Earnings season opens with the first read on how the Iran war is hitting company results

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

THIS MORNING: Delays at the Saudi-UAE border? + four new rules changes for ADGM incorporated players

Good morning, friends. Earnings season is finally upon us — and it’s going to be a telling one. Companies will be reporting financials for the period that saw the peak of the US-Iran conflict here in the Gulf.

Taaleem's 2Q financials remained solid, growing y-o-y, with enrolment numbers at premium schools offsetting a hit at its nursery segment. We’ll be keeping a close eye on banks, real estate firms, which analysts say were the most exposed to the conflict. Logistics, hospitality, and aviation are also on our radar.

Our Big Story Today dives into a new digital money alternative being offered in the UAE — tokenized deposits, the banking sector’s more direct answer to stablecoins. Treasury teams in this market finally have both options on the table at once, and we take a look at the benefits offered by each.

Also: An Abu Dhabi engineering firm with Adnoc-prequalified status just got a suitor from Mumbai. SEPC is set to acquire up to a 90% stake in Abu Dhabi-based firm Avenir International Engineers and Consultants through a share-swap transaction, though it still needs shareholder and regulatory sign-offs. Plus: Commercial Bank of Dubai is the latest to show that appetite for Gulf debt is as solid as ever, with its AT1 sukuk upsized to USD 550 mn.

The EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum is back — and this year, we're giving the full day to the one question on every business leader's mind: What does AI actually mean for your company, your people, and your own job?

Leaders in New York, London, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore are asking the same things, and nobody has built a playbook that works yet. We're all figuring it out in real time — and for Egypt, the stakes are unusually high.

Egypt could leapfrog a generation on the back of this technology — or watch AI hollow out the industries and jobs we can't afford to lose. The leaders who get literate early will be the ones who get to decide which road we take.

Every session on stage answers one question: "So, what do I actually do about it?"

Join us on 5 October in Cairo. Seats are limited and attendance is by invitation only.

Request your invitation here.

Delays at the border?

Earlier this week, we heard of delays in payments from banks in Saudi Arabia to accounts in the UAE — now Semafor is reporting those same delays at the border for the movement of goods from the UAE into Saudi, with delays lasting from hours to several days — and in some cases more than a week — as bottlenecks worsen at the Al Batha crossing. Goods caught in the delays include building equipment, furniture, spare parts, and fresh flowers. So far, Saudi customs authorities deny any disruption, saying trade remains within normal customs operations and that no complaints or signs of delays have been recorded.

Why it matters: The delays are adding friction to one of the Arab world’s biggest trade corridors. Bilateral trade between the two hit USD 25.7 bn last year, up from USD 21.7 bn in 2024, and the delays come as land crossings grew over the past few months due to the Strait of Hormuz blockade and increased reliance on overland routes.

From power to water in Egypt

Amea Power is reportedly in advanced talks with the Egyptian government to develop three seawater desalination plants with a combined capacity of up to 300k cbm per day, Chairman Hussain Al Nowais was quoted as saying. Two plants would be built on the Mediterranean coast and one on the Red Sea, with Amea expected to fund, design, build, and operate the projects.

Why Egypt: The country needs 114 bn cbm of freshwater annually but gets only around half from natural resources, forcing it to lean on wastewater reuse, groundwater, and food imports. The government is already scaling its desalination infrastructure, with 129 operating plants totaling 1.41 mn cbm per day and another 19 under construction.

Amea’s Egypt footprint is already growing on the power side: The company expected to connect roughly 1 GW to Egypt’s grid by June of this year, making desalination the next leg of a broader infrastructure buildout in the country. The push also comes as Amea lines up a bigger funding cycle, with Al Nowais saying earlier this year it was in talks with local and international institutions for a 2026 capital increase that would double its capital, ahead of a potential ADX IPO within two years.

Data point

20% — that’s the decline seen in new lease volumes in Dubai’s rental market in 1H, according to Dubai Land Department data picked up by AGBI. Average new tenancy prices were down 6% y-o-y to AED 60k, but renewals held flat y-o-y at an average of AED 65k. This tracks with a wider slowdown hitting the emirate’s housing market, which continued in May as prices fell for the third straight month, albeit at a slower rate.

