Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We begin the last week of September with a verdict handed down to Manchester City, while Washington and Beijing are doing a better job of building bridges than Washington and Tehran.
An independent commission has found Manchester City in breach of 114 of the 115 charges the Premier League brought against it, the Financial Times reports — a verdict against a club owned by one of Abu Dhabi's most senior royals, arriving just as UK-UAE relations settle back onto firm ground. The findings have not been published and sanctions are undetermined. Club Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who also runs Mubadala, told fans the process is ongoing “with significant elements to be completed” and repeated the club’s denial of wrongdoing.
The charges,brought in February 2023after a multi-year investigation, cover the 2009/10 to 2017/18 seasons: Financial reporting including sponsorship revenue and related-party dealings, manager and player remuneration, compliance with Premier League and UEFA rules, and cooperation with the investigation itself. If the findings survive what is left of the process, the sanctions range from fines and points deductions to compensation for rival clubs or expulsion from the league.
Washington and Beijing cut tariffs on USD 60 bn of trade, and Chinese equities sold off anyway. Each side put USD 30 bn of non-sensitive goods forward for better treatment — US corn, wheat, sorghum, meat, dairy, seafood, logs, cosmetics and medical devices one way; Chinese coffee makers, toasters, tableware, bed linen, toys, fireworks and Christmas decorations the other — which unlocks improved access for around 30% of US exports to China. The tariff pause runs to 10 January, and China’s Commerce Ministry said this morning it gives both sides a “relatively stable and predictable policy environment.”
Also agreed: an agriculture working group meeting before year-end, 10 mn tonnes a year of US coal in 2027 and 2028, approvals for foreign financial institutions to open in China, and more direct flights. The CSI300 still slid more than 2% to a one-year low, with tech names hit by a bipartisan US push to ban Chinese components from data centres. Soybeans, LNG and oil appear on neither list.
And on the doomsday side of things: OpenAI now says governments may be among “dozens” of entities its models reached. Websites run by governments, universities and public agencies could be affected, the New York Times reports, partly because models doing research work are pointed at authoritative sources of public information. This follows the disclosure that an OpenAI agent reached an Australian government website in June, the first known case involving a public body — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had a “frank conversation” with Sam Altman and that the company “will obviously face legal consequences.”
Both governments now say they want to manage this together. The Washington summit produced a communication channel for AI incidents and a follow-up dialogue before the end of November. Yuyuantantian, a social media account affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV, wrote on Sunday that China and the US have the ability and the responsibility to manage AI, citing Xi on keeping the technology under human control.
Altman made a version of the same argument at the UN General Assembly, saying the most important decisions “cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone.” The same CCTV-linked account used a second post to propose that Beijing and Washington jointly counter what it called Japan’s “digital militarism,” which is a useful reminder of what tends to happen to shared-risk frameworks once they meet national agendas.
On deck for the week: A nearly final draft of theagenda is livefor our upcoming EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum. We’ll be discussing what AI means for your company, your team, the economy, and your family. Some of the nation’s most senior business leaders will join us on stage to help us all think through this AI moment we’re all living through. –Salma
Private K-12 in the GCC has come through the year in better shape than operators feared in the spring, but the recovery is uneven across the region. In Qatar, premium school networks hit enrollment targets and normalized attendance after early-term wobbles, with single-gender Qatari nationals’ demand doing the heavy lifting. In Kuwait, tuition price caps, cost-of-living pressure on mid-tier expat households, and a rolling citizenship review have combined to push enrollments slightly down and squeeze margins.
Qatar’s recovery builds on a pattern wereported from the UAE last month, while Kuwait doesn’t. The UAE’s largest premium operators — Gems, Taaleem, Nord Anglia — went into September with retention and staffing intact and revised their conflict-era worst-cases down. Qatar now looks like a smaller version of that story.
