Happy Friday, wonderful people. Cheap money ended in three time zones this week as rates went up in Washington on Wednesday, in five Gulf capitals hours later, and in Tokyo this morning.
The Bank of Japantook the last of the cheap funding off the tablethis morning as Kazuo Ueda’s board raised to 1.25%, a 31-year high, a day after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi reshuffled her cabinet promising to prioritise growth. Japan has been the world’s cheapest source of money for a generation.
Tokyo’s move followed Washington — and the Gulf — after the US Federal Reserveraised rates in the first decision since Kevin Warsh took the helm of the US Federal Reserve, and the first time rates were raised in the US since 2023. The Fed lifted its benchmark rates by a quarter point as price pressure is ramping up on new tariffs, the war’s energy shock, and AI-related capex.
The White House had a spokesman on Fox within minutes calling it “a rather unfortunate decision” with no “particularly compelling economic case.” Warsh told his press conference that inflation has been “too high … for too long.”
Five Gulf central banks moved within hours: The UAE took its base rate to 3.9% and Saudi’s repo went to 4.5%, with Bahrain, Qatar and Oman following; Kuwait, which tracks a basket rather than the USD alone, held at 3.5%.
Meanwhile: The 2027 F1 calendar puts the Gulf at both ends of the season. Bahrain takes pre-season testing in February and opens the championship from 12-14 March, Jeddah follows a week later, and the year closes in Qatar and then Abu Dhabi in December. Sprints go from six to ten, with Bahrain and Abu Dhabi running them for the first time. Four of 24 races on this side of the world, including the two that close it out. –Salma
India is building its North Africa business one country at a time, but the patchwork approach is costing it the region’s biggest prize: A connected production base across Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia that could carry Indian manufacturing into African and European markets.
The individual relationships are growing. New Delhi has set bigger trade targets with Egypt and Morocco, Indian companies are moving into local manufacturing, and both sides are going long on pharma, automotive, fertilizers, machinery, and energy. But each relationship runs on its own terms and its own timetable, and little yet links a factory in one country to suppliers or buyers in the next.
“What we see in North Africa today is better described as the development of interconnected economic gateways rather than an established Indian North Africa corridor,” Manish Karmwar, professor at the University of Delhi’s Department of African Studies, tells EnterpriseAM.
Egypt leads while Tunisia lags
Egypt has the largest trade relationship with India, and it’s still well short of its goal. Trade reached USD 6.5 bn in FY 2025-26, according to the Indian Embassy in Cairo. That’s just over half the USD 12 bn five-year target set in 2023, which Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed at the Brics Summit in New Delhi this month. More than 700 Indian companies are registered in Egypt, around 70 of them active, with combined investments above USD 5.5 bn.
Morocco is on its own clock. The two countries agreed last month to double bilateral trade within five years, from around USD 4 bn in 2025, and to set up a joint working group to explore a preferential trade agreement (PTA).
Algeria is smaller but accelerating, while Tunisia is lagging altogether. Indian exports hit a record USD 1.1 bn in FY 2025-26, up from USD 947 mn the year before, according to the Indian Commerce Ministry. India and Tunisia have repeatedly targeted USD 1 bn in bilateral trade, but trade came to USD 521.7 mn in FY 2024-25.
Each of those figures comes from a separate negotiation, and no target or framework covers all four.
Why New Delhi goes country by country
The piecemeal approach is partly by design. “India’s trade strategy has tilted decisively towards bilateral deals over region-wide agreements," says Tanu M. Goyal, senior fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
Bilateral agreements let India tailor its commitments to each partner’s interests. “The experience with ASEAN showed India that bloc-level negotiations can produce weaker outcomes because terms end up being set by the ‘lowest common denominator,’” Goyal says. Morocco’s PTA talks follow that model.
The region also gives New Delhi little reason to try anything else. “The national interests of the countries of the region are highly fragmented,” says Samir Bhattacharya, fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. That fragmentation, he says, has kept the Arab Maghreb Union largely dormant since the 1990s, and he points to how differently the four countries see themselves: Egypt as African and Arab, Morocco as African but also European, and Tunisia as barely African at all, “except for geography.”