Further north, Ras Al Khaimah is still running hot, with rents rising 10% over the past year to AED 57 per sq ft, according to data from Bayut, as owners and landlords are hoping for a surge in demand driven by incoming tourism projects like Wynn’s USD 5.1 bn casino resort. Similarly, rents were up 8.8% in Ajman, and 3.4% in Umm Al Quwain.

PSA

If you’re incorporated in ADGM, four rule changes just landed — and they took effect on publication, ADGM said yesterday. The ADGM Registration Authority updated its commercial legislation to tighten its AML/CFT standards, and it affects you if you’re running a nominee structure, a trust, or a branch of a foreign parent through ADGM:

The public register will now flag whether a shareholder or director is acting as a nominee — a real change for anyone using nominee arrangements for privacy or structuring reasons;
The Registrar can now formally demand beneficial ownership information on trusts connected to ADGM;
Cash payments are now capped at USD 3k — lawyers, accountants, company service providers, and real estate businesses can no longer accept or hand out cash above that threshold per transaction;
Foreign company branches now owe beneficial ownership on their parent.

WEATHER- It’s still hot and humid, with highs of 41-42° in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and a low of 31° today, before temperatures cool slightly in Dubai over the weekend, with a high of 40° and a low of 30° tomorrow and after. Abu Dhabi hovers at a 42° high throughout.

The big story abroad

The US-Iran tit-for-tat continues, but at least technical talks are still on, according to a US official who spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity. Talks had stalled this week while Iran held funeral rites for former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and tensions had escalated as the US hit roughly 90 targets on Wednesday night, framing the strikes as degrading Iran's capacity to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran retaliated against US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.

Iran says the US also hit its rail network — overnight strikes damaged a bridge on the Gorgan-Incheh Borun line in Golestan province, a corridor linking Iran to Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, disrupting passenger service to Mashhad just as Khamenei's coffin arrived for burial there. Strikes were also reported on power transmission infrastructure in Chabahar and Konarak in the southeast.

The conflict is squeezing diesel markets: Russia's new export ban — a response to Ukrainian drone strikes that have knocked out close to half its refining capacity — has combined with renewed Hormuz risk to push US diesel prices up 13%, and diesel futures in London up 14%.

Meanwhile, Fed chair Kevin Warsh named five external task forces stacked with names like Mervyn King and Marc Andreessen to reshape Fed communications, the balance sheet, data collection, AI-era productivity, and inflation targeting — a sign that he’s moving ahead with an overhaul of the Fed’s communications framework with recommendations due to the FOMC by year-end.

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Tokenized deposits are the UAE banking system’s answer to stablecoins

Digital money is splitting into two different models, and corporate treasurers in the UAE are getting the full suite of options. We’ve been reporting on the stablecoin rush for months now, with AE Coin becoming the country’s first CBUAE-licensed stablecoin and others from Zand Bank, Rakbank, and IHC, ADQ, and First Abu Dhabi Bank all following suit. But the newest form of digital money being offered to UAE corporates is tokenized deposits — a slightly more familiar alternative.

HSBC’s rollout of tokenized deposits to corporate clients in the UAE is the clearest real-world test yet of that alternative — and of which model treasury teams actually pick once both options are available. Tokenized deposits keep money inside the regulated banking system as a bank liability, just moving on blockchain rails to ensure speed and efficiency. Stablecoins, on the other hand, move money into a privately issued token that lives off any single bank’s balance sheet entirely.

The benefit? You’re getting a tokenized form of commercial bank money that “represents a direct claim on the bank and operates within the same regulatory and banking framework as traditional bank deposits,” Kyle Boag, regional head of global payments solutions at HSBC MENAT, tells EnterpriseAM.

Tokenized deposits stay fully inside the prudential rules governing commercial banks — meaning access to central bank liquidity facilities and deposit protection that stablecoins don’t necessarily carry.

Stablecoins lean on reserve assets and secondary-market mechanisms to hold their value instead — a model that depends entirely on the market trusting the issuer actually holds what it claims. When that trust wavered for USDC in 2023 — after its issuer’s bank reserves got caught up in Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse — the token briefly lost its peg, recovering only after US regulators stepped in to guarantee those bank deposits. Tokenized deposits don’t carry that specific risk, because the backstop is already built into the banking system they run on.

