Alef Education Holding is planning an IPO on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange as it seeks to expand its business beyond the UAE.

The company, which develops digital tools that are broadly used in Emirati schools, said today that it will sell 20% of its shares during a subscription period that starts May 28, with trading on the ADX expected to start June 12.

“We intend to solidify our market leadership at home and grow our presence across our target markets through continued investment in our digital capabilities, broadening our product offering and expanding our geographic footprint,” Alef CEO Geoffrey Alphonso said in a statement.

First Abu Dhabi Bank and EFG Hermes UAE were appointed as lead managers and  bookrunners for the IPO.

The Premier League Trophy is coming home… to Abu Dhabi. Manchester City, owned by UAE Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, won a record fourth straight Premier League title on Sunday, beating West Ham 3-1 in the final game of the season. City, as the club is known, is the first to clinch the champion title of English soccer’s top division four years in a row.

The team to beat in the U.K. is in many ways the UAE capital’s soccer team as well — from a business perspective at least. City is part of a multi-club ownership structure under City Football Group (CFG), owned by Sheikh Mansour and chaired by Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak.

Other board members include attorney Martin Edelman, who has served on the board of Abu Dhabi’s listed developer Aldar as well as an advisor to Mubadala; UAE communications fixer Simon Pearce; oil and gas executive John MacBeath; Alberto Galassi, CEO of Italian yacht builder Ferretti Group; and Abdulla Khouri, whose entertainment and events group, Ethara, puts on the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix each year.

Since coming under Sheikh Mansour’s ownership in 2008, when he bought the club for $254 million, City has become the fifth most valuable soccer team in the world, worth just shy of $5 billion — and notably had the highest revenue of any club last year, according to Forbes.

In 2019, American private equity firm Silver Lake invested $500 million for a 10% stake in CFG, and three years later made an undisclosed follow-on investment to increase its holding to around 18%.

CFG holds stakes in 13 football clubs over five continents including New York City FC and Melbourne FC. Sheikh Mansour is the chairman of Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s second largest sovereign wealth fund, whose holdings swelled to $302 billion in assets under management last year. 

A rally this year on the Shanghai Stock Exchange has been a boon to Saudi Arabia.

The Public Investment Fund bought 153,000 shares in Alibaba during the first quarter of 2024, profiting from the stock’s 24% jump during the period, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports, citing disclosures by the PIF to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

By contrast, the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund reduced its portfolio of U.S. stocks by about half to $18 billion.

“Investors have relinquished the wait-and-watch approach [for Chinese equities] in favor of building exposure on incremental signs of easing and wiped out the underweight allocation from prior months,” Bank of America strategists said in a note on Thursday, cited by the newspaper.

The MSCI China Index has surged nearly 28% since a January low, restoring over $2 trillion of value to Chinese companies listed on the mainland, in Hong Kong and New York, according to Bloomberg data. 

Mubadala Investment Co., Abu Dhabi’s second-largest sovereign wealth fund, published its 2023 annual review today, revealing the fund has swelled to $302 billion in assets under management and deployed $27 billion over the year.

Those investments were focused on opportunities in artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure, life sciences and the energy transition as well as expanding its holdings in private credit, according to a statement.

“Amidst the complexities that defined the global investment landscape in 2023, Mubadala accelerated its shift towards targeted investments that will shape the future economy” of the UAE, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Managing Director and Group CEO, said in a statement.

Mubadala reported $27 billion in investment returns, a 19.5% decline from the market peak in 2021 and down 6.6% compared to 2022. The portfolio achieved a five-year rate of return of 10.3%.

Qatar expects demand for liquified natural gas to keep growing and sees little prospect of a growing glut in coming years.

Speaking at the Qatar Investment Forum in Doha on Wednesday, Energy Minister Saad Al-Kaabi said his country will press on with its multibillion-dollar expansion of liquified natural gas facilities, and may consider adding further capacity if more gas becomes available, Bloomberg reports.

“If we have a reasonable economic growth going forward, I think you’ll see all that supply and demand will catch up and you’ll need another phase of development of gas in the 2030s,” he said. “I don’t think gas is going away anytime soon.”

Qatar is boosting its LNG capacity to 126 million tons a year by 2027 from 77 million a year currently. It’s targeting 142 million tons a year by the end of the decade.

In a bid to rouse would-be expats from their roosts in London, New York and Singapore, Dubai has created a new office dedicated to improving the quality of life in the Middle East’s wealthiest city.

The plan tracks with a growing trend among Gulf economies to prioritize investments in livability as competition for knowledge workers – financiers, tech engineers and healthcare workforces – heats up. Populations are on the rise in cities across the region including Dubai, as well as Abu Dhabi, Doha and Riyadh.  

Under directives from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai, the Dubai Quality of Life Strategy 2033 was approved on Tuesday with the aim of turning Dubai “into the world’s best city to live in.” 

Encompassing 200 projects and 1,000 live events aimed at drawing stars and sports teams, Dubai will also focus urban plans on residents’ ability to access essential services within a 20-minute journey — a distinction cities like Paris take pride in.

The plans will rely heavily on private sector participation, according to a statement.

Riyadh is undergoing a similar effort, pouring billions of dollars into beautifying the kingdom’s capital with parks, refurbished boulevards and new culture and leisure spaces as society opens up in the long-conservative kingdom.

Qatar’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament ignited tourism in 2022 and officials say they hope to stoke the industry further through deregulation.

By changing rules on licensing and operating hours, the Gulf state expects to generate a new bounty of international visitors, Saad bin Ali Al Kharji, Chairman of Qatar Tourism told Bloomberg in an interview.

“We will try to liberate the hospitality sector and remove any obstacles,” he said.

Defying expectations of a downturn following the World Cup, incoming arrivals to Qatar swelled 39% to 4 million tourists last year from 2022.

Qatar’s strategic plan calls for tourism to contribute 12% to GDP as Gulf neighbors Saudi Arabia and the UAE also invest heavily in the industry.

The Gulf Cooperation Council plans to offer a regional visa soon that would grant tourists access to all six of its member nations.

Abu Dhabi’s leading artificial intelligence firms made two announcements about advancements in large language model-based products this week.

Core42, a subsidiary of Mubadala and Microsoft-backed G42, has rolled out JAIS Chat as a mobile app available for download on iOS.

The bilingual chatbot was developed to meet the growing demand and popularity of generative AI capabilities regionally and can interact in English and Arabic, as well as facilitate translation.

Meanwhile, the Technology Innovation Institute, a government-backed research center, launched an update to its LLM, Falcon 2, that it says can outperform big tech players like Meta’s Llama.

“We’re very proud that we can still punch way above our weight, really compete with the best players globally,” Advanced Technology Research Council Secretary General Faisal Al Bannai, who is also an adviser to the president on strategic research and advanced technology, said.