The four markets also barely trade with one another. “Intra-North Africa exports made up just 4% of the region's total exports in 2021, as against roughly 60% within the European Union,” Malinne Blomberg, deputy director general for North Africa at the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, tells EnterpriseAM. Tunisia sends 7% of its exports to its North African neighbors, Egypt 5%, Algeria 4%, and Morocco 2%, she says.
India is also not alone in working this way. Blomberg says the EU, China, the Gulf, and Turkey all pair a regional interest with country-by-country deals. “Bilateral-by-default may be less a distinctly Indian habit than the only way anyone actually operates in North Africa today,” she says. If every major partner works bilaterally, the advantage goes to whichever one connects its separate country agreements first.
What the patchwork costs
The cost shows up in Africa’s own trade framework. Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia all belong to the African Continental FreeTrade Area (AfCFTA), and Egypt and Tunisia already trade under its Guided Trade Initiative. But AfCFTA preferences are protected by rules of origin, Goyal says, so goods exported from India don’t qualify. India’s only comprehensive trade agreement in force on the continent is its 2021 CECPA with Mauritius.
“The more durable route to capturing value from Africa’s regional integration is likely to run through outward investment and local production rather than through market-access concessions alone,” Goyal says. For Indian companies, that means manufacturing inside North Africa to sell across the continent on AfCFTA terms. A set of plants that don’t trade with one another captures only part of that value.
India’s plants in the region don’t connect
India already has industrial anchors in three of the four markets. In Tunisia, Indian companies GSFC and Coromandel each hold 15% of the USD 465 mn Tunisia-India Fertilizer Joint Venture, which was set up in 2006 and began operating in 2013. Egypt has built an Egyptian-Indian Industrial Integration Platform for joint production, component exchange, supplier development, and export manufacturing. Morocco hosts the IMACID phosphates partnership and Tata’s first overseas defense plant, in Berrechid, which Defense Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated in September 2025.
Each of these projects belongs to its own bilateral relationship, and none yet feeds a supply chain that reaches the other three markets.
Making the pieces work together
India doesn’t need North Africa to act as one market to benefit from it. Each country could play a different role: Egypt offering manufacturing scale and Suez connectivity, Morocco access to European and African markets, Algeria energy, mining, and industrial projects, and Tunisia fertilizer and specialized manufacturing.
That would require Indian companies to plan production across borders: Making goods in one country, sourcing from a second, and selling into a third, rather than exporting from India to each market separately.
Blomberg says the region’s gaps are practical ones. “What’s needed is better port-to-port connectivity and customs interoperability, closer alignment on standards and rules of origin, and the regional value chains that would let a company source in one North African country and sell in another,” she says. Closing those gaps doesn’t require a political union, she adds — only steady investment in the plumbing.
Policy is only partway there. New Delhi treats North Africa as a distinct region within its West Asia-North Africa (WANA) framework, Karmwar says, but its trade diplomacy remains largely bilateral. “The policy ingredients for a North African corridor are emerging,” he says, “but they have not yet been consolidated into a single North Africa strategy.”
Bhattacharya is more skeptical. “India’s engagement in the region will remain bilateral,” he says, citing the strategic differences between the four countries. If he’s right, connecting these markets will depend on Indian companies and on the ports, customs systems, and standards Blomberg describes. Until those links are built, India will have four growing trade relationships in North Africa and no regional play.
Saudi Arabia announced its first death on home soil from Houthi drone attacks this week and faced credible claims it lost an F-15 over Marib, as a decade of largely unchallenged Saudi air operations over Yemen met locally produced surface-to-air missiles. The day after the F-15 claim, the US State Department cleared a potential USD 24.3 bn sale of 48 F-35s to the Kingdom.
Saudi warplanes struck Hajjah province near the Red Sea coast and the area around Taiz on Thursday, Houthi-controlled television reported, and Yemenis took to boats in the Red Sea to escape the fighting, Reuters reports. Saudi civil defense said a Yemeni resident of the Kingdom was killed by debris from a drone intercepted over Taif — the first death Riyadh has announced since fighting escalated last week, against more than 80 wounded previously.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree put Saudi air strikes at as many as 450 this week and claimed fresh drone and missile strikes on the Yanbu oil port and the Khamis Mushait airbase, without saying when.