That’s not to say UAE-licensed stablecoins are unregulated — CBUAE rules already require issuers to hold reserves 1:1 in liquid assets and file audited whitepapers, and many of the regulated stablecoins in the UAE — Rakbank, Zand AED, and the FAB/ADQ/IHC token — are issued by banks directly anyway, though AE Coin and USDU are issued by non-bank entities.

Much like stablecoins, treasury, not retail, is where demand lies

“The strongest use cases we see today are treasury centralization and real-time cross-border payments,” Boag says. That’s because tokenized deposits let funds move “24/7, all year round, without being constrained by traditional payment cut-off times,” he adds. That’s instead of the settlement windows that give treasury teams hours to manage liquidity positions before a traditional payment finalizes, per the IMF.

GO DEEPER- We’ve tracked the demand side of this before: business use — trade finance, remittances, and B2B settlement — is what’s actually driving stablecoin adoption in the UAE, with volumes up over 40% y-o-y in 2025. HSBC’s tokenized deposits are the banking system’s answer to that same appetite for faster digital money, without handing deposits over to someone else’s ledger.

But adoption, for now, looks narrow by design. HSBC expects the earliest users to be “digitally mature organisations, particularly those that have already invested in modern treasury infrastructure and technology-enabled financial operations,” Boag says.

HSBC doesn’t see this as a fight it needs to win

“We see tokenized deposits and stablecoins as complementary forms of digital money rather than competing solutions,” Boag says, adding that the two “may serve different customer needs and use cases.” The real potential, in his telling, isn’t picking a winner — it’s interoperability: letting different forms of digital money talk to each other as adoption grows.

Our take: HSBC — and stablecoin issuers — are both moving in step with the UAE government and financial regulator, whose goal is to modernize its payment infrastructure and to build a cashless, digitally-native financial system. The underlying goal? Becoming a hub that can move money in and out, in any direction, as fast and cheaply as possible.

SEPC to acquire UAE’s Avenir International

An Abu Dhabi engineering firm with prequalified Adnoc status is about to come under Indian ownership. Mumbai-listed SEPC is set to acquire up to a 90% stake in Abu Dhabi-based firm Avenir International Engineers and Consultants through a share-swap transaction, as per an exchange filing (pdf).

The details: SEPC’s board approved a preferential allotment of 1.5 bn equity shares at INR 10 apiece — aggregating to c. USD 183 mn — to Avenir's shareholders. The transaction needs shareholder and regulatory sign-off and is expected to close by December 2026.

Avenir? Founded in 2011, Avenir serves oil and gas and civil infrastructure clients in the UAE and posted turnover of about AED 75.01 mn in 2025. Its most valuable asset for a buyer isn't revenue — it's Adnoc prequalification, which lets a contractor bid directly on Adnoc-linked EPC work instead of coming in underneath a prequalified partner.

Why an Indian firm wants in: SEPC is a Chennai-based EPC player with a track record across the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia, but no standing Adnoc credential of its own — buying Avenir gets it one.

This is SEPC’s second acquisition in the Gulf: In 2024, it acquired a 75% stake in Bahrain-based Almoayyed Electrical Equipment & Instrumentation Systems, giving it a platform in electrical and automation systems for energy projects across the UAE and Bahrain.

Commercial Bank of Dubai upsizes its AT1 comeback to USD 550 mn after orders top USD 825 mn

Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD) priced the benchmark AT1 it mandated banks for earlier this week — and upsized it on strong demand, Zawya reports. The bank upsized the Reg-S perpetual non-call six-year issuance to USD 550 mn from an initial USD 500 mn target, pricing at par with a 6.625% coupon. Next, it will list on Euronext Dublin and Nasdaq Dubai.

How strong was demand? Orders peaked at USD 825 mn — well over the final USD 550 mn print — after initial price thoughts had been floated in the low 7% area.

