered by ManpowerGroup.)

The upside: Finance and healthcare companies still expect to hire, the survey found.

FINALLY- CTOs aren’t the only ones who will want to read our sitdown on cybersecurity with Mashreq’s information security lead. CEOs and leaders of any business that relies on digital infrastructure will want to give it a think. –Patrick

Changing the playbook

The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) entered this year in expansion mode on expectations of rising LNG revenues, with plans to increase allocations in the US and other Western markets while deepening exposure to AI (hello, SpaceX IPO…), infrastructure and strategic industries. The war in the Gulf upended the math by taking away the LNG revenue tailwinds Qatar was expecting to finance the playbook.

How bad was the hit? Iranian strikes have taken out around 17% of Qatar’s LNG export capacity, cutting annual revenue by an estimated USD 20 bn. Repairing the damage to Qatar’s LNG facilities and restoring its exports to pre-war levels could take up to five years, industry estimates suggest. The IMF now expects Qatar’s GDP to contract by around 6.0% this year.

What does this all mean for the QIA’s evolving investment strategy and risk management moving forward? We spoke with Azad Zangana, head of GCC macroeconomic analysis at Oxford Economics, to map out the war’s shocks and how the sovereign wealth fund could adapt. Edited excerpts below:

EnterpriseAM: How serious is the short-term economic disruption, and what does it mean for QIA’s strategy?

Azad Zangana: The current events have essentially changed the risk profile for the QIA. Prior to the war, the general assumption was always: Here’s a portion that goes into illiquid assets — we might need it in 50 years, or in 100 years. Now, the answer is, actually, we might need this in a year or two.

The need to diversify has gone up, but so has the need for liquid capital. Going forward, they will hold more liquid assets. That means going into public markets rather than buying another building or a shopping center. This will be the near-term change.

In the near term, there's going to be a pause to think about where capital is most required at this point in time. We're generally assuming that shipping fully resumes by the third quarter, so we're talking about four or five months worth of lost revenues. It is not enough to change long-term plans. It might lead to some short-term pain, but it’s much more about shoring things up in the short term and making sure that there’s enough capital flowing, because things like day-to-day government spending, including salaries, would typically be paid out of revenues coming in. If those revenues are stopped — which they have, as far as we can tell — then that needs to be paid for in a different way. One avenue is the repatriation of some of this capital.

I don’t think there’s going to be a sudden big change in strategy. What might shift, however, is that we could see a prioritization of holding onto more local, liquid capital in case of future emergencies.

The real worry emerges when we’re three or four months down the line and shipping is still halted — that’s a different story and is much more serious. You’ll start seeing greater liquidation of private holdings and private assets and then repatriation of that capital.

I don’t think we’re there yet. There have likely been some sales of liquid assets in public markets like equities and bonds, rather than private assets, to shoulder the smallest liquidation loss. The fund may have started some contingency planning to consider questions like: If we had to sell something that is very illiquid, what’s the best thing to sell? Can we start the process now for the end of the year?

EnterpriseAM: How could a prolonged disruption in LNG revenues affect the QIA’s role in stabilizing the economy?

AZ: Qatar is probably the most negatively impacted country in the GCC at this point in time. Bahrain and Kuwait are also unable to export, but they’ve been able to store some of the oil they produce, which can then be exported later. There’s a degree to which they can catch up. The problem with Qatar is that storing LNG is very expensive, so that’s not happening — they’ve just shut down production altogether and there is a genuine period of lost output and revenues.

Banks are vulnerable and are concerned with their exposure — who they’ve lent money to and those borrowers’ ability to repay, all of which depends on where the borrowers’ revenues are coming from. If they’ve lent to property developers, for example, there’s a degree of certainty these developers will complete their projects, then sell or lease the projects so they can make an earning and repay the loans. When it comes to government lending, they’re going to be quite dependent on the LNG revenues to be able to disperse that capital and repay those loans as well. So there is definitely exposure, and the longer this exists, the greater the potential for losses to occur.