A recovery paid for by Qataris
Premium operators in Qatar filled their seats, but with a different set of families than last year. All three Nord Anglia schools in Qatar hit their enrollment targets this year, and Sherborne Qatar reported 90% attendance across its five schools — the Education and Higher Education Ministry benchmark. But the composition has changed. “This year our admission status changed slightly, in that we had far more local Qatari students applying to come to the school and fewer expats,” Sherborne Qatar Chief Education Officer Jane Goldsack tells EnterpriseAM. “Less of the expat market actually joined us,” she says.
The growth is concentrated in single-gender schools. Sherborne’s boys school, launched two years ago, has grown from zero to 260 pupils. Its older co-ed campus sits at around 1.1k and its prep co-ed at 500-520 — stable, but not growing. “Our single-gender market is really taking off, mainly with Qatari pupils. The co-ed market has stayed stable,” Goldsack says.
Nord Anglia’s numbers tell the same story. Last year the group acquired Etqan Global Academy, a single-sex school that operates all-boys and all-girls academies in Qatar with a focus on Islamic values and Qatari heritage. It has added around 10% to its roll since the acquisition. “Parents are really looking for the single-sex environment far more than the cultural identity,” Nord Anglia Regional Managing Director Elizabeth Lamb tells us.
The expat-citizen divide could be a sign that the hit Qatar’s energy economy took is starting to show up in the school ledger. Nord Anglia runs a campus near the Ras Laffan gas fields, where a large share of parents work in the sector. Lamb says QatarEnergy has trimmed educational allowances for some workers there due to reduced gas exports on Hormuz disruptions “We have to provide great value for money to persuade [these] parents to keep their children in our school,” she adds.
Kuwait is going the other way
Kuwait is running the opposite play. Nord Anglia saw a slight enrollment drop across its British School of Kuwait and Sunshine Kindergarten campuses, which together still make up its largest school in the region, at more than 3.5k students. Regionally, the group’s student count rose 2% year-on-year. Kuwait dragged. “Many more people left Kuwait; some left because of the war, and others left because of the changing political situation with the government deciding to revoke citizenship,” Lamb says.
And unlike in Qatar, there’s no local-demand offset. Nord Anglia didn’t report a Kuwaiti-national surge picking up seats vacated by expat families — the base is shrinking on both sides at once. That matters for the recovery path: Qatar has a growing customer segment absorbing capacity on more single-gender offerings, while Kuwait doesn’t.
The citizenship overhaul, however, is the overarching drag as it compounds uncertainty in the market. The government has tightened naturalization rules to strip political rights from naturalized citizens, eliminate discretionary citizenship paths (long-term residency, marriage to Kuwaitis), end automatic transmission to foreign spouses, and expand state powers to revoke nationality for fraud, dual citizenship, or security offenses without judicial review. It has also cut roughly 5k teachers from the national system, Lamb says. “It’s hard to read that country and predict where the government might take things, or who will be allowed to hold residential visas to live and educate their children there,” she explains.
Same shock, different fee toolset
In neither country did an operator raise fees this year, but the reasons were not the same. In Qatar, it’s business as usual: The Education Ministry routinely holds fees flat, and Sherborne hasn’t applied a granted increase yet. In Kuwait, schools technically had headroom to raise but chose not to, because their customers are already squeezed.
“There is certainly margin squeeze in markets like Kuwait as operators could not always pass on rising teacher salaries, rents, and other expenses, especially in price-capped markets,” Junaid Ansari, head of investment strategy and research at Kamco Invest, tells EnterpriseAM.
And families aren’t waiting for the squeeze to ease. They’re going for more affordable options. Mid-level expat professionals whose housing allowances haven’t kept up with rents and school fees are being priced out of the premium tier. “Parents are actively moving toward established mid-tier operators that offer strong academics at 20% to 30% lower price points,” Ansari says.
REMEMBER- The UAE has more room to maneuver. Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority froze private school fees for the 2026/27 academic year after granting increases of up to 2.35% the year before — a fee squeeze imposed from a position of strength, not weakness. UAE operators told us in August they were absorbing it against solid earnings from the years prior, as well as a booming property market that has anchored expats in place. Kuwait has no such offset.
