THIS MORNING: Wartime loan deferrals reach AED 15.9 bn + ADIB shareholders give thumbs up to rights issue

Good morning, everyone. The fallout from the regional war is showing up everywhere from real estate, to construction, and banking in today’s issue.

First up, Dubai residential sales fell sharply in 3Q, with value down 47% y-o-y to AED 72.6 bn and volumes down 38% to 34k transactions, as the lag between agreed sales and formal registrations clears. A similar slowdown is showing up in construction, as UAE project awards dipped 25.8% y-o-y to USD 15.6 bn during the quarter, despite the Emirates still gaining ground in a shrinking Gulf market where awards sank 37.2% y-o-y.

On the credit side of things, loan deferrals under the CBUAE’s wartime relief scheme reached AED 15.9 bn by end-August, up from AED 13.5 bn a month earlier, covering nearly 156k customers. We’ll be tracking whether borrowers coming off deferrals resume payments smoothly, or whether stress starts to show.

Plus: Indian fintech Juspay is pitching itself as the GCC’s unifying middleman and Janus Henderson’s shariah-compliant regional private credit fund is two-thirds of the way there on its USD 300 mn target.

The Gulf’s sovereign funds and largest companies are committing billions to AI infrastructure at home and to AI companies in the US and beyond. EnterpriseAM AI + Innovation reports on where that capital goes, who controls it and what it is actually buying.

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ADIB shareholders give rights issue a thumbs up

ADIB’s AED 1.75 bn rights issue is a step closer. Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) shareholders on Tuesday approved the raise, which the board signed off on in August and which will help fund expansion in its core businesses and digital and AI capabilities, according to a statement. The bank will issue c. 106.4 mn new shares at AED 16.45 each, a 28.8% discount to its closing price on 24 August. Shareholders can buy roughly one new share for every 34 they hold, which adds about 3% to the share count.

Why it matters: This would be the first major UAE follow-on since Sharjah Islamic Bank’s AED 2.6 bn rights issue in March. It’s also the kind of deal analysts told us would lead a 4Q reopening of the UAE's capital markets, while the IPO pipeline stays frozen.

What’s next: ADIB still needs regulatory sign-off, including from the Central Bank of the UAE. Once it has that, it will publish a prospectus setting the record date, the rights trading window, and the subscription period.

Another UAE school operator eyes KSA’s Ajialuna

Gulf-based school operator Alephya Education — majority-owned by US private equity firm TA Associate — is in advanced talks to buy a controlling stake in Riyadh-based Ajialuna Educational from Sulaiman Alrajhi Holding, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The transaction could value Ajialuna at up to USD 500 mn. Ajialuna runs 10 private and international schools across Saudi Arabia with more than 17k students. Alephya runs 15 schools across the GCC with more than 20k students.

REMEMBER- Ajialuna has been on the block for a year. Dubai's GEMS Education was among the bidders last September, when a sale was expected to close as early as November 2025 and Alrajhi was said to be seeking a full exit.

In context: Investors spent much of the year watching for signs that tensions between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh could slow investment between the two economies, Bloomberg reports. Recent signals have been warmer: Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last month, and the UAE condemned Houthi missile and drone attacks on civilian facilities in Khamis Mushait, Abha and Taif, reaffirming its solidarity with the Kingdom.

Data point

Loan deferrals under the Central Bank of the UAE’s (CBUAE) wartime relief scheme reached AED 15.9 bn by the end of August, covering nearly 156k bank customers, according to a press release (pdf). That is up from AED 13.5 bn across roughly 135k customers at end-July. Individuals made up almost all beneficiaries — 148.7k borrowers — but accounted for just AED 2.3 bn of deferred repayments. The Financial Institutions Resilience Package launched in March, shortly after the regional conflict broke out.

Individuals make up most of the borrowers, but businesses hold most of the money: Some 148.7k individuals received deferrals worth just AED 2.3 bn. Meanwhile, 849 private-sector companies received AED 10.7 bn and 6.4k SMEs another AED 2.9 bn, so businesses account for about 86% of the total.

That complicates the unwind we were watching: We reported last month that the earliest six-month deferrals were beginning to expire, setting up a cleaner test of borrower health as support rolls off. But the relief pool was still expanding through August. So far, banks are holding up: the non-performing loan ratio fell to 2.6% at end-August. The next thing to watch is whether borrowers coming off deferrals resume payments smoothly, or whether stress starts showing up once the cushion disappears.

PSA

Food makers and importers have nine months to cut the salt, sugar, and fat in bread, flavored dairy, and salty snacks. The Health Ministry has started enforcing caps on those ingredients in selected packaged foods, state news agency Wam reports. The rules cover locally made and imported products, apply to companies in freezones, and reach every link of the supply chain from manufacturing to retail. Leavened and flat bread, sweetened milk drinks and milk alternatives, flavored yogurt, and salty snacks such as crackers, chips, nuts, and pretzels must meet the first-phase limits within nine months. Processed cheese gets two years and three months. All products then need to keep cutting until they hit tighter final limits by the end of 2030.

The fine print: Products that don’t comply can stay on shelves for up to a year, or until they expire if that comes first. Firms that would need to cut an ingredient by more than 20% to meet the first-phase cap have 30 days to apply for an exception. Penalties range from a warning to fines of AED 5k-500k, and repeat offenders face closure of up to six months or loss of their license.

WEATHER- The mercury is rising back up again today, with a high of 42°C in Abu Dhabi and 41°C in Dubai, before cooling to 30°C in both emirates overnight, according to our favorite weather app.

The big story abroad

There’s no single biggest story in the international business press this morning, but there is a common theme running throughout most of the top stories: The AI buildout, and who’s paying for it.

Oracle, Broadcom, and SpaceX are going to private credit to pay for AI chips. The three companies are each arranging multi-bn debt packages with Wall Street investment firms to fund chip purchases, shifting the cost of the AI buildout off their own books, the Wall Street Journal reports. Broadcom is working to arrange more than USD 50 bn to finance the custom AI chip it’s developing with OpenAI, with Apollo and Blackstone among the lenders approached. Oracle is in talks with Apollo and Goldman Sachs to fund a large chip purchase, and SpaceX has approached lenders about a USD 40 bn package for Nvidia hardware, the Financial Times reports.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has closed Anthropic’s lead in business AI spending. Spending on the two companies’ models was split roughly evenly in September among some 120k firms tracked by OpenRouter, against Anthropic’s three-quarter share at the start of the year, the WSJ reports. OpenAI cut the price of GPT-5.6 Luna by 80% and Terra by 20% shortly after launching the line in June, and says 2.5 mn businesses now use its products. Retool’s CEO David Hsu said the GPT-5.6 release was the main reason his company moved most of its work to OpenAI, and that he now spends around 20% less than he would on Anthropic models.

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