In any case, Qatar holds a tremendous amount of overseas reserves that it can repatriate and probably cover the banking system for well over a year if it needed to. The question will be whether they want to use these reserves or if there is a better way to protect the state’s capital.

EnterpriseAM: Could the heightened security risk now accelerate the QIA’s strategy away from trophy acquisitions and toward more liquid or strategic investments?

AZ: We’ve seen a reduction in the amount of investment going into sports and sporting activities, especially overseas. That could certainly be an area that suffers, because although it generates good advertising for Qatar, the question is what’s the real value of that versus working in a sector to generate tangible returns and productivity gains as well over a long time? A similar reconsideration could go into some property holdings in the West — they’ll need to think about the ROI now and in the future, and whether there are better places to invest or if it’s a matter of changing how much property they hold.

Travel and tourism has been an important area, and I think that will continue to be the case. Even with the current shock to the sector, the long-term outlook is incredibly strong. It’s important for Qatar to keep competing and building out that sector. Investment in IT and artificial intelligence are also going to be very important as a global trend.

Renewable energy is going to be very important too. Combining that with the other investments that are going on is also going to be key. But there’s got to be more than that. They can’t just rely on big trends, because everybody else is doing the same thing. They have to think about other areas in terms of manufacturing that they can go into.

One thing that this crisis has really exposed is the import dependence of the region to the rest of the world. Food inflation in Qatar has absolutely shot up in the last few months because not enough agricultural produce is produced within the region that’s easy to import. They have to look at food security and see if there’s a way that they can produce more locally, even if it's more expensive.

Then there are strategic investments, which are focused on not just making as much money as possible, but thinking about how Qatar can benefit from having exposure to these areas. Investing in AI in the US enables Qatar to learn about AI from the West and bring some of that technology home. That direction of strategic investment will continue.

Pulling the plug

Bankers have pulled the plug on the much-watched USD 800 mn Tadawul IPO of contractor Mutlaq Al Ghowairi — which only opened bookbuilding days earlier, the company said in a statement. Real estate player Arabian Dyar, eyeing a SAR 16 bn valuation, is pulling back, too.

The strange part: The books were covered. Shareholders got cold feet on post-listing performance after last week’s strikes on Kuwait and Bahrain, Bloomberg reports, with some investors scaling back orders as the ceasefire wobbled. MGC was meant to be the Gulf’s first major listing since the war began, the bellwether for infrastructure-sector confidence, and the first test of Saudi’s new guidance encouraging issuers to hand retail investors up to 30% of an offering.

IN CONTEXT- Newly listed names are holding up: IT services firm Dar Albalad climbed 28% on its Tadawul debut last month and still trades roughly 41% above its IPO price, and Tadawul stayed in the green through the thick of the war. “Once visibility improves, particularly on oil prices and regional stability, expect issuers to come back, possibly with repriced expectations,” Riyadh-based investment banker Mustafa Fahim told EnterpriseAM.

What to watch next: Will Oman India Fertilizer Co. push ahead with plans to list in Muscat ? The company is a rich dividend play with a captive market in India. Egypt’s Banque du Caire — the third big regional IPO in the pipeline — is also out of the market for now, with our Egypt desk reporting the bank has push ed to the fall window.

Saudi quick-commerce player Ninja is sizing up Delivery Hero’s Middle East portfolio, the FT reports. Riyadh-based Ninja would start with HungerStation, Delivery Hero‘s Saudi unit, which would be easier to integrate and face fewer regulatory hurdles, and could partner with another buyer to make an offer for parts of Dubai-listed Talabat.

BACKGROUND- The dark-store grocery player hit a USD 1.5 bn valuation last July and has banks lined up for a potential c. USD 1 bn Tadawul listing of its own — and two of its founders know the target well, one having helped establish HungerStation, another being a Delivery Hero and Gorillas alum.

Big global infra investors still have appetite for Kuwait’s USD 7.5 bn pipeline deal. BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, Brookfield, EIG, Apollo, and KKR are through to the next round of bidding for a stake in KPC’s crude pipeline network, Bloomberg reports.