The Houthis said Wednesday they downed a Saudi F-15 over Marib with a locally produced missile, releasing footage of charred desert and debris resembling wings, an engine and a tail fin carrying the Saudi flag, the Wall Street Journal reports. Saudi Arabia has yet to confirm the incident, and the fate of the jet’s crew remains unclear.
One day later, theUS State Department approveda potential USD 24.3 bn sale of 48 Lockheed Martin F-35s to Saudi Arabia, along with 49 Pratt & Whitney engines, communications equipment, spare parts, and support items. The sale is meant to “[improve] the security of a major non-NATO ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” the State Department said. It still needs to clear Congress, and it would be several years before the first aircraft reach the Kingdom, Axios reports.
What could hold it up: Israel did not object as forcefully as it did to a Turkish F-35 package but wanted the sale conditioned on Saudi normalization with Israel, which Trump declined to require. US intelligence analysts have raised the risk of Chinese access to F-35 technology through Saudi partnerships.
Baghdad is trying to buy its way out of two Iranian chokeholds at once, with both fixes running through Europe. Planned pipelines from Iraq’s southern fields to Turkey and Syria will aim at European buyers and bypass the Strait of Hormuz, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi said in Berlin on Wednesday, according to a statement. Al Zaidi’s remarks came one day after his electricity minister signed a fourth-phase framework with Siemens Energy meant to get Iraqi power plants off imported gas, the ministry said in a statement.
The crude routes: The two lines, running from Basra to Turkey and to the Syrian port of Baniyas, would carry a combined 2.2 mn bbl / d, around 65% of what Iraq exported before the US-Iran conflict began. Iraq was sending some 3.4 mn bbl / d through Hormuz before the strait was effectively closed. “We do not want to remain hostage to one route,” Al Zaidi is quoted as saying.
On the grid side: The Siemens framework covers combined-cycle and thermal plants burning fuels Iraq has at home, new and upgraded substations, maintenance work, and financing mechanisms. Al Zaidi wants generation sources “beyond gas” after Iranian supply proved unreliable this year.
More than 60% of Jordanian goods heading to the US will get zero-tariff treatmentunder an understanding reached with Washington, with the remainder facing an additional 10% duty, Jordan Times quotes Industry, Trade and Supply Minister Yarub Qudah as saying. Apparel and garments — Jordan’s largest manufactured export to the US — retained full exemption, alongside pharma, fertilizers, and phosphate.
The arrangement doesn’t change the existing 2001 freetrade agreement (FTA) with the US, but rather affirms its framework, Qudah said. The announcement suggests a smaller scope to the tariffs the Trump administration imposed on Jordan as part of its tariff campaigns.
REMEMBER- Trump first blasted Jordan with an add-on 20% tariff rate in April last year, before reducing it to 10% this summer. Jordan was the first Arab country to sign an FTA with the US in October 2000 — an agreement that entered into force in 2001 and eliminated duties on nearly all products by 2010. Two-way goods trade reached USD 5.3 bn in 2025, with US imports from Jordan standing at USD 3.1 bn against USD 2.2 bn in exports the other way.
The clarification comes as Jordanian exports are running hot. Total exports grew more than 14% y-o-y in 1H 2026, Qudah said, coming on top of an 11.5% full-year gain in 2025. The surge was accompanied by a re-export windfall due to regional shipping disruptions: Re-exports jumped 44%. And Jordan’s main port’s container throughput was up more than 5% y-o-y through September. What’s next? Increasing trading optionality. Qudah said two preferential trade agreements are expected to be signed before year-end: One with Rwanda targeting East and Central Africa, another with Uzbekistan opening a Central Asian corridor. Talks with the Eurasian Economic Union on a preferential arrangement are also underway.
The largest contracts signed at Syria’s second reconstruction expo went to Saudi companies, with the money channeled primarily towards roads, cement, and water. Saudi Arabia’s Al Rawaf Contracting signed a USD 300 mn roads and infrastructure contract at Imar 2026 in Damascus, marking the single biggest agreement at the expo, SANA reports. Al Hassan Holding Group also signed cement supply contracts worth USD 72 mn with Saudi-listed Jouf Cement.
