It’s showtime this week for Shura Island, the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s $690 million luxury resort project whose opening has been postponed since early last year.

Managed by Four Seasons, the island’s development is backed by the PIF’s Red Sea Global and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding as a part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s effort to turn the kingdom into a luxury tourism magnet.

But in the shadow of the launch parties and coral reef marketing campaigns, consultants are being hired to tell ministries and developers that some of Saudi Arabia’s multibillion-dollar projects are too expensive to build, as the kingdom struggles with budget deficits, Intelligence Online reports.

The government’s budget troubles have forced officials to slow, shrink or shut down projects ranging from parts of NEOM’s The Line and the Trojena ski resort to Riyadh’s cube-shaped Mukaab.

A centerpiece of the Red Sea gigaproject, the Shura Island resort includes 149 rooms and suites, 31 residences and six restaurants, with 11 hotels already operating along the Red Sea beach area and six more opening soon on Shura Island itself, Arabian Gulf Business Insight reports. Bookings open from May 20.

The UAE is investigating a weekend drone attack on its $28 billion Barakah nuclear power plant that could escalate its three-month old conflict with Iran.

Though air defense systems shot down two of the three drones, the third one hit an electrical generator within the massive compound, which is operated by state-owned Emirates Nuclear Energy Co. and was built with the Korea Electric Power Corp.

Barakah, the Gulf’s first commercial nuclear power installation, is a central part of the UAE’s strategy to shift away from fossil fuels and move toward net zero emission energy sources. It currently supplies 25% of the country’s power.

No radiation was released in the attack, though one of Barakah’s four reactors was switched to emergency diesel power, The National reports.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed condemned what he described as a “treacherous terrorist attack,” while Presidential Advisor Anwar Gargash indicated that Iran was the prime suspect. The assault on Barakah, “whether carried out by the principal perpetrator or through one of its agents, represents a dangerous escalation,” Gargash wrote on X.

Since the end of February, Iran-linked attacks have hit or damaged Gulf-linked assets, including ADNOC tankers and gas facilities in Abu Dhabi, KEZAD industrial sites and the Emirates Global Aluminium complex

UBS has lost several senior wealth management bankers in the Middle East, less than two years after hiring them.

Among those departing the Swiss bank are Rana Al Emam and Ali Khunji, who joined UBS from HSBC Holdings in 2024 to expand the bank’s wealth business in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.

Al Emam moved to Banco Santander, while Khunji joined J. Safra Sarasin earlier this year, Bloomberg reports.

The moves are a visible indicator of the intense competition for talent in regional wealth management, though some firms have been recently scaling back since the war with Iran started.

The UAE emirate of Sharjah and Oman have launched a new sea-and-land logistics corridor to diversify Gulf trade routes amid the Strait of Hormuz blockade.

The arrangement allows goods to cross borders more easily, giving access to Oman’s east coast ports of Sohar, Duqm and Salalah, The National reports.

Since the outbreak of the Iran war, Gulf countries have ramped up trucking routes to allow free movement of goods via alternative routes.

Dubai’s new “green corridor” with Oman has become a vital trade artery, with customs declarations surging from 12,000 in March to almost 100,000 in April.

Oman India Fertiliser Co. is weighing an IPO that could value the company at more than $2.5 billion, potentially making it one of the sultanate’s biggest stock offerings.

The fertilizer producer, which is backed by the Oman Investment Authority and the Indian government, is planning to raise several hundred million dollars, with shareholders selling a combined stake of about 25%, Bloomberg reports.

It comes amid a rally in fertilizer prices driven by the regional conflict and would offer a welcome boost for both the Muscat exchange and the wider Middle East region, where deal flow had already started to slow down before the war began.

Société Générale, Arqaam Capital Ltd. and Bank Muscat SAOG are among the arrangers working on the deal. 

Anticipating future shipping headaches in the Strait of Hormuz, the UAE is accelerating plans to build a new pipeline that can bypass the Iran-blocked waterway.

Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed issued an order on Thursday to fast-track construction of the ADNOC pipeline aimed at expanding the UAE’s capacity to transport oil for export through the Gulf of Oman.

The national petroleum company’s existing Habshan-Fujairah pipeline already carries as much as 1.8 million barrels a day to the Indian Ocean coast, avoiding the narrow Hormuz channel, The Wall Street Journal reports. But that’s only about half the country’s prewar daily oil output.

Sheikh Khaled’s order comes a month after Saudi Arabia restored its East-West oil pipeline to full capacity, fixing damage linked to the Iran conflict that disrupted flows across the kingdom. Repairs to the pipeline, which runs from oil fields in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, enabled the kingdom to service customers amid skyrocketing oil prices.

The new pipeline project, scheduled for completion in 2027, follows the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC, which will allow it to increase production and meet the war-related rise in global demand for oil and gas.

Abu Dhabi’s rapidly expanding L’imad Group and ADNOC oil company are teaming up with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and Singapore’s Temasek sovereign wealth fund to invest as much as $30 billion in logistics and energy projects.

The four firms issued a statement today saying that funding for future deals across the MENA region and in Central Asia will come from BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, along with L’imad, Temasek and ADNOC.

The massive combination of capital demonstrates the ambitious agenda of L’imad, the UAE’s newest sovereign fund, which emerged last year when it acquired most of ADQ’s holdings and now manages about $300 billion in assets.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink cultivated some goodwill last month when he visited the UAE in the middle of Iran war and met with President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed to discuss strengthening investment partnerships.

L’imad made a splash in December when it joined Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the Qatar Investment Authority in backing Paramount Skydance’s $108 billion takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.

Meanwhile, the UAE’s state-owned defense contractor EDGE Group signed an agreement today to acquire a majority stake in Italy’s Costruzioni Motori Diesel, which specializes in developing advanced propulsion systems for road vehicles, ships and aircraft.

AI Chipmaker Cerebras Systems, a central partner in the UAE’s AI ambitions, has raised $5.5 billion ahead of its listing on the Nasdaq today, in the biggest IPO in the U.S. this year.

The California-based startup, which counts UAE tech investor G42 and Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence among its biggest customers, priced its shares at $185 each, valuing the company at about $40 billion.

G42, which is chaired by UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, bought about 1% of Cerebras for $40 million in 2021, meaning it stands to reap a substantial paper windfall in the IPO.

Earlier this year, Cerebras made a $10 billion deal to supply Sam Altman’s OpenAI with more than 750 megawatts of computing power over three years.