In context: Aramco is lining up divestments worth as much as USD 35 bn across energy facilities and real estate.

Who doesn’t like some fried chicken and a Timmy’s? UAE SWF Mubadala has hired advisers to prepare a bid for Restaurant Brands Europe — the Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons operator across Spain and Portugal — Spanish daily Expansión reports. The business could fetch EUR 2-3 bn including debt. Abu Dhabi isn’t alone: Meritage and Apollo are also said to be circling.

Cairo headquartered fintech giant MNT-Halan hit a USD 1.4 bn valuation on the first close of a strategic round led by Al Ahly Capital, the National Bank of Egypt’s USD 2.5 bn investment arm, according to a company statement (pdf). The size and stake weren’t disclosed, and a second close is in the works.

Why it matters: MNT-Halan has worked with 30-plus banks, but this is the first time a commercial lender has taken equity — and it lands right after the CBE tightened how banks fund non-bank lenders. MNT-Halan has spent the past two years turning itself from an Egyptian upstart into a multi-market power player — buying Advans Pakistan Microfinance Bank and Turkey’s Tam Finans in 2024 and launching Halan Advance in the UAE. The new money is earmarked for Egyptian SMEs and a new push in the the Gulf.

Dubai Islamic Bank priced a USD 1 bn perpetual non-call six-year AT1 sukuk yesterday, drawing a book north of USD 1.85 bn, per Zawya — a day after mandating the deal. The Mudaraba paper will list on Euronext Dublin and Nasdaq Dubai, with eleven joint leads on the transaction including our friends at HSBC and KFH Capital.

DIB is the fifth Gulf bank into the AT1 pool since the war began, by our math, following Emirates NBD (USD 750 mn), Saudi Investment Bank (SAR 1.85 bn), Alinma Bank (twin SAR and USD issuances), and Oman Arab Bank (USD 400 mn).

The IMF isn’t sure it likes FAB’s USD 5 bn total return swap with Nigeria, warning in an Article IV consultation that the structure is opaque and warning that “high collateral and possible margin calls introduce additional fiscal risks and could give rise to political constraints on monetary or exchange-rate policy.”

Also worth knowing this morning

Octo Management Consultancies, the UAE alternative investment manager, is partnering with Bahrain’s GFH on a USD 300 mn logistics and industrial real estate platform spanning the UAE and Saudi, according to a statement.

BP is folding five Egyptian gas concessions into its joint venture with Adnoc after getting approval from the regulator.

The Royal Commission for Makkah City and Holy Sites awarded SAR 13.3 bn of redevelopment projects across six sites, each structured through closed-ended real estate funds, with developers and fund managers financing and delivering work the state budget used to carry.

Julphar, the Ras Al Khaimah-based, ADX-listed drugmaker, has completed the sale of its Health First Pharmacy chain in the UAE to Albatha Group, the family-owned Emirati conglomerate whose 25-plus companies span automotive, healthcare, engineering, FMCG, and real estate, according to a press release (pdf).

Alcazar Energy, the UAE-based renewables investor, has signed a USD 420 mn agreement to operate, maintain, and upgrade Egypt’s 580 MW Gabal El Zeit wind farm.

Kuwait rolled over its USD 2 bn deposit at the Central Bank of Egypt for another year after it matured in April, as Egypt’s reserves extend a record streak to USD 53.13 bn.

Adnoc is weighing Canadian upstream and LNG investments through its international arm XRG, Upstream CEO Musabbeh Al Kaabi told R euters.

Market Snapshot

Tadawul 1.3% • ADX 0.8% • DFM 0.9% • EGX30 1.0%

Brent USD 91.88 / bbl • Gold USD 4,224 / oz • USD / SAR 3.75 • USD / EGP 51.72

Mr. Robot’s nightmare

Resilience is a newly critical fixed cost in banking — and not every bank will be able to pay it. That’s the blunt assessment of Mashreq Group Chief Information Security Officer Olivier Busolini, whose bank responded to March’s attacks by re-architecting for a scenario the Gulf’s risk models never priced in: The UAE itself going dark.