This is CBD's second AT1 in as many years. The Baa1/A-rated lender redeemed a USD 600 mn AT1 in April, exercising the call option on the paper it had issued back in 2020. This print effectively replaces that capital, on essentially similar terms, at a moment when Gulf bank issuers are moving fast to lock in cheaper funding.

This slots into the same wave we flagged when Ajman Bank priced its debut AT1 sukuk at 6.50% overnight — except CBD is an established, repeat name in the trade, not a new entrant.

ADVISORS- Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Barclays, Citi, CBD itself, Emirates NBD Capital, FAB, and Standard Chartered ran the books.

Keyper raises USD 11 mn to make annual rent cheques less painful

UAE proptech Keyper raised USD 11 mn to push monthly rent payments further into a market still built around the annual cheque, according to a press release. The round was led by Speedinvest, alongside our friends at Mashreq’s VC arm NeoVentures and Dar Ventures, MEVP, Dubai Future District Fund, Property Finder, Arab National Bank, Ellington Properties, and Abbey Road Investment Group. The round follows an earlier USD 4 mn series A round and a USD 30 mn sukuk agreement with Franklin Templeton.

What Keyper does: The UAE-based proptech lets tenants convert annual rent payments into monthly digital installments, while landlords still receive upfront rental income. The company combines rent payments, property management tech, and embedded financial services in one platform. It now supports more than 10.5k properties valued at over USD 6 bn and serves 4k landlords. It says it has financed more than USD 44 mn in rent value since launch, including USD 19 mn so far this year.

Keyper has been laying the rails for this for a while. The company teamed up with Dubai First and FAB to let tenants pay rent through its platform using FAB or Dubai First Mastercards and became the first user of DIFC's API-based real estate data solution. Two of its other tie-ups have since turned into backing. It partnered with Property Finder to bring rent-now-pay-monthly options onto the listings platform and struck an integration agreement with Ellington Properties, covering digital rental management, automated rent collection, live market data, and in-app financing — both Property Finder and Ellington Properties are now among the Series A’s investors.

What’s next: The fresh capital will go toward scaling Keyper’s monthly rent payment platform, bringing in more institutional landlords and large residential portfolios, launching new financing and liquidity products for property owners and expanding its property-management services.

Taaleem’s net income grew in 2Q 2026, as steady enrolment at premium schools and a diversified student body helped keep it stable

A larger premium student body boosts Taaleem’s earnings: Education provider Taaleem saw a 21% y-o-y growth in its bottom line in 2Q 2026 — or 3Q, according to its financial year, which ends in August — to AED 105.6 mn on the back of an uptick in student enrolment at its premium schools, according to its earnings release (pdf) and financials (pdf). Its revenue grew 19.2% y-o-y to AED 399.8 mn.

On a 9M basis: It posted AED 1.2 bn in revenue for 9M FY 2025/26, backed by an 11.5% y-o-y uptick in student enrolment at its new premium schools. The provider’s bottom line rose 9% y-o-y to AED 283.2 mn.

Behind the results: New school launches in DBS Mira and DBS Islands helped push up numbers by 18.6k pupils in its premium segment, its largest revenue contributor, helping to offset a dip in enrolment for its public-private partnership schools. Also boosting results, as in 1Q, was the provider’s takeover of a controlling stake in Kids First Group last summer, which added AED 10.7 mn to its earnings.

The conflict hasn’t had a major impact on Taaleem, with the school operator noting a 99% teacher retention rate, while its 50/50 split of foreign and UAE national pupils helped keep business steady. KFG, its early years platform, saw the greatest hit to enrollment due to the “limited suitability of remote learning for early-years education and its monthly fee collection model,” the company said. Enrolment recovered, however, to around 82% of pre-conflict levels by mid-June, it added.

Going forward: Sign-ups for its summer school programs are up y-o-y so far, the company said. Its plans to open Harrow International School Dubai at the end of August are still on track and are set to provide forward visibility for future earnings, CEO Alan Williamson said.

Cantor hires fresh faces for Abu Dhabi office

Cantor Fitzgerald is hiring 16 people to build out its Abu Dhabi fixed income desk, deepening its Middle East push, Bloomberg reports. Most of the new hires will sit in Abu Dhabi, with the rest split between London and Singapore. The team will be led by former Stifel executive Tom Goodale (LinkedIn), who joined with 10 former colleagues.