Teachers held, even when students didn’t
Teacher retention was surprisingly strong on both sides of the Gulf. A handful of younger expat teachers left Nord Anglia’s Qatar campuses at the peak of the conflict, but every school opened the academic year fully staffed. At Sherborne, all but one teacher returned after the summer.
But the UAE had it better. Gems reported turnover of 16-17% this year against a norm of 25% for international schools — its lowest in a decade. Taaleem lost 9% against a typical 15%, with only one percentage point tied to conflict-related departures. The Northern Gulf didn’t get quite that break: Nord Anglia’s Qatar and Kuwait recruitment cycle stretched to seven or eight months, up from the usual four or five, with some hires being made through the summer, something Lamb said was unusual for the group.
Expansion continues, but selectively
Despite resilient underlying demand, some school operators are keeping expansion plans firmly on ice. Rather than rushing to break ground on new greenfield campuses or import new brands, some players are focusing on maximizing yield and optimizing capacity across existing assets. “We are not rushing to expand our brand; instead, we are trying to improve our existing schools... we want to improve our existing provision rather than rushing to expand campuses,” says Sherborne’s Goldsack.
Others are focused on targeted, high-margin niches: Where portfolio expansion is occurring, some operators are doubling down on early-years education and localized acquisition targets. Nord Anglia, for instance, is still on offense, weighing an American-curriculum acquisition in Qatar — a segment it doesn’t yet cover there — and additional Sunshine Kindergarten sites in Kuwait City, where a recent refurbishment has drawn strong local demand.
Expansion plans in the UAE, however, are holding up more firmly. Gems announced an AED 2 bn expansion across Dubai and Abu Dhabi over the next three years. Taaleem is putting AED 1.5-2 bn toward growth, with five to six M&A targets lined up for its Kids First Group nursery arm and more premium school openings across its brands. Nord Anglia deferred a handful of UAE projects from FY28 to FY29 but still opened Harrow Dubai on time this September and expects Dubai British School Ghaf Woods and Harrow Abu Dhabi on schedule.
Supply-side pressure is building on Qatar at the same time. Goldsack notes that “more and more UK private schools are looking to shift to Qatar and the Middle East” as the UK independent sector comes under pressure at home as the market saturates there.
For investors, the long-term thesis for the education sector is intact, but deal execution has slowed. GCC private K-12 remains defensive and cash-generative, Ansari tells us, but transaction velocity has cooled. Due diligence cycles are longer, fee-approval regimes are getting more scrutiny, and enrollment pacing is harder to underwrite, he adds. And valuation multiples across smaller GCC economies have experienced a broad-based recalibration, though quality platforms in markets with fee flexibility continue to command a scarcity premium, Ansari says.
What to watch: How much of Kuwait’s enrollment drag turns out to be cyclical versus structural once the citizenship review settles; whether Qatari single-gender demand keeps growing at current rates or plateaus as capacity comes online; and whether Dubai’s fee freeze holds for a second year, which would begin to compress margins in the region’s most flexible market too.
Prospects for a lasting resolution to the regional war dimmed over the weekend. US President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire that would have seen Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart nuclear talks in exchange for Washington lifting its port blockade. Trump expects the bombardment of Iran to continue after the US midterm elections in November, officials said.
Tehran remained firm in its stance on the proposal and is maintaining that a “negotiated solution” is the only way out of the current impasse. Trump expects to resume talks this week, he told Axios, despite rejecting Iran’s proposal.
AND- Washington wants Iran’s entire fleet grounded: Any airport, ground handler, or sales agent serving any of Iran’s 27 airlines risks sanctions under a 24 August sanctions package. Tehran’s airport listed flights to China, Turkey, and Pakistan last Thursday, but none to the Gulf or Iraq, which is hit hardest given it sees an average of 40 daily Iranian flights moving students, patients, and pilgrims. A handful of countries severed their flight links with Iran last week.