The digital-first bank is re-architecting its cloud to fail over to regions outside the Gulf, treating geographic redundancy as a core control rather than a nice-to-have — and, pending regulatory approval, preparing to hold backup copies of critical data in Europe and Asia. The lesson of March, Busolini says, is that same-region redundancy protects you from a data center failure, not from a war.

When we mapped last month how geopolitical volatility and AI are reshaping regionalcybersecurity, we argued that the convergence of physical conflict and digital attacks was breaking the old corporate risk models. Mashreq’s playbook shows what replacing them looks like in practice.

Among the key takeaways, Busolini walks us through:

How the definition of resilience has shifted from “can we recover?” to “can we continue operating?”
How the bank is looking for regulatory approval to move key backups outside our region;
Why its expansions in Egypt and Pakistan are built as sealed, digitally sovereign compartments to hedge against the possibility of a breach in one market cascading to others;
What a “minimum viable bank” costs to keep standing
What the cost of additional resilience could mean to smaller lenders;
And the three ways he convinces other execs and boards to think through wartime investment in capex on cybersecurity.

EnterpriseAM: Iranian strikes took down data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, at least two of which have never recovered. How did that change how you think about resilience and being cloud-first?

Olivier Busolini: The events of March did not reverse Mashreq’s cloud‑first strategy, but they materially refined how cloud resilience is defined and engineered. Our internal decisions shifted away from assuming that same‑region redundancy provides sufficient resilience during geopolitical escalation. Same-region redundancy protects against data‑center failures, not regional or geopolitical outages. As a result, the strategic response has focused on re‑architecting for geographic‑independent failover.

Core banking and ledger platforms remain on hardened, regulator-approved on‑premise environments, consistent with existing regulatory and operational models, as reflected in Mashreq’s resilience plans. At the same time, we’re redesigning cloud‑based systems toward primary-secondary or active-active multi‑region models, including regions outside the Gulf, to reduce the shared geopolitical blast radius.

[These are two different ways of running backup systems across different geographies to ensure a bank stays online. A primary-secondary model works like a main computer and a standby backup: If a crisis knocks-out the main region, the bank has to flip a switch to wake up the secondary region and take over. An active-active model works like a multi-engine airplane: Both regions are fully awake and processing live customer data simultaneously.]

Selective externalization is the name of the game. This means backups and archives migrating to Europe or Asia for cyber and regional‑outage resilience. It also means cross‑region designs for cloud security and monitoring platforms, specifically to remain operational if UAE regions are unavailable. We’re in the design phase and, in some cases, have prepared plans that are pending regulatory approval.

This doesn’t mean relocating the bank, but ensuring cognitive continuity, as in the ability for monitoring, decision‑making, data recovery, and command‑and‑control during regional disruption. We’re positioning this as ‘cloud maturity,’ not ‘cloud retreat’ — it’s not about “Can we recover?” but “How can we continue operating?”

EnterpriseAM: We reported on an 8x surge in DDoS attacks in March. Is your intelligence team see any signs of the use of adaptive AI bots — specifically, those that can autonomously change their traffic signatures or attack tactics once they’re throttled by your defenses?

OB: We haven’t seen confirmed evidence of fully autonomous, self‑adapting AI botnets dynamically mutating attack signatures in real time. The March DDoS surge was predominantly driven by hacktivist‑style DDoS campaigns characterized by high volume, rapid coordination across groups, and sustained, rolling attacks across multiple days and geographies.

The dominant behavior was human‑directed adaptation, not autonomous AI adaptation. The human behavior pattern included manual switching, HTTP floods, and application‑layer pressure, as in re‑targeting banks and public‑facing portals as defenses were activated. Those attacks were loud, visible, and symbolic, rather than stealth‑driven. While fully autonomous adaptive botnets have not been observed, we’re acutely aware — through external advisories — that AI‑accelerated offensive capabilities are emerging, particularly in exploit discovery and chaining, rather than DDoS traffic shaping itself. Current data shows limited evidence of APT‑level, destructive tooling.

