Digital bank Revolut secures key authorization for UAE launch
Digital bank Revolut is launching its services in the UAE after gaining key authorization following a protracted approval process.
The London-based firm said that the UAE’s Central Bank had okayed its application for so-called stored value facilities and retail payment services, Bloomberg reports.
It now plans to build out its local operations before going live. Revolut has been planning to launch since it secured “in-principle” approvals in September last year.
Historically, it has been complex for so-called neobanks to enter the Gulf market, where traditional banks have dominated.
However, since the emergence of homegrown digital banks including Wio, Mashreq Neo and Liv — all tied to major UAE lenders — the market has started to open up.
London-based money transfer company Wise also recently secured approvals, and homegrown Islamic digital finance startup Fasset has been expanding its services.
UAE maps strategy to protect Gulf shipping from renewed threats
UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani Al Zeyoudi offered a glimpse today at how government planners are trying to prevent a repeat of Iran’s chokehold over Gulf shipping. “We want to make our dependency on the Strait of Hormuz close to zero,” Al Zeyoudi said in an interview with Bloomberg.
A key part of the strategy is the emirate of Fujairah, where the government has spent years building infrastructure to bypass the narrow waterway. ADNOC already operates a pipeline that can carry up to 1.5 million barrels of crude a day directly from Abu Dhabi to Fujairah, and is developing a second line that would further increase export capacity.
Al Zeyoudi said the UAE is also investing in rail links, ports and overland trade corridors that can move goods between Asia, the Middle East and Europe without relying on a single maritime route.
The aftermath of the Strait of Hormuz crisis will also be prominent at this week’s Saudi Arabia’s FII Priority Europe conference in Rome.
Opening the formal proceedings on Thursday will be PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who will be joined by Saudi Tourism Minister Ahmed Al-Khateeb, Princess Reema bint Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., and a full roster of government officials.
Among European leaders on the schedule are Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Italian Industry Minister Adolfo Urso.
Speakers include Anthony Gutman, Co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International; Andrew Cohen, executive chairman of JPMorgan Chase’s global private bank; Lord Franck Petitgas, Vice Chairman of Blackstone Europe; Sir Noel Quinn, Chairman of Julius Baer; Mohamed Alabbar, founder of Emaar Properties; and Gerard Inzerillo, Group CEO of Diriyah Co.
Qatar vies with Turkey, India, Indonesia to host 2036 Olympics
Qatar has officially entered the race to host the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al-Thani, President of the Qatar Olympic Committee, said competing for the games will build on the country’s success as the first Middle Eastern nation to host the FIFA World Cup soccer championship in 2022.
Having established prominence in international sports as a “central pillar of our national strategy,” Sheikh Joaan said Qatar already has 95% of the required infrastructure in place to become the first Middle East nation to host the Olympics.
Also competing for the 2036 games are India, Turkey, Chile and Indonesia.
UAE, European Union see progress in clinching trade deal
The UAE and the European Union are moving closer to a trade agreement that would give the emirates consolidated access to the world’s largest trading bloc while reinforcing the country’s own status as a global logistics hub.
A deal between the UAE and the EU could also be key to unlocking a wider agreement between the 27-member bloc and the Gulf Cooperation Council, a stop-start negotiation which has not yielded consensus in the 35 years since talks started.
Dr. Thani Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, met with the EU’s trade chief Maros Sefcovic in Dubai on Wednesday to launch the talks officially over a potential Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the UAE’s framework for the dozens of trade deals it has made since 2021 to diversify its economy.
During his visit to the emirate, Sefcovic also met with the private sector to discuss opportunities for increased investment flows. The EU currently accounts for $67.6 billion in non-oil trade with the Emirates, 8.3% of the UAE’s total trade.
Speaking to reporters alongside Sefcovic, Al Zeyoudi said the UAE wants to seal a deal with the EU “in a very short period, three to six months from now.”
The Emirati cabinet minister added he did not see the talks as a hurdle for a future EU deal with the GCC and noted that bilateral talks with New Zealand and South Korea had led to trade agreements with the GCC, Reuters reports.
“We are seeing it’s a flow which is going to be starting from here and moving to the GCC,” he said. “Usually, the blocs are much slower than the bilateral, and that’s why we’re starting here, so we can move quickly.”
UAE minister woos Silicon Valley investment firms on U.S. tour
From meeting U.S. policymakers face-to-face in Washington to chatting with OpenAI execs in San Francisco, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade and Talent Attraction Thani Al Zeyoudi says his cross-country tour last week should pay dividends in relationship-building abroad.
Along with a raft of discussions about artificial intelligence “as the defining technology of our era,” Al Zeyoudi’s Silicon Valley sojourn put him in direct contact with a wide gamut of Silicon Valley investment firms, he said on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post.
Those included TPG, Thoma Bravo, Viking Global Investors, Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures, Brave Capital, Audere Capital, Flagship Capital Management, General Catalyst and Mubadala Ventures – which the minister called “sources of capital formation being directed to bleeding-edge technologies shaping the world today.”