Tehran is threatening and negotiating at the same time. A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran could make complying countries’ airports “unusable,” even as its aviation regulator is talking to the UAE.
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia…
Saudi air defenses intercepted and destroyedsix missilesover the long weekend fired toward Taif and Yanbu, two drones aimed at Riyadh, and a missile at Khamis Mushait, Coalition spokesman Turki Al Maliki said on X. The Houthis said they hit a “sensitive site” in Riyadh and Aramco facilities in Yanbu in response to the Kingdom’s “aggressive aerial raids,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Thursday. Saudi Arabia struck back the next day with 14 airstrikes and missile attacks on Taiz, Amran, Marib, and Saada in Yemen, Saree said in a separate statement. The number of Saudi strikes has exceeded 1k since the escalation began.
Saudi’s Capital Market Authority (CMA) wants to put IPO underwriters on the hook for the whole offering: The CMA has launched consultations on a set of draft provisions rewriting IPO rules that would force the underwriting bank to sign a firm underwriting agreement before book building begins — the stage where the bank sounds out large investors to set the price — and buy any shares investors don’t take, up to the entire offering. If the shortfall leaves the issuer below listing requirements, the shares don’t list, and the underwriter buys the offering anyway.
The practice is common in the US and Europe, and it turns banks into “genuine backstops rather than facilitators of IPO demand,” giving them reason to scrutinize inflated or weakly funded bids when they carry the risk of the full book, Ubhar Capital head of research Tahir Abbas tells Bloomberg.
Two companion rule changes target the order book directly: Financial advisors would have to verify each large bid is backed by available liquidity, and orders would become binding by the subscription payment deadline. Issuers would also have to disclose at least a year of forward-looking financial forecasts, vetted by the financial advisor.
Covered books had stopped being a reliable guide to how a stock trades after the bell, with Kamco Invest’s Junaid Ansari and Abbas both flagging to us in July that post-listing performance has become the metric issuers and advisors are now watching. Only four of the 17 companies to list on Tadawul since the start of 2025 are trading above their issue price, according to Bloomberg data.
Order-book quality is one factor among several here. The market participants we've spoken with agree the mechanics need fixing. “Book building needs to be genuine price discovery rather than simply a mechanism for validating the highest achievable valuation,” EQCM founder and CEO Osama Alowedi previously told EnterpriseAM. But the drought has structural factors weighing it down too. Higher-for-longer rates have lifted the cost of equity and pushed valuations down, this year’s geopolitical volatility pushed issuers to delay rather than launch into a jittery market, and owners have been reluctant to list at the prices a bruised market will pay. Those causes sit largely outside what this draft addresses.
BACKGROUND- The draft builds on a run of CMA moves to reshape the IPO process. Earlier measures pushed issuers to reserve as much as 30% of an offering for retail investors. The consultation also comes after the regulator’s scrutiny of how 2025 listings were priced and allocated, and shortly after Mazen Al Sudairi took over as CMA chairman — a capital-markets veteran from some of the kingdom’s biggest banks.
The MENA growth story in 2026 comes down to rain, war, and the Strait of Hormuz. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) cut its outlook for the countries it covers in our region in its September Regional Economic Prospects (pdf) but the damage is concentrated. Iraq’s oil collapse after Hormuz closed and Lebanon’s renewed war with Israel are the main drags, while Morocco and Tunisia get a lift from the end of a multi-year drought. Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey took smaller hits but kept growing.
One caveat before reading the numbers: The EBRD doesn’t cover the GCC, so this is a partial regional picture.
Iraq is such an outlier that the bank strips it out of the regional headline figure. The EBRD’s group of five Mediterranean economies, all net energy importers — Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia — is now expected to grow 3.9% y-o-y in 2026, only 0.2% below what the bank forecast in June. Add Iraq, and you have a 0.7% contraction, down from a 2.5% growth forecast.