EnterpriseAM: How should other institutions think through the capex piece?

OB: We used three principles that we think are widely applicable. First, we defined what a “minimum viable bank” looked like and set out to deliver that, not maximum fortification. That means ensuring the bank can continue operating a critical subset of services. In our case, that meant core ledgers, payment, treasury, and regulatory reporting systems and essential security, identity, and data‑preservation capabilities — not full operations.

You also want to see those investments be “reversible” where possible. Think about temporary cross‑region data copies, additional cloud capacity, and backup preservation.

And when you’re making your case, always set out the cost of prevention in the context of the cost of outage. Spending on resilience is easy to quantify — the cost of regulatory exposure, inability to clear payments or meet obligations, and long‑tail reputational harm are existential. This isn’t about incremental IT spend, it’s about reputation and delivering on our promises.

Tap or click here to continue reading the full interview on our website.

This is fine

More fighting, but the ceasefire is fine? Iran exchanged yet more attacks with US and its neighbors in the region yesterday and overnight, starting with Iran shooting down a US Army Apache near the coast of Oman yesterday. Washington launched retaliatory strikes last night in what it called “a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” hitting air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded by attacking US bases in Bahrain and Jordan, as well as Kuwait.

Despite the back-and-forth hits, Washington reportedly thinks peace talks won’t be negatively affected, according to officials. Still, the negotiations are fraught at best, particularly as the talks between Israel and Lebanon — which Iran has made clear is a requirement for its own peace agreement — is still up in the air. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun made a direct appeal earlier this week to Israel to come to the negotiating table for a non-aggression pact (not a full peace deal) rather than pushing ahead with its military aggression against Lebanon.

The shaky peace talks are reviving a long fraught risk for global shipping and energy markets: A blockade of Bab Al Mandab. Yemen’s Houthis threatened on Monday to reinstate its policy of attacking Israel-linked vessels — a threat that was broad and unpredictable enough to bring a major halt to shipping through the Red Sea chokepoint for almost two years previously.

REMEMBER- Houthis sat on the sidelines for most of the US-Israel-Iran escalation over the last three months, with pundits saying early in the conflict that Iran was keeping the Yemeni militant group on the sideline as a strategic winning card if things get bad. During Israel’s war on Gaza, the Houthis attacks saw global carriers divert vessels en-masse away from the Red Sea to the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope.

What this means for the Suez Canal and Asia: The Suez Canal could regain GCC-Asia flows of critical goods that must keep moving — like Saudi crude, GCC fertilizers, aluminum, and food — even as Europe-Asia carriers again reroute via the Cape of Good Hope. Asia gets the worst of it: Higher costs and longer lead times across both corridors. Big shippers are risk-averse and shift quickly — which is easier now given surplus capacity due to new deliveries, as our LogisticsAM desk previously reported. If the Houthis do launch an attack, both GCC-Asia and Europe-Asia flows hit Suez or the Cape almost overnight.

Top of the class

Morocco is having a moment in the sun: Morocco’s economy grew at a 4.9% clip in 2025, accelerating from 4.4% the year before, according to data from the country’s High Commission for Planning.

A rebound in agriculture did much of the heavy lifting, growing 7.1% after contracting 5.1% in 2024, with agricultural value added rising 8.2% in 2025. That figure had dropped 5.7% the previous year. Investment was the other standout, with gross investment rising 16.3% — 2.4 percentage points higher than 2024. On the downside, Morocco’s trade balance weighed on growth, with import growth (+9.0%) outpacing exports (+6.6%).

Beyond the headline growth, Morocco’s industrial horsepower drew its own recognition. Morocco overtook South Africa to become the highest-ranked industrial economy in Africa for the first time on record, according to the African Development Bank’s Industrialization Index for 2025 (pdf). The bank credited sustained industrial upgrading, export diversification, and “effective implementation of strategic industrial policy.”