The hires will be working closely with our friend and former EFG Hermes Equity Capital Markets head Ali Khalpey (LinkedIn), who was appointed last year to lead Cantor's regional investment banking and capital markets business and build a 25-50-person team across Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Sovereign AI startup Avelin AI raises pre-seed funding, while DP World expands its trucking fleet

Avelin AI raises pre-seed round

Dubai-based Avelin AI has secured USD 3.7 mn in pre-seed funding from angel investors to build out its sovereign AI platform for governments and regulated industries, according to a press release (pdf). The startup was founded by Yury Akinin (LinkedIn), who co-founded life sciences AI company Quantori — which he exited at a valuation worth of USD 100 mn — and led engineering teams at large enterprises before starting Avelin. It counts Nvidia Inception, AWS Activate, and the Dubai Future Foundation among its technology partners.

The funding will go toward commercial expansion across the Middle East, Europe, and America, as well as scaling GPU infrastructure and developing its Cross Model fusion technology. Avelin says it's now focused on converting existing commercial agreements into signed contracts, targeting regulated sectors including financial services, healthcare, government, and critical infrastructure.

Avelin’s raise lands in the middle of a busy few weeks for sovereign and regional AI funding, as governments in the Gulf work to keep data, infrastructure, and compliance in-house rather than renting capability from outside advisors. Arabic-language AI startup CNTXT AI raised USD 60 mn in a Series A, and the GCC- and London-based 1001 closed a USD 30 mn Series A just last week.

DP World expands GCC road freight network

DP World is scaling its GCC land freight network as demand for overland logistics grows across the region, adding 700 more trucks to strengthen inland logistics links between ports, economic zones, and customers, according to Dubai Media Office.

The additional fleet is expected to contribute up to 35k truck trips per month to both domestic and cross-border cargo movements along first-, middle-, and last-mile delivery operations.

IN CONTEXT- The investment comes as GCC logistics operators continue to expand road freight capacity following the disruptions to shipping routes linked to the Strait of Hormuz. DP World has also been expanding corridors that connect ports with inland hubs, including fast customs routes linking UAE’s east coast directly to Jebel Ali and a customs corridor from Sohar in Oman.

IMF now sees MENA economy contracting 0.5%

The IMF marginally trimmed its 2026 global growth forecast to 3.0%, down from 3.1% in April, in its latest economic outlook report (pdf) — but MENA saw a much sharper downgrade. The region is now expected to contract by 0.5% this year, a 1.6-percentage-point downward revision and the single largest cut of any grouping in the entire report. 2027 projections tell the opposite story on both counts: global growth rebounds to 3.4%, and MENA sees the most aggressive growth of all at 7.3%.

That’s despite Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s expected growth this year. Saudi Arabia is seen growing 1.7% for 2026 — though that’s still a sharp 1.4-percentage-point cut from April — on the back of more diversified export routes than Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar. Meanwhile, Egypt is seen growing 4.6%, an upward revision of 0.4 percentage points from April’s forecast.

Behind the downgrade: Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar — the producers most exposed to the war’s disruption of energy output, transport, and the Strait of Hormuz — are projected to contract sharply this year, before penciling in “double-digit expansions” in 2027 once exports normalize.

The IMF frames 2026 as two opposing forces — a negative supply shock from the Middle East war and a positive demand shock from the global AI and technology investment cycle. Globally, the two are roughly offsetting each other, which is why the world number only slipped a tenth of a point. But the offset isn’t evenly distributed. Economies plugged into AI-related trade and manufacturing are seeing upgrades even when they’re energy importers. On the other hand, economies directly exposed to the war and not plugged into that tech cycle are seeing some of the sharpest cuts in the entire report.

The oil math behind the downgrade got more expensive, not cheaper. The Fund’s reference forecast assumes crude averages USD 89.27 a barrel in 2026 — 9% above the roughly USD 82 it assumed in April — before easing to USD 78.70 in 2027. The whole forecast rests on the Strait of Hormuz beginning to reopen this month and returning to pre-war conditions by March 2027. The IMF itself frames the risks around that timeline as more balanced than in April, but still tilted to the downside.