This is because Iraq is now expected to see a 12% contraction, almost eight times the 1.5% contraction predicted in the latest forecast from June. Iraq’s alternative export routes are carrying less than a quarter of pre-war oil volumes since Hormuz closed, and interrupted Iranian gas supplies have worsened power shortages. With oil funding more than 90% of government revenue, Baghdad is borrowing at home to plug the gap and drawing from foreign reserves, which fell to USD 83 bn from USD 97 bn between January and June. And the bank warns the contraction could deepen if the disruptions drag on.
Lebanon is the other hopeless case. The economy is expected to shrink by 5%, compared to June’s forecast of a 2% contraction. Renewed fighting with Israel added damage on top of an existing USD 11 bn reconstruction bill. Some 360k people remained displaced in August, and inflation, which doubled to around 20% in April, was still 15.7% in July.
Turkey, which the EBRD covers as a standalone economy rather than under its Mediterranean grouping, is the third casualty. It is expected to grow at 3%, although that’s down from 3.5%. High inflation and tight credit weakened spending at home. Exports fell 3.4% in the second quarter, inflation edged up to 31.5% in August, and reserves dropped USD 71 bn between January and June before partly recovering. The bank flags a risk that a weaker TRY would leave Turkish companies struggling to repay their dollar and euro debts.
Egypt and Jordan took smaller hits but kept growing. Egypt (4.6%, down from 4.9%) remains among the region’s fastest growing markets. Remittances and tourism receipts rose to USD 16.9 bn and reserves hit a record USD 56.3 bn, though gas output shrank for a 16th straight quarter and interest payments now absorb 88% of government revenue. Jordan saw the smallest downward revision in the region (2.5%, down from 2.6%) despite initial troubles in its tourism sector.
Morocco and Tunisia got the only upgrades in the region. Morocco is expected to grow at 4.8% (up from 4.4%), while Tunisia would grow at 2.4% (from 2.2%). The end of a multi-year drought did the work. In Morocco, farm output rose 18.4% in the 1Q, offsetting weaker investment. Inflation averaged just 0.5% in 1H and the government is holding its 3.4% deficit target. In Tunisia, Agriculture and food processing sectors helped, despite shrinking chemicals and textiles output, rising energy import bill and falling reserves.
What’s next: The 2027 rebound hinges on Hormuz reopening. The EBRD pencils in 14% growth for Iraq and 7.1% for the Mediterranean group next year, but only if trade disruptions clear by early in the year. Meanwhile, Morocco’s growth is expected to decelerate in 2027, growing at 3.9% once the harvest bounce runs its impact.
BP is spending USD 700 mn drilling wells on both sides of a sale it hasn’t closed. One of the four is in a field Energean is lined up to buy; two go to the joint venture BP is keeping with Abu Dhabi’s XRG. Most of today’s other money is long-dated: CIB’s textile loan runs seven years, XRG’s Azeri gas FID doesn’t produce until 2029, and Nawy has rebuilt its retail property business inside a fund that can live 20 years instead of five.
BP’s four-well Egypt program straddles a sale it hasn’t closed. The USD 700 mn program proceeds while BP negotiates the sale of roughly USD 1 bn of local assets to Energean. EVP Gordon Birrell walked Oil Minister Karim Badawi through it on Thursday, the ministry said in a statement.
On the selling side: Fayoum-4 is already producing in the West Nile Delta two years early, at c. 80 mmcf / d. The package Energean is eyeing covers those stakes (with London-listed Harbour Energy) and its 50% contractor interest in Temsah, Reuters reports — where Eni made the c. 2 tcf Denise West discovery this year.
On the keeping side: After Fayoum-4 the rig moved to the Gharab exploration well, then drills two deepwater wells back-to-back for Arcius, BP’s 51-49 JV with XRG — which also holds BP’s interest in Zohr, at c. 30 tcf the Eastern Mediterranean’s largest gas field.