The reversal is as much about Pretoria as it is about Rabat: South Africa, still described as a “continental industrial powerhouse,” continues a long, gradual slide in industrial competitiveness. The two countries lead a small group of North African frontrunners, alongside Egypt and Tunisia, that the report says continue to outperform their peers by a wide margin.

The industrial success story shows in the data: Morocco’s automotive sector — now the country’s leading export category — generated MAD 58.28 bn (USD 6.3 bn) in export revenues in the first four months of 2026, rising 18.6% y-o-y. Car assembly was the fastest-growing segment, with exports growing 33.5% y-o-y to MAD 23.9 bn (USD 2.6 bn), while the wiring harness segment rose 16.1% y-o-y. The gains weren’t universal across the sector — textiles and leather, electronics, and phosphate derivatives all slipped over the period.

For sale

Saudi Arabia is putting more of its football on the market, opening bidding on five more clubs — Al Riyadh, Al Fateh, Abha, Al Tai, and Al Shoulla — spanning the Saudi Pro League, First Division, and Second Division, our Saudi desk reports. Investors have until 5 July to file prequalification applications under the Sports Clubs Investment and Privatization Project. The Sports Ministry says it is matching each club’s readiness against buyer seriousness rather than rushing clubs out the door.

The pipeline is building: Expressions of interest (EOI) will stay open on a rolling basis, and a deal takes 8-10 months to close once a buyer surfaces. More than 80 EOIs are now registered across 22 clubs. The government has completed transactions on 11 clubs and two more — Al Najma and Al Akhdoud — are close to contract signing, Ibrahim AlMoaiqel, assistant deputy minister for investment and privatization, said last week. The Al Akhdoud privatization stalled last year after interested investors failed to meet the requirements.

The pitch to buyers: Get in early. “We intend to bring more clubs to the market over the next few months,” AlMoaiqel said, likening the current moment to the run-up to Major League Soccer’s value surge before the 2026 World Cup in North America. Saudi Arabia is looking to boost club valuations ahead of the 2034 World Cup by deepening commercial activity and investment.

The model has shifted from spending to selling. Riyadh restructured the sector in 2023, folding its four biggest clubs (Al Hilal, Al Nassr, Al Ittihad, and Al Ahli) into companies that are majority-owned by the PIF, and bankrolling a wave of marquee signings. The fund agreed to offload 70% of Al Hilal to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Company at an SAR 1.4 bn (USD 373 mn) enterprise value — its first sell-down, and the first club offered to a corporate buyer.

Out of step

Middle East tech stocks are approaching bear-market territory, with Magnitt’s new Magnitt Tech Index (MGTI) down 17.8% YTD on the back of the regional conflict, the venture intelligence platform said in a press release (pdf).

MGTI tracks 15 tech firms across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt worth a combined USD 11.1 bn — six in Saudi Arabia, six in the UAE, two in Egypt, and a single company in Morocco. Quantitative benchmarks used for inclusion require companies to have at least 50% of their revenues attributed to proprietary tech, a free market cap no less than USD 50 mn, and a daily average trading volume of USD 500k or more

Trailing the global peer set: MGTI returned 76% over three years (2023-25), against 133% for MSCI’s emerging markets tech index, the MSCI EM IT. The gap reflects MENA tech’s limited exposure to AI and semiconductors, plus the devaluation of the EGP, which erased some 38% of Fawry and 31% of e-finance’s USD value.

IN CONTEXT- AI-linked firms have driven one of the most sustained stock market rallies globally in recent memory. Bloomberg reported last month that the AI rally is currently delivering momentum investors their best returns in decades. Some individual names have seen staggering gains — SanDisk shares, buoyed by AI’s data storage demands, have climbed more than 600% this year.

New ground

Open house

Qatar has widened the door to foreign real estate investment, adding the Simaisma Resort and Beach Project to the list of zones where non-Qataris are allowed to own property. The change, which Qatar’s cabinet approved this week, amends the country’s 2020 framework governing foreign ownership and usufruct rights in designated areas in a move that’s being framed as part of a broader push to attract international capital and diversify the economy beyond hydrocarbons.