BACKGROUND- We flagged the fragility behind this exact picture a day before the IMF’s numbers landed. Oxford Economics had the global second-half acceleration at 3.1% annualized, contingent entirely on the US-Iran truce holding, and put the odds of that truce surviving at 50-50.

MARKETS THIS MORNING-

Asian markets are mostly in the green this morning, driven by a tech equity rally that has spilled over from the US. South Korea led gains, with the Kospi rising over 4.6%, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei gaining 2.4%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng up 0.4% and China’s CSI 300 up 0.3%. Over on Wall Street, futures are edging lower following yesterday’s rally.

ADX	9,882	-0.0% (YTD: -1.1%)
DFM	5,991	-0.2% (YTD: -0.9%)
Nasdaq Dubai UAE20	4,769	+0.2% (YTD: -2.4%)
USD : AED CBUAE	Buy 3.67	Sell 3.67
EIBOR	3.5% o/n	4.2% 1 yr
TASI	10,808	-0.4% (YTD: +3.0%)
EGX30	51,312	+0.5% (YTD: +25.0%)
S&P 500	7,544	+0.8% (YTD: +10.2%)
FTSE 100	10,472	-0.2% (YTD: +5.5%)
Euro Stoxx 50	6,284	+1.3% (YTD: +8.5%)
Brent crude	USD 76.26	-0.1%
Natural gas (Nymex)	USD 3.01	+0.1%
Gold	USD 4,134	-0.1%
BTC	USD 63,326	+1.6% (YTD: -28.6%)
Chimera JP Morgan UAE Bond UCITS ETF	AED 3.72	-0.3% (YTD: +1.4%)
S&P MENA Bond & Sukuk	150.96	+0.2% (YTD: -0.5%)
VIX (Volatility Index)	15.84	-6.3% (YTD: +6%)

THE CLOSING BELL-

The DFM fell 0.2% yesterday on turnover of AED 642.5 mn. The index is down 0.9% YTD.

In the green: National International Holding Company (+14.3%), Islamic Arab Ins. Company (+7.1%), and Watania International Holding (+6.6%).

In the red: United Foods (-4.8%), Union Coop (-2.2%), and Salik Company (-1.9%).

Over on the ADX, the index remained flat on turnover of AED 1.3 bn. Meanwhile, Nasdaq Dubai was up 0.2%.

Metamorph's Manish Raniga spent a decade turning around distressed airlines — now he's rolling up the Gulf's wellness industry

Manish Raniga (LinkedIn) has spent his career inside the room where deals are made — first at PwC, then at Etihad Airways during the decade it used M&A to put Abu Dhabi on the aviation map, then as a C-suite operator turning around other major airlines. In 2024, he and his former boss-turned-business-partner Prasad Hedge decided to build something that combined dealmaking and operating capability under one roof.

That became Metamorph, a private equity firm that just closed its first Gulf platform: a USD 200 mn wellness and longevity JV backed by Abu Dhabi's Al Nasser Holdings’ Nova Capital. The firm’s board includes heavyweights like former Bridgewater Associates CEO Eileen Murray, ex-Executive Vice President of Blackstone Brad Hogas, and Dr. Christopher Jensen, a longevity physician who advises Six Senses, Aman Hotels & Resorts, and Four Seasons.

Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a member of the community starts their day — and throws in a couple of questions just for fun. This week, we sat down with Raniga, Metamorph's co-founder and managing partner, to talk about his path from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, how Metamorph is structuring the Gulf's next wave of roll-ups, and what his mornings look like. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

EnterpriseAM: You started in M&A, went on to work more on the operational side of things, and now you’re back on the dealmaking side of the table. Why did you decide to get back into investment, and why start Metamorph?

Manish Raniga (MR): I joined PwC as a graduate and was there for 10 years, leading the M&A and transaction services practice out of Sydney on headline agreements like the BHP Billiton merger and the privatization of Sydney Airport, before transitioning into more of a strategy role at Macquarie Bank as a program director restructuring the bank and building a back office in India that became its global nervous center.