XRG now earns at both ends of Azerbaijan’s gas chain. Adnoc’s investment arm, TotalEnergies, and Socar have taken FID on the full-field development of Azerbaijan’s offshore Absheron, XRG said. The expansion quadruples output to 6 bcm a year from 1.5 bcm, plus 47k bbl / d of condensate, according to TotalEnergies, with startup in 2029. Total operates with 35%, Socar 35%, XRG 30%.
Why it matters: The FID comes less than two weeks after XRG closed its stake in the Southern Gas Corridor, which carries Azeri gas west — and Absheron’s output goes to Turkey through that network. The corridor stake is a minority one with no control over flows, but XRG earns on both the molecules and the route. Adnoc signed in June to take Absheron gas once it is online; the FID was expected in July. It also holds 38% of Turkmenistan’s block I and equity in five Rio Grande LNG trains.
L’imad is pushing ahead with its squeeze-out of AD Ports, issuing a mandatory acquisition notice to take over the remaining 1.07% stake in the firm via ADQ after it recently lifted its holding to 98.93%, according to an ADX disclosure (pdf). The buyout settled two weeks ahead of schedule, having moved a 9 October deadline forward to 25 September. L’imad has wasted no time with the squeeze-out either, moving ahead with the notice significantly faster than the 60-day deadline.
Nawy is moving its retail property business inside a regulated fund.Nawy Shares and CI Capital Asset Management (Ciam) signed an agreement to set up and manage real estate investment funds, with first subscriptions targeted early next year pending regulatory approvals, according to a joint statement. The co-owned vehicle is open to individual and institutional investors and will hold both projects under development and completed income-generating assets, with the option to structure individual issuances around specific projects.
Nawy has separately set up a multi-tranche fund company that owns the properties, with a licensed manager running them. “The multi-tranche setup allows us to release properties unit-by-unit on a tranche basis,” Nawy Shares Managing Director Ayman Magdy tells us — retail investors want to see the specific project, developer, and payment terms rather than a pooled portfolio. Properties are divided into 20-40 shares with tickets from EGP 20-25k, and 10-20 units release every Tuesday, typically selling out within hours.
What changes with the fund: Investment certificates via Misr for Central Clearing, Depository and Registry (MCDR) replace preliminary contracts. An independent FRA/CBE-registered valuer reassesses NAV every six months, and each tranche publishes semi-annual disclosures. Maximum fund life goes to 20 years from five, matching Egypt’s 12-15-year off-plan payment plans. Exits are governed by the fund prospectus and executed by the licensed manager, not by individual certificate-holder approvals.
SOUND SMART- The fund already delivers most of what tokenization promises — traceable ownership, transparent pricing, an MCDR registry, a future secondary market — Magdy argues: “Tokenization streamlines the process further, but our off-plan fund framework already fulfills all of these underlying requirements.” The fintech license needed for streamlined KYC and a live secondary market is still pending. Nawy separately bought UAE fractional platform SmartCrowd in July 2025 and secured Dubai VARA approval for a tokenization platform earlier this year.
Dubai investment group with offices in Burj Khalifa is in hot water over missed payments: Clients of AIX Investment Group accuse the firm of halting or delaying payouts on products that promised double-digit annual returns, the Financial Times reports, citing court documents, investors, and lawyers. Two investors have filed claims for USD 2 mn and USD 8 mn at the DIFC Courts, and thousands of clients could be affected. One claim describes AIX’s payment performance as “delayed, irregular and opaque.” Local authorities have also visited AIX’s premises to investigate, the salmon-colored paper says.
Raya Holding’s wholly owned Raya Integration will subscribe to a capital hike at Raya Data Center Services of up to USD 60 mn (c. EGP 3 bn), with proceeds used only to fund the equity portion of the purchase price for 100% of the target, the company said in a bourse filing (pdf). Raya Integration owns 60% of Raya Data Center Services, according to a separate disclosure (pdf).