These two contracts alone account for about a fifth of the headline total of USD 1.8 bn-worth of agreements signed at the four-day event. Beyond the few large agreements, the fair mostly saw smaller supply agreements.
Also from the fair: Advanced Technical Systems signed a USD 15 mn contract for water purification and pumping statements. Thara Real Estate Development also signed supply contracts for infrastructure, building materials, and finishing for its Sham View residential project in Damascus.
Separately, Gulf players are also lining up around Syria’s aviation infrastructure. The UAE’s Dnata is pushing for an exclusive contract to manage and operate services at Damascus International Airport, Al Bayan reports, citing CEO Nabil Sultan. The UAE-based aviation services provider has sent a delegation to Damascus to discuss potential investments and an operating model with Syrian officials.
Meanwhile, Saudi- backed upgrades to Aleppo International Airport will begin in early 2027, lifting the existing airport’s annual capacity past 2 mn passengers in phase one, according to Syrian state news agency SANA. The development is being advanced through the Elaf Investment Fund, led by BinDawood Investment Company, as part of a broader Saudi investment commitment of SAR 7.5 bn to develop two airports in the Syrian city.
Background: The Damascus airport is already in for a major overhaul, as a Qatar-led consortium under UCC Holding signed final concession agreements last November covering the development, expansion, and operation of Damascus International Airport. The USD 4 bn project aims to increase capacity to 31 mn passengers annually. Saudi’s planned investments in Syria span railways, a new joint airline, postal services, telecoms, desalination, and more.
Three buyers who already had a foot in the door got the rest of the way in this week. ADQ is past 98.50% of AD Ports Group and can now force out whoever didn’t tender, Al Baraka cleared its 51% threshold on AT Lease, and B Investments is buying a holding company rather than shares to reach Madinet Masr. We’ve said the AD Ports delisting isn’t the start of a take-private wave, and one week of cleared thresholds doesn’t change that.
ADQ can now force out AD Ports Group’s remaining minorities. Holders tendered 23.08% of the company into the AED 6.25-a-share offer run by ADQ’s L’imad Holding subsidiary as of close on 15 September, on top of the 75.42% it already held — taking ADQ to 98.50%, comfortably past the squeeze-out threshold, AD Ports said in an ADX disclosure (pdf).
That’s about 94% of what ADQ didn’t already own. The offer covered as much as 24.58% of the company; 23.08% came in, leaving 1.50% outstanding. That answers the freefloat question we flagged — how many minorities would follow IHC-controlled Al Seer Marine, which sold to ADQ at the offer price before the tally closed. Every substantive condition is cleared bar routine notifications to the Securities and Commodities Authority and the ADX. Settlement is due no later than 9 October, the date ADQ locked in last week.
B Investments is buying a holding company rather than shares to get at Madinet Masr. Its board signed off on acquiring 53.5% of Big Investment Group, a related shareholder that owns 20.4% of listed developer Madinet Masr for Housing and Development, according to a bourse filing (pdf). The EGX-listed private equity firm, which already holds 7.66% of Madinet Masr directly, will pay Big’s shareholders in newly issued stock rather than cash. Transaction value, exchange ratio, and timeline weren’t disclosed.
The structure buys control without buying the economics. The deal hands B Investments an indirect look-through interest of another 10.9% — 53.5% of Big multiplied by Big’s 20.4%, by our math — for a combined economic interest of c. 18.6%, while putting Big’s entire 20.4% voting bloc under its control.
Al Baraka Bank’s bid for AT Lease has drawn enough shares to go through. Shareholders tendered 273.7 mn shares into the bank’s mandatory tender offer (MTO) before it expired yesterday, clearing the 51% minimum acceptance Al Baraka set when it published the offer last month, according to an EGX disclosure. The count is preliminary, and the exchange has yet to confirm final accepted quantities.
Abu Dhabi's L’imad Holding is weighing a bid for a stake in Atlas Air Worldwide, the Apollo-controlled air cargo giant that could be valued north of USD 10 bn, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Talks are early, and it's competing against other strategics and PE firms who’ve been circling since Apollo was first reported to be weighing a sale of the closely held company back in December.