I then got a tap on my shoulder to join Etihad Airways in 2011 — first as finance director of the commercial division, then as head of corporate strategy and strategic projects, including orchestrating M&A transactions across Jet Airways, Air Berlin, Air Seychelles, and Alitalia. A lot of these were distressed airlines, and the question was how to turn them around and integrate them into Etihad’s mandate as the growth engine of Abu Dhabi. From there, I moved into C-suite roles at Jet Airways and GoAir, then South African Airways, where as, CCO, I took it through a bankruptcy process, a recapitalization, and a relaunch during the pandemic. Later, I joined a large family private office, a mid-tier private equity firm in Miami, where assets under management grew from USD 4 bn to just under USD 20 bn in funds under management, running a roughly USD 5 bn portfolio myself across diversified assets like football teams, fintech, aviation, and consumer finance.

My business partner Prasad Hedge was my line manager there, and in 2024, we decided to create something different. We wanted to create a firm with the DNA of a private equity firm and an operator, with digital at its core. We aim to support the entrepreneur and provide them with the operating capability to scale. We incorporated the business in Delaware, and then set up a legal entity in ADGM.

E: How central is the Gulf to Metamorph's strategy versus other markets you look at?

MR: I see the Gulf as a growth engine, not just for our firm but for the global economy. We see the UAE as our number one priority, followed by the GCC as our core geographical pillar — with my business partner in the US giving us the North American market too. Outside of that core, we only look at [windows] on a tactical basis, where there's a potential synergy back to the UAE or the GCC. For example, there's a synergy between our healthcare business in the US and what we're doing in wellness and longevity — traditional primary healthcare and the healthcare of the future, which is regenerative medicine.

E: Beyond wellness, what other sectors is Metamorph eyeing investments in? What’s the investment strategy?

MR: Right now we're working on five platforms: wellness and longevity, a healthcare platform based in the US, AI infrastructure, real estate and hospitality, and aviation. We're also about to launch an industrial platform focused on logistics and warehousing.

In wellness and longevity, as part of our first wave, we'll be acquiring five businesses, and we'll be making an announcement in the coming weeks on who those are. We're integrating these businesses into a single operating model under a single operating framework — it's going to be a hero brand, taking the best of talent and capability across each business up to the platform level. Our ambition is to take these UAE-born businesses to a global stage.

E: Running a business like this comes with famously long hours. What does your routine actually look like?

MR: First and foremost, before being a private equity professional, I'm a husband and a father — I've got a son and a daughter, and my wife and kids are based in Australia. I spend approximately four to five weeks at a time in Dubai, then go back to Australia for a couple of weeks. While I'm in Australia, I'm also the national vice chair of the Australia India Business Council — a volunteer role working with the Australian government on the Australia-India corridor, which is Australia's number one trading partner right now.

I spend early mornings with my family in Australia on Zoom. My business partner is in Miami, so we usually hop on four to five hours of back-to-back calls once he comes online around 3 or 4pm Dubai time. Somewhere in between all of that, I need to eat and go to the gym. I do personal training three times a week and I'm very focused on my fitness. I try to get at least six hours of sleep a night; that's the minimum for me to function and perform.

Other than that, I'm kind of like Mrs. Doubtfire, running between meetings in DIFC with different capital partners. Abu Dhabi is extremely important for us, particularly with the Al Nasser relationship, so I spend a fair amount of time there too, making sure I'm physically present with our capital partners.

Every day, my business partner and I spend a good hour to an hour and a half on ideation — we'll pick one of our platforms, say AI infrastructure, and ask what's broken about it, how we create the alpha, and what the gaps in the market are. We do deep research, we use a lot of AI to accelerate our thinking, and we challenge each other on why a particular industry should be transformed. That ideation then becomes a strategy we present to investors. We prefer to work on fewer, higher-quality agreements rather than being transactional — if we're doing five transactions, we want five out of five to succeed.

Raniga's favorites

His favorite coffee spot: I live in Downtown, so I typically walk to Dubai Mall for my coffee. Arabica is one of my favorite spots. If I can't get that far because I'm running late, I'll go down the road to Black Sheep. A cortado is my coffee of choice.

What he's listening to: I'm really into biohacking at the moment, so I’m following Bryan Johnson and others — I try to study the science behind it.