It is contingent on winning. The board’s approval takes effect only if the acquisition is awarded to and completed by Raya Integration or Raya Data Center, definitive documents are signed, and conditions precedent and approvals come through. If the transaction falls away, so does the capital increase.
CIB is lending USD 80 mn to a Turkish textile group building for export out of Egypt. The package for Eroglu Global Holding’s Eroglu Knitting complex in Qantara West is a USD 75 mn seven-year medium-term loan for phase two and three machinery, plus a USD 5 mn working-capital facility, according to a statement (pdf). Total investment in the complex is USD 140 mn. The 150k sqm site targets 24 mn garments a year at full operation alongside yarn and dyed-fabric production, c. USD 165 mn of annual revenue, and more than 4.5k jobs. All output is for export — c. 50% to Europe, 30% to the US, the rest elsewhere.
The IsDB and the Arab Coordination Group are doubling their education facility. The Islamic Development Bank and the ACG are putting USD 800 mn of concessional financing into a second phase of SmartEd, pairing with USD 200 mn of Global Partnership for Education grants for a USD 1 bn package announced at the GPE replenishment conference, according to the statement. IsDB and the Opec Fund are each contributing USD 400 mn.
Oman’s new Africa-focused bank secures its first mandate: African Bank of Oman (ABO) will work with Angola’s Luanda-Bengo Special Economic Zone (ZEE) to identify and structure investment opportunities for projects in the zone, after signing an MoU that also cover conventional and trade finances, as well as financing advisory work, Oman Observer reports. “[This is] what the corridor we set out to build looks like when it starts moving,” ABO CEO António Dinis Mendes said.
Part of a recent Angola push: The MoU was signed after Sultan Haitham bin Tarek wrapped his visit to the capital Lunada earlier this month. The visit produced five agreements and eight MoUs worth an estimated USD 1.5 bn, spanning energy, mining, logistics, defense, ports, agriculture, and transport, as well as mutual visa exemption and a double-taxation treaty, Omans’ Foreign Ministry said at the time. Omani oilfield services firm Desert Sand Oil & Gas also inked a cooperation MoU with Angolan state oil company Sonangol on the sidelines of the visit.
REMEMBER- ABO was formally launched in Luanda in April, with share capital of AOA 18.2 bn (c. EUR 17 mn) as a corporate investment bank pitched at “supporting large corporates engaged in trade between Angola, the GCC, and surrounding regions.” Licensed by the National Bank of Angola, the bank set an initial target of serving 50 players, whether multinational corporations or public sector, across oil and gas, mining, and logistics — the sectors where Angolan and Omani diversification strategies overlap most heavily.
Amman calling
Jordan’s Bank al Etihad is heading to Abu Dhabi, but through the offshore door. The lender signed an MoU with Ethmar International Holding (EIH) and other UAE investors to set up a new bank in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), pending approvals, it said in a statement.
The new lender will be a full deposit-taking bank. It will hold a Category 1 license, ADGM’s deposit-taking tier. It won’t, however, chase UAE onshore retail market, since ADGM banks are barred from taking AED deposits. AED-leg settlements would instead run through correspondent banking relationships with CBUAE-licensed onshore banks.
This license is what the bank needs anyways. It aims to target cross-border businesses, with a focus on corporate, institutional, and high-net-worth clients doing business across Al Etihad’s core markets Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine. ADGM gives Bank al Etihad a common-law, USD-based hub to book the Jordan-Iraq-Gulf flows its clients already run, and a revenue line outside Jordan.
REMEMBER- A Palestinian bank adopted the same proposition last year: Bank of Palestine Global, a subsidiary of Bank of Palestine, got the same Category 1 in-principle approval in November 2025 and is due to launch in 2H under CEO Linda Tarazi. The authorization covers “accepting deposits and arranging deals in investments, targeting the global Palestinian community at large” in a multi-currency, cross-border retail and wealth proposition targeting the diaspora.