Ras El Hekma’s first district is going to the Egyptian loan market. Abu Dhabi developer Modon Holding is seeking a EGP 35 bn (USD 672 mn) syndicated loan to fund infrastructure in Wadi Yemm, the first district of the North Coast megaproject for which Modon has been appointed master developer, Asharq Business reports, citing two sources it says are familiar with the matter. FAB Misr is arranging and managing the facility, with local lenders and UAE banks operating in Egypt expected to participate, one source said.
Three banks — Al Baraka Bank Syria, QNB Syria, and the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria — have put together Syria’s first syndicated Islamic financing, covering two Damascus projects including a 2 km tunnel between Al-Mujtahid and Bab Musalla, Arab News reports. Construction is now scheduled at two to two-and-a-half years, against an earlier 10-year estimate.
IN CONTEXT- Syria took in USD 2.7 bn in 1H against USD 3.7 bn of spending, and Finance Minister Mohammed Barnieh said the structure eases pressure on the public budget. The Central Bank and the Supreme Fatwa Council both signed off.
Aldar and Mubadala Investment Company have paid AED 918 mn for Masdar City Square, taking the portfolio held through their 2024 joint venture to AED 4.7 bn, according to a press release. The purchase adds income-generating real estate tied to Masdar City’s tech, research, and sustainability tenants.
ALSO WORTH KNOWING
Sarat Investments Holding has launched a USD 100 mn life sciences fund, Jawlah reports. The five-year fund will back 15-20 startups at series A or later that are already commercial and manufacturing, with annual revenues up to c. USD 2 mn — a screen built around exit prospects. A second fund at 5x the size is planned if the first phase works.
Saudi proptech player Rize has secured USD 50 mn in debt financing from Jadwa Investment to fund its residential rental contracts, Zawya reports.
Turkey’s regulators are preparing a rescue package for its investment-fund industry after a wave of redemption defaults and a spate of regulatory actions tipped Borsa Istanbul into its worst two-day selloff since March 2025.
The crackdown appears to be wide: Turkey’s Capital Markets Board (SPK) ordered last week the liquidation of 130 funds across seven asset managers — five at Tera Portfoy Yonetimi, 12 at Pusula Portfoy Yonetimi, 31 at Hedef, 16 at Atlas, nine at A1, 15 at Bulls, and 42 at Pardus. The SPK also suspended trading in all funds run by those seven firms and issued a two-year trading ban on executives at Pusula and Tera. The decisions came as Turkey advances criminal complaints against Pusula and Tera for alleged price manipulation in the equity market, with prosecutors placing Tera chairman Emre Tezmen under a travel ban and arresting Info Yatirim’s chairman Namik Kemal Gokalp.
The domino run started Monday, after Asset management firm Pusula disclosed that some of its investment and money market funds could not meet withdrawal requests. On Wednesday, Tera defaulted on redemptions on its money market fund and equity intensive fund — TRY 366 bn combined, or roughly USD 7.5 bn. And Atlas Portfoy joined Thursday, announcing redemption delays on its own money market fund.
The trigger dates to late August,when the SPK tightened asset managers’ ownership limits in a single stock. The rules, which included new tiered caps, are forcing managers holding concentrated positions in illiquid names to unwind, at the same time investors were pulling money out. The industry has bled roughly TRY 128.7 bn (USD 2.7 bn) in net assets in the following two weeks, Turkish business news platform Bazaar Times reported last week.
BACKGROUND- Turkey’s regulators moved last month after the MSCI threatened to downgrade Turkey’s index status unless regulators intervene on what it said was a recurring pattern of possible coordinated trading among funds tied to smaller listed Turkish companies, we previously reported. The MSCI gave Turkey until its November review to show credible progress on the issue.
At the center of the regulatory crackdown are funds’ positions in three publicly listed companies:Katilimevim, a Sharia-compliant home and vehicle savings-finance firm; Gundogdu Gida, an Istanbul dairy producer in which Pusula funds held 38.67% of the capital as of 18 August; and Destek Finans Faktoring, a factoring subsidiary of Destek Holding.
