Qatar and China are strengthening investment ties amid U.S. warnings to its Gulf allies about getting too close to Beijing.

Most recently, the Qatar Investment Authority agreed to buy a 10% stake in ChinaAMC, the country’s second-largest mutual fund, from Hong Kong-based Primavera Capital, Reuters reports.

China has become one of the major importers of liquefied natural gas from Qatar, the No. 3 exporter of LNG.

Middle East sovereign wealth funds have invested $7 billion in China since June last year, five times the amount seen during the previous 12 months, according to industry data provider Global SWF.

Etihad Airways is moving ahead with plans for a possible IPO, the first for a major airline in the Middle East, CEO Antonoaldo Neves said in an interview with Bloomberg.

The potential listing comes amid booming demand for air travel globally.

Airlines have raised their profit forecast to $30.5 billion this year as passenger count is expected to reach a record 5 billion, the International Air Transport Association said during its annual meeting, which wraps up in Dubai today.

Middle East carriers are faring particularly well, set to earn a net profit of $3.8 billion this year, up from $3.1 billion last year, according to the IATA.

Profit per passenger is among the highest in the world, netting $15.20 compared to the global average of $6.

Etihad, which has already recruited more than 1,000 cabin attendants this year, announced this week it is looking to add another 1,000 crew members.

The UAE flag carrier will host recruitment drives from June until the end of the year in 19 locations, including Athens, Vienna, Singapore, Cape Town, Colombo and Jaipur.

The Qatar Central Bank has the infrastructure ready to circulate a national digital currency and will soon start an experimental phase that will operate through October.

The state news agency reported this week that the central bank plans to focus on distributed ledger technology, enhancing liquidity and transactions with securities.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, the UAE’s Vice President and Chairman of the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE), chaired a meeting of the bank’s Board of Directors in Abu Dhabi on Monday in which plans to introduce a digital currency and regulate cryptocurrencies were discussed.

The CBUAE has participated in Project mBridge, in which interoperability for a digital currency was successfully tested earlier this year with the central banks of China, Hong Kong and Thailand and used for remittance payments to India.

Digital currencies are coming into focus in the Gulf as governments respond to cryptocurrency market volatility and assert their monetary sovereignty, according to the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, a Qatari think tank.

Sitting at the base of the world’s tallest skyscraper where dozens of dancing fountains greet more than 100 million credit-card-wielding visitors a year, the Dubai Mall ranks as the biggest and glitziest shopping center in the Middle East. Now it’s getting bigger and glitzier.

Mohamed Alabbar, founder of Emaar Properties, which built the 162-story Burj Khalifa that towers above, announced an expansion of the mall on Monday that will add 240 stores and restaurants to the 1,200 currently in operation.

The $408 million plan to enlarge the Dubai landmark comes after Emaar posted a 70% increase in net profit last year and the UAE reported record tourism.

“This expansion reflects Dubai’s ambitious vision to remain at the forefront of global innovation and culture, further solidifying our city’s position as a top global destination,” Alabbar said in a statement.

The mall, which first opened in 2008, is anchored by Bloomingdale’s and Galeries Lafayette, with boutiques that include Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Armani, Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Dolce & Gabbana.

The vast shopping galleries also house the Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo, an Olympic-size skating rink and a 24-screen cinema complex.

Emirates President Tim Clark says in a round of interviews that the crisis at Boeing is far from over and the U.S. planemaker needs to do more to address customer concerns.

For starters, he says Emirates should receive billions in compensation for delays in the development of Boeing’s latest 777 jet, Arab News reports.

Clark’s concerns carry clout given that his airline is the biggest buyer of both Boeing and Airbus widebody aircraft.

“For me, this will be a five-year hiatus starting from now,” Clark said in an interview with Bloomberg.

As a result of the manufacturing issues and delays on new widebody aircraft at the planemaker, Emirates is putting more of its Boeing 777 aircraft through an extensive retrofit program, Clark said.