Ich bin ein Emirati
Abu Dhabi’s defense major Edge signed an MoU with German shipbuilder TKMS to jointly develop underwater surveillance and protection systems, according to a press release. The two will combine TKMS platform capabilities with Edge sensor and systems work into an integrated multi-system approach for underwater security serving both navies. The deal was signed in Munich during UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed's state visit to Germany, and folds into the broader UAE-Germany bilateral framework that took shape earlier this month with EUR 5 bn of new energy and industry agreements.
IN CONTEXT- Edge’s European buildout is picking up pace. The TKMS deal caps a run of moves in the continent, recently anchored by the June launch of the Paris HQ for Edge Europe. The expanding footprint includes a planned controlling stake in Italian engine maker CMD, a smart-weapons collaboration with France’s Safran, and joint ventures with Spain’s Indra and EM&E on drone loitering munitions and armored vehicles, as well as earlier stakes in Estonia’s Milrem Robotics, Switzerland’s Anavia, and Poland’s Flaris.
Aramco is splitting off a standalone gas unit, carving out gas out of its upstream and downstream businesses in a structure that could eventually support a minority listing to raise fresh capital, Reuters reports, citing two people familiar with the plans. The arrangement would create a dedicated platform with its own leadership to develop domestic gas, expand overseas LNG, and explore capital-raising options such as further lease-and-leaseback agreements. The energy giant has reportedly tapped Evercore to advise on the restructuring — internally called Project Gamma.
ICYMI- Aramco has already used that playbook on Jafurah. A BlackRock GIP-led consortium invested USD 11 bn in Jafurah’s gas-processing infrastructure last year through a lease-and-leaseback agreement. The assets were placed in Jafurah Midstream Gas Company, with Aramco retaining 51% and the investor group taking 49%, before being leased back to Aramco for 20 years. Jafurah began operating last year and is potentially the largest unconventional gas field outside the US, holding an estimated 230 tcf.
Cash crop
The World Bank Board has approved USD 750 mn for an agrifood project in Turkey, a 50% upsize on the USD 500 mn design set out in the Bank's concept note last December, Turkish Agriculture and Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said last week. The funding is expected to be available to businesses as early as this year, Yumakli added.
Ankara is folding the WB approval into a much larger USD 5.3 bn narrative it first put on the table in May, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced a 10-year agrifood package covering up to 80% of investment costs, with financing of up to USD 10 mn per business, seven-year maturities and 24-month grace periods, plus a separate USD 500 mn Credit Guarantee Fund arm for smallholders. The government’s targets — 400k farmers and 250k jobs by 2032 — are roughly double what the WB financing is designed to deliver, implying the remaining c. USD 3.9 bn will come from Turkish public funds and participating banks. Neither Ankara nor the Bank has provided the breakdown.
Watch this space: Ankara is treating agrifood as one of the few sectors where it can credibly court multilateral capital as it works through the rest of the disinflation program. The government puts Turkey’s 2025 agricultural output at USD 83.2 bn — seventh globally, up from 12th in 2002 — and forecast a record 140 mn-ton crop harvest this year.
Data point
Turkey’s foreign arrivals are close to stabilizing: Turkey welcomed 34.8 mn foreign visitors in the first eight months (8M) of 2026, down 1.8% y-o-y, according to Culture and Tourism Ministry data. Russia, now Turkey’s largest source market, drove the recovery, climbing to 4.72 mn from 4.55 mn a year earlier. Germany, the UK, Iran and Bulgaria, the country’s remaining major source markets, all slightly softened. Antalya and Istanbul remained the dominant destinations, drawing a combined 22.8 mn visitors — about 65% of the country’s arrivals during the 8M period. Gulf arrivals were a drag, but they constituted a much smaller share of arrivals. Saudi, Turkey’s largest Gulf source, saw arrivals down by 11.1% to 612k. The trend extended to the remaining GCC markets, with Kuwait down 43.5% y-o-y to 92k visitors; Bahrain dropping 34.6% to 24k, the UAE by 32.1% to 46k, and Qatar by 26.1% to 29k.
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