Simaisma now joins a roster of approved zones that includes West Bay Lagoon, Al Dafna, Lusail, Al Khor resort, and Jabal Thaileb, among others. In choosing Simaisma — which is being developed by Qatari Diar into one of the country’s largest tourism and leisure destinations — Doha is looking to offer up an attractive option for private-sector participation and non-oil FDI.

Easing the squeeze

Saudi Arabia slashed its official selling price for crude oil to Asia for July, bringing the price down by USD 6 / bbl to a premium of USD 9.50 / bbl above average quotes for Oman and Dubai. The pricing change matched up with industry expectations and comes as demand is waning in Asia, with consumers struggling to keep pace with higher prices, which in turn brought refining margins under pressure.

Building backup

Kuwait tapped India’s engineering contractor major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) to upgrade the country’s existing oil storage and export network. The USD 992 mn upgrade would reportedly see L&T build new storage and integrate systems that allow Kuwait to handle more than one crude stream across the export system.

As one of the most vulnerable GCC exporters, Kuwait has been scrambling to build hedges against disruptions, but none offer immediate solutions. It is reportedly in discussions with Pakistan over crude storage buildout and it awarded around USD 1.5 bn in crude pipeline contracts earlier this year.

Farm to table

Saudi Arabia is turning to Russia to help shore up its food security and boost localization, with the two countries signing 13 agreements worth a combined SAR 4.8 bn (USD 1.28 bn), the Saudi Press Agency reports. The agreements cover the localization of veterinary vaccines, securing livestock feed, and the export of Saudi fish, camel milk, and coffee. The agreements come after Saudi Arabia and Russia set a target of USD 1.46 bn in Russian investments over the next five years.

Two for Damascus

Saudi real estate firm Abyat is launching two new developments in Damascus worth more than USD 2 bn combined, according to state news agency Sana. The developments include Abyat Hills in Damascus’ Qudsaya E3 suburb, with a four-year completion timeline, and the larger Modern Urban Cluster in Al Bajaa, which is expected to be developed over eight years.

The developments extend Riyadh’s post-war Syria playbook — leading Saudi businesses into strategic sectors to secure an early commercial foothold, rather than writing aid checks. This builds on SAR 24 bn of agreements signed at the July 2025 Saudi-Syrian Investment Forum.

Staggering

Ouch…

Canceled contracts don’t go away for free: Neom looks set to spend more on canceling contracts than on new projects over the next five years, with SAR 60 bn (USD 16 bn) penciled into its 2026-2030 budget for contractor termination payouts and penalty clauses, Semafor reports. That figure outpaces the SAR 40 bn (USD 10.7 bn) planned for new infrastructure spending, most of which is earmarked for Oxagon’s industrial city and utilities. Neom did not respond to our requests for comment as of this writing.

Background: Saudi Arabia has been scrapping a few Neom-gigaproject-related contracts following a comprehensive review after years of delays, design challenges, and cost overruns. Scrapped projects include multi-bn-USD contracts to build a freshwater lake at Trojena and a USD 1 bn tunneling contract at Neom’s The Line.

Fading

Is LIV Golf’s funding drying up? The Public Investment Fund’s remaining LIV Golf funding may not be enough to cover the 2026 season in full, Front Office Sports reports. The league’s cancellation of its New Orleans tournament and the 47-day gap until its next scheduled event reportedly raised concerns about the stability of the calendar and the durability of the fund’s backing.

LIV currently receives funding from the PIF every month and is still operating on the assumption that those payments will continue through the season, an unnamed league source told the news outlet. CEO Scott O’Neill said the league has begun reaching out to prospective partners as it looks to attract new investments. LIV Golf was reportedly exploring a US bankruptcy filing as a worst-case scenario if its search for new capital falls short.

CALENDAR

June 2026

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

11 June — Central Bank of Turkey monetary policy decision. Turkey

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

21-24 June — Afreximbank Annual Meetings. Egypt

July 2026

2 July — Parliamentary elections. Algeria

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

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