That has raised the cost of the program to about $3.5 billion from previously $2 billion, he said.

Clark also advised that Boeing pick a strong CEO grounded in engineering and business to replace the departing Dave Calhoun.

The Emirates chief also said he’s certain that airfares are going up. “Unfortunately, but that’s the way it is,” he told CNBC.

Saudi Aramco executives are traveling this week to recruit international investors for the oil company’s $12 billion secondary offering, a departure from its IPO held five years ago that was marketed primarily to the home crowd.

Aramco CEO Amin Nasser and CFO Ziad Al Murshed will be attending roadshow events in London while others are planning to join presentations in New York, Bloomberg reports.

Institutional investors can submit orders until June 6 for the $1.8 trillion company’s share sale that began the booking process on Sunday and was oversubscribed within hours.

Before Aramco’s $29.4 billion IPO in 2019, overseas investors showed limited interest, leaving the government reliant on local buyers.

The kingdom scrapped a roadshow event in London and decided against presentations in the U.S. and Japan, choosing instead to focus on its enthusiastic domestic audience, who made the IPO the largest in history.

Fast fashion disruptor Shein is planning to confidentially file for a London public listing as soon as this week, Sky News reported, the first step in a super-sized initial public offering in the U.K.

The Singapore-headquartered company, which counts Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala as a major shareholder, had been targeting a New York IPO in the second half of last year but Beijing-Washington tensions waylaid those plans. 

To placate U.S. lawmakers in a bid to go public there, Shein has gone so far as to move its HQ from China to Singapore and stop selling its products in the world’s second-largest economy. Executive Chair Donald Tang told the Financial Times last month those efforts were not enough.  

Now the retailer is serving up a potential blockbuster to the sluggish London exchange, although a confidential filing does not necessarily mean a share sale is imminent. The filing will allow Shein to list more quickly if the company decides to move ahead on a market debut.

The 15-year-old company, which also counts venture capital group Sequoia China and private equity group General Atlantic as major backers, was valued at $66 billion in a funding round a year ago. 

While Shein did not invent the technology to help it predict rising fashion trends, the platform to give near real-time data to suppliers — who are mostly in China — created its unique “on-demand” production model, according to Business Insider, which looked into its production practices.

The data sharing allows for a fast turnaround from small order runs to much larger orders when an item is selling well, and to quickly drop an item when it isn’t.

The tight control it keeps over its supply chain has revolutionized fast fashion in recent years, making Shein more in demand among consumers than competitors like Zara and H&M.

Price is another factor in its popularity. McKinsey found the average cost per item from Shein is $14, while Zara is $34.

Saudi Aramco’s long-anticipated secondary offering, which could raise as much as $13.1 billion and rank among the most lucrative share sales since the company’s own IPO five years ago, gets underway next week.

The government filed papers on Thursday to start the booking process for investor orders that will lead to the sale of a 0.64% chunk of the world’s largest oil producer on the Tadawul Stock Exchange in Riyadh. Aramco will start taking orders from institutional investors on Sunday, June 2.

State-owned Aramco will earn about $12 billion if it chooses to sell the shares at the top of its indicated pricing range and could add another $1.1 billion by exercising the so-called greenshoe option in the likely event that demand from investors is high.

“The offering provides us with an opportunity to broaden the shareholder base amongst both Saudi and international investors,” Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser told reporters on a call after the announcement, Reuters reported. “It also offers us an opportunity to increase liquidity and to increase our global index weighting.”

Selling the shares will provide the kingdom with cash to fuel Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s $1.5 trillion Vision 2030 campaign to diversify the economy amid the global transition from fossil fuels. The government has recently extended the timeline for Neom and some of its mega-projects because of funding shortfalls as oil production cuts have reduced Aramco revenue.

At the top end of the price range, the Aramco deal would be the sixth-largest share sale since the company raised $30 billion in its 2019 initial public offering, Bloomberg reports.