How one of these stocks moved shows what the funds may have been doing: Katilimevim’s stock rose roughly 2,000% in just over the twelve months leading to July 2026, in our calculation of market tracing data, before hitting an all-time high of TRY 69.00 on 28 August — a few days before the SPK unveiled its rule rewrite. It closed Wednesday at TRY 24.72, down nearly two-thirds from its late-August peak.
The outcome? Highly exposed funds are seeing the value of their AUM evaporate. The new rules gave exposed funds a year to adhere to the new caps, driving a run from funds to offload big parts of their positions in some of these stocks, which are becoming harder to sell quickly enough, Bloomberg reports. For example, Pusula’s AUM had already collapsed to TRY 143 bn by Monday, from TRY 431 bn at the end of August.
Who will come to the rescue?
Officials are now trying to assure investors: The Financial Stability Committee, which was founded in 2011 to coordinate government response to financial stress after the 2008-09 financial crisis, said yesterday the turmoil posed no fundamental or structural risk to Turkish capital markets and pledged more measures to ease the liquidity crunch and prevent contagion, Bloomberg reports.
The Central Bank of Turkey (TCMB) already moved on liquidity. It will increase one-week repo funding as needed, revise commercial banks’ borrowing limits, and reduce collateral haircuts on funds provided in central-bank markets. The SPK also temporarily cut the minimum equity maintenance ratio for margin trading to 20% from 35%, effective through 2 October.
IN CONTEXT- The market duress adds to Turkey’s fiscal and macro stress. The TCMB held its one-week repo rate at 37% for a fifth straight meeting on 10 September, citing energy-price shocks from the US-Iran war that have kept annual inflation at 31.5% in August. Finance Minister Simsek said this week that the conflict has added 7 percentage points to Turkish inflation.
Morocco and Oman are in line for a combined USD 190 mn in financing from the OPEC Fund for International Development as part of a USD 645 mn package the fund is disbursing for public and private sector projects, according to a statement. The fund earmarked USD 150 mn for Morocco to “help finance a major new dam designed to improve water security and climate resilience,” while Oman is set to receive up to USD 40 mn for the construction of the Plaza District within its Yiti Sustainable City.
ALSO- The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has just approved two EUR 25 mn financing facilities in our region this week. The first is for Iraq’s Bank of Baghdad as a trade-finance facility under the EBRD’s Trade Facilitation Program, paired with EU-funded technical assistance covering bank employees’ competence and training to improve the financial inclusion of underserved groups. The other is a EUR 25 mn line to Morocco’s Banque Centrale Populaire, dedicated to on-lending focused on energy-efficiency projects and small-scale renewables.
Back in action?
Cosco made its first transit through the Suez Canal since the Red Sea crisis began, Suez Canal Authority Chairman Osama Rabie said in a statement on Wednesday. The OOCL Portugal, a Cosco-group vessel with a 24k TEU capacity, crossed from Belgium toward China on an Ocean Alliance service, carrying 247k tons of cargo.
There’s been a broader return to Suez recently, but it’s still selective. CMA CGM sent its Vendome through the canal in June, marking the first southbound transit of its FAL3 service since January. MSC said it would partially restore Suez transits for its Indusa service, westbound only, while Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd announced that four more Gemini services would switch from the Cape of Good Hope to Suez.
Dammam gets new wings
Saudi Arabia is giving Dammam both a new airline and a bigger airport plan. The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) awarded an air operator certificate to an Air Arabia-led consortium — including Nesma Group and KUN Holding — to launch a new national low-cost carrier based at Dammam’s King Fahd International Airport (DMM), according to a press release. Dammam Airports also signed a design contract with WSP to develop King Fahd International Airport under its approved master plan, SPA reports.
Snowbirds, Doha edition
Qatar wants a bigger share of Russia’s winter-sun travelers: Visit Qatar has signed an MoU with Russian tour operator Fun & Sun to fly charter flights from Moscow and Yekaterinburg to Hamad International Airport from October, Qatar News Agency reports. The two expect the flights to bring more than 22k Russian tourists to Qatar over the 2026-2027 winter season.
The IMF wants to hand most Lebanese banks over to independent administrators while their losses are assessed — and Beirut is pushing back. An IMF delegation led by Mission Chief Ernesto Ramirez Rigo arrived in Beirut this week with the proposal, which has reopened the standoff over Article 4 of the draft financial stabilization and deposit recovery law (the financial gap law), which addresses the process of how and who assess banks’ losses and assets. Nearly 35 hours of discussions have not closed the gap, Lebanese daily L’Orient Le Jour reports.