Favorite piece of advice: My father, who was also a chartered accountant before becoming an entrepreneur, told me: Work with people or hire people who have the right attitude and not the right aptitude. The people who have the right aptitude may not have the right attitude — they may not have shared values or think the way that you do. And if you don't have aligned values and vision, it doesn't matter how smart or successful that person is, because that in itself is a broken relationship. I can teach people skills, and they can acquire knowledge, but one thing you can't change is one's attitude and value set.

CALENDAR

JULY

28-29 July (Tuesday-Wednesday): Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

SEPTEMBER

1-3 September (Tuesday-Thursday: Middle East Energy, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

7-9 September (Monday-Wednesday): AIM Congress, Dubai World Trade Center.

7-9 September (Monday-Wednesday): International Property Show, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

12-13 September (Saturday-Sunday): Emirates International Congress on AI & Visionary Leadership in Transforming Healthcare, Adnec Center Abu Dhabi.

14-17 September (Monday-Thursday): Arabian Travel Market, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

15-16 September (Tuesday-Wednesday): Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

29-30 September (Tuesday-Wednesday): AFCM Annual Conference, Abu Dhabi.

OCTOBER

4-10 October (Sunday-Saturday): World Space Week, Abu Dhabi.

5-7 October (Monday-Wednesday): AI Everything Global, Adnec Center, Abu Dhabi.

12-14 October (Monday-Wednesday): Airport Show, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

14-15 October (Wednesday-Thursday): Sharjah Investment Forum, Jawaher Reception and Convention Center, Sharjah.

13-15 October (Tuesday-Thursday): Annual Meeting of Global Future Leaders, Dubai.

20-22 October (Tuesday-Thursday): Future Health Summit, Adnec Center Abu Dhabi.

27-28 October (Tuesday-Wednesday): Arab Competition Forum, Dubai.

27-28 October (Tuesday-Wednesday): Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

30 October (Friday): Large businesses achieving annual revenues equal to or above AED 50 mn must appoint an accredited service provider for e-invoicing implementation.

Signposted to happen sometime in October 2026:

Abu Dhabi Space Week, Abu Dhabi.

NOVEMBER

2-6 November (Monday-Friday): Dubai Future Finance Week, Dubai.

4 November (Wednesday): Digital Transformation Summit, Sofitel, Abu Dhabi.

9-10 November (Monday-Tuesday): Annual government meetings, Abu Dhabi.

9-12 November (Monday-Thursday): EMEA Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education Conference, Dubai College of Tourism, Dubai.

10-12 November (Tuesday-Thursday): Dubai International Electric Vehicle Exhibition & Conference, Dubai World Trade Center.

16-18 November (Monday-Wednesday): World Police Summit, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

18-19 November (Wednesday-Thursday): Touchdown Middle East 2026, Conrad Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers, Abu Dhabi.

DECEMBER

2-4 December (Wednesday-Friday): UN Water Conference, UAE.

4-6 December (Friday-Sunday): Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Abu Dhabi.

8-9 December (Tuesday-Wednesday): Capital Market Summit, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai.

8-9 December (Tuesday-Wednesday): Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

8-10 December (Tuesday-Thursday): Abu Dhabi Water & Power Week, Adnec Center, Abu Dhabi.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2027:

1 January: Deadline for large businesses to implement e-invoicing;
1Q 2027: Completion of the first phase of Hassyan seawater desalination project;
1-3 February (Monday-Wednesday): World Governments Summit;
31 March: Small businesses with annual revenues of less than AED 50 mn are obliged to contract with an accredited service provider for e-invoicing implementation;
31 March: Government entities are required to appoint an accredited service provider for e-invoicing implementation;
21-22 April (Wednesday-Thursday): Token2049, Dubai;
1 July: Deadline for small businesses to implement e-invoicing;
1 October: Deadline for governments to implement e-invoicing;
Abu Dhabi’s solar and battery energy facility, combining 5.2 GW of solar capacity and 19 GWh of battery storage, is set for commissioning.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2028:

Artificial Intelligence Summit.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2029:

Sibos 2029 organized by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), Dubai;
Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, Abu Dhabi;
The commissioning of the seventh phase of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.

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