He said companies including Flexport, Interos, Lightmatter and Lila Sciences were “keen to explore partnerships with the UAE.”
Reflecting on the SelectUSA Investment Summit in suburban Washington D.C., where he was a keynote speaker, Al Zeyoudi noted his meetings with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy as especially useful in kindling American-Emirati collaboration.
“While we shared non-oil trade of $40 billion in 2023, I believe our nations have only touched the surface of bilateral opportunity,” Al Zeyoudi said. “Sectors such as renewable energy, sustainability, biotechnology, life sciences, finance, and logistics are all ripe for further development.”
Abu Dhabi’s AI-focused energy company AIQ, meanwhile, announced a partnership agreement on Monday with Texas-based Halliburton’s Landmark unit to help expand the use of AI tools in oil and gas production.
Qatar makes chips play amid Gulf push into AI
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani opened the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha this morning with the message that the country is continuing its economic diversification efforts driven by its sovereign wealth fund, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).
QIA, which has over a half trillion dollars in assets under management, has made the U.S. its main market but it is eyeing emerging markets like Central Asia and Africa, he said, and the fund is accelerating investments in technology.
His remarks at the Bloomberg-hosted forum follow an announcement from the QIA last night that it plans to be an anchor investor in Ardian Semiconductor, a fund set up by French private equity firm Ardian to invest in the semiconductor industry across Europe.
No deal terms were disclosed but the move comes as Gulf sovereigns are jockeying for key pieces of what is powering the AI revolution, including chips, data centers and intellectual property.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund launched the $100 billion AI investment firm Alat in February and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala followed up a month later as a founding partner of MGX, a deep tech-focused fund aiming for $100 billion in assets under management.
The three-day conference will feature Jenny Johnson, President & CEO of Franklin Templeton (who addressed the Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare Week yesterday), and Ken Griffin, Founder and CEO of Citadel.
Also joining panels in Qatar’s capital will be Darren Woods, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil; Noor Sweid, Founder and Managing Partner of UAE-based Global Ventures; Rick Gerson, Co-Founder and Chair of Alpha Wave; and Gerry Cardinale, Founder, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Redbird Capital Partners.
Qatar pledges 10 billion euros for French startups and tech funds
On a state visit to Paris, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani pledged to invest 10 billion euros ($10.9 billion) in French startups and tech funds between now and 2030.
Feted by French President Emmanuel Macron with a dinner on Tuesday night at the Élysée Palace, the Emir hailed the longstanding relationship between the two countries and said his visit would deepen their strategic partnership.
The Qatari investments will cover a range of industries, including energy, semiconductors, aerospace, artificial intelligence, health, hospitality and culture, Macron’s office said.
Emiratis estimate trade volume with Israel will reach $5 billion in the next few years
Trade between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is expected to reach $5 billion in the “upcoming few years,” Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi predicted at the 2022 Davos World Economic Forum.
Al Zeyoudi detailed the economic benefit from the Abraham Accords at a Davos session titled “The Future of the Abraham Accords” alongside co-panelists Dorit Dor, the chief product and technology officer at Check Point Software Technologies Ltd; Stuart Eizenstat, the State Department’s special adviser on Holocaust issues and partner at Covington & Burling law firm, who currently serves as the State Department’s Special Advisor on Holocaust Issues; and Khalid Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, an advisor to Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
Less than two years since the signing of the historic normalization agreements, the trade volume between Israel and the UAE has eclipsed $2.5 billion, leading Al Zeyoudi to forecast that bilateral trade between Israel and the UAE will exceed $2 billion this year and that 1,000 Israeli companies will operate in his country by year’s end.
Al Zeyoudi also noted both countries share common challenges — water scarcity, agriculture, and energy diversification — and referenced past areas of cooperation, including the creation of a water research institute, Israel’s sale to the UAE of stakes in its Tamar gas field and the two countries’ collaboration on launching the Beresheet 2 space mission.
The panel also touched on long-standing obstacles in the Middle East, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran and relations between the Gulf states and Turkey.
Al Khalifa reiterated that his country remains committed to the Arab Peace Initiative, a proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and claimed the 2002 document was a tacit acknowledgement of Israel’s legitimacy by the Arab world.
“It’s a de facto acceptance by every Arab country of the State of Israel in the region,” he said.
Sounding a note of optimism, Eizenstat expressed confidence that Israel’s relationship with Abraham Accords countries could deepen, and proposed the U.S. create “Qualified Industrial Zones,” regions in which the U.S. allows free trade on products manufactured with Israeli help, in Abraham Accords countries.
“As much as we’ve had remarkable change for the good in a little over a year, there is room for enormous expansion if we do the right things and we continue down this path,” Eizenstat said.
Asked about the possibility of promoting peace between other Middle Eastern countries, Al Khalifa stressed the importance of patience, but said, “We will need to work harder and harder and harder to make that go at a faster pace.”