The IMF’s argument is about who holds the keys to the books. IMF experts think a large share of banks would be insolvent — and some would have negative capital — once losses are recognized and assets properly valued. Leaving the same pre-2019 shareholders and executives in charge of the review would let them shape decisions that affect their own institutions and shareholders. An independent administrator, the Fund argues, would safeguard the assets and give auditors clean access.
Beirut wants a narrower fix and a different order of operations. The Lebanese team has proposed splitting banks into five categories, with administrators appointed only for the two most vulnerable. It also wants “irregular claims,” which BDL Governor Karim Souhaid estimates could be as much as 30% of deposits, examined and stripped out before remaining losses are allocated. The IMF says that would push losses onto depositors before shareholders and subordinated creditors absorb them, inverting the standard hierarchy of claims.
REMEMBER- The Lebanese Parliament passed amendments to the Banking Resolution Law last month, which make the Higher Banking Authority responsible for the due diligence process and already let it appoint temporary administrators — a move the IMF called a “major step” but not enough on its own, citing the delay on the financial gap law. Economists have separately flagged to us that the draft of the financial gap law’s repayment plan numbers are unworkable, and BDL’s own criminal complaints against former private-banking executives — part of a broader anti-corruption sweep climbing the banking establishment — underline why the Fund wants insiders out of the room when the books undergo due diligence.
Say goodbye
Cloud data held in the Gulf can now be permanently lost. AWS says it cannot restore one of its three UAE availability zones or its Bahrain infrastructure after Iranian attacks in March and April, and that resources and data held exclusively in these zones are unrecoverable, Reuters reports. Most customers have re-established operations in other regions from backups, and AWS says it has exhausted every option for the rest. In Bahrain, the damage spanned several zones and “exceeded what our regional and multi-availability zones services are designed to withstand.”
AWS will provide an update on Bahrain in early 2027, but gave no timeline for the UAE.
Atomic wishlist
Syria has told the IAEA where it wants help as it rebuilds. The Syrian Atomic Energy Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency signed a Country Program Framework in Vienna on Wednesday, according to SANA. The framework sets which sectors will get the agency’s technical cooperation funding and nuclear technology transfers through 2031.
The six-year plan covers seven areas: Nuclear and radiation safety, health and nutrition, food and agriculture, energy planning, nuclear knowledge management, industrial applications, and water and the environment.
Cleared for landing?
The UAE is pushing to get itself off international travel advisory lists just as Dubai’s tourism numbers have posted their sharpest rebound since the Iran war began, on the back of a full conference schedule, Bloomberg reports. International overnight visitors to the city hit 869k in August — the highest since February — while hotel occupancy climbed to 66%, up from a war-battered 36% in March, according to government figures released this week.
Lifting the warnings would ease the ins. costs keeping long-haul carriers away, CEO of the Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing Issam Kazim told Bloomberg at the Arabian Travel Market conference. Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths told the business news service in June that insurers are still struggling to price the region at all. Meanwhile, non-Gulf carriers have absorbed USD 70k to USD 150k in extra charges per flight into the region, the Financial Times reported earlier this year.
The push comes as British Airways finally sets a return date for Dubai: British Airways will resume Dubai flights on 3 November, starting with a single daily service from London before expanding to two flights a day, the airline confirmed. It’s a major milestone for a route that’s been dark since the Iran war grounded most of the sector’s Gulf capacity in late February — but it’s also another setback. The British flag carrier had previously targeted a 25 October comeback since mid-year, following earlier pushbacks from May and July targets.
Data point
43% — that’s how much the number of hotels in Oman rose y-o-y in 2025, ending the year with a total of 1,475 hotels, according to the National Center for Statistics and Information. South Al Batinah had the highest number of hotels across the country at the end of last year with 313 hotels, followed by Muscat (271) and Al Dakhliyah (209). Oman’s hotel revenues rose 22.3% y-o-y in 2025 to OMR 359 mn (USD 933.